Snow and Blizzards and Hong Kong?

Feb. 6th Saturday

So today we got up bright and early for breakfast after 3-4 hours of sleep. lol It was actually pretty good, washoku style. We all headed out around 10:30am to catch the train/subway to Otaru. Otaru is the port city next to Sapporo. It`s famous for it`s music boxes, it`s glass, beer, and the Otaru canal. The train there was also really cute. Nice and bright colored inside. We rode along the snowy coast. It was a beautiful site I have to say. When we got there it was snowing pretty hard. But we endured it and walked out and over to the Music Box Museum.

The outside looked like an old brick building with large wooden doors that reminded me vaguely of an old English warehouse. You walked in and immediately the chimes and tinkling of all the music boxes floated into your ears. It made my spirits lift to hear such beautiful sounds and the interior of this place made you feel warm and fuzzy. All the furniture and the floor inside was made of wood that creaked as you walked on it. I actually quite liked that feeling of creaking wood underneath your feet. The lighting was warm and abundant, but not too powerful. And there were blue Christmas lights that hung down from the ceilings. Most beautiful of all were the huge array of assorted music boxes displayed on the wooden tables.

There were boxes that were adorned with flowers and jewelry, carvings of Victorian maidens on the cover, lacquered Japanese style painted boxes, picture frame music boxes that played music when you pulled a string, merry-go-round boxes that spun slowly around while playing music, and ones that had kalaidescopes attached to them so as music played and while looking through the scope the shapes would shift. I thought that the first room alone was amazing and was definitely planning on buying something there, but I told myself to wait until I looked through the whole thing. Everything, however, was around $30. It was quite expensive, but I had to remind myself that these were handmade unique music boxes that you will not find anywhere else and that these were one of the thigns the city was famous for. Besides, they were wonderous and cute looking.

The second room was larger and opened up to high ceilings and had a large shrubbery bear greeting you in. In this room, everything here was geared towards younger children and/or family. Everything was soooo cute and sparkled quite brightly in the warm light. Many of the boxes here were topped with cute Otaru glass figures or just made out of the famous Otaru glass. The room was so colorful and cheerful and the tinkling sounds could just be heard everywhere. I didn`t know where to start so I started to the far left and made my way down came back up towards the middle and ended down the far right lane. They even had music boxes for babies where they were stuffed animals that had music boxes inside them. Most impressive were the shapes of cash registers, motorcycles, cars made out of copper and all were music boxes. They also had ones that were mini ferris wheels or fighter planes suspended by metal filaments that would rotate as music played. Absolutely adorable.

As I was perusing through the aisles I stopped at a particular table that caught my attention. It was actually the least colorful and sparkly of all the other tables and not many people paid too much attention to it as the tables around it held spinning glass figures that would spin around as music played or the sushi music boxes that had realistic sushi models attached to the top of them. On this particular table everything was made of wood and were the color of wood. The one that I was quite fixed on was this thing that looked like a cardboard box that was opened and had 3 carved wooden dogs with their top torso sticking out of the box opening. I turned the knob to play the music and it started playing "My Neighbord Totoro"`s theme song. The dogs in the box swayed left and right in unison to the music. And right then and there, I knew that this was the music box I was buying. There was something nostalgic about it and something that pulled at me when I first laid eyes on it. It made me feel sad and at peace inside at the same time. And hearing the music, I somehow almost cried.

I don`t know why, but lately, upon seeing specific nature scenes here or specific items these feelings come back to me and I feel as if I`ve seen them somewhere before and my chest wells up and a tear will almost escape my eye. Call me crazy, but it feels like for specific areas that I see I feel like I`ve lived there before or there`s something about these things that tugs at me. Vague, barely noticeable images will start playing at the back of my mind, but I can never make it out. Everytime, this will happen: I see these places and then there will be a flash of a second of an image of something happening in these places, but they`re so quick and transparent that I can`t make it out and it just leaves my thoughts later. But then again, I`ve had these feelings back in the states too, but only in specific areas. So maybe I`m just overthinking things and it`s really nothing. But I think from now on, I`ll start keeping records of these things.

But back to the music box museum itself. Sorry for that weird tangent. I still told myself to go look at other things before coming back to buy this one. I went to the 2nd floor and along the wall of the stairs were hung copper figures and sculptures each with a string attached so that when you pull them, they played music. They were absolutely cute and adorable especially the ones with owl carvings. But I had no particular interest in buying one of them. They were unique and amazing though, it`s just I was attached to the the simple cardboard music box. We then looked around more and saw jewelry and the museum side of this place where it showed the history and had the oldest and larges music boxes I`ve ever seen. They even had a music box juke box! That was cool. But afterwards everyone went off to buy what they needed and I headed back down to the first floor to that same table. I bought a music box picture frame that swayed back and forth to the music made from the same wooden materials and with cats on top instead of dogs. And I also bought that cardboard music box. We spent a good 1 1/2 hours in this place and then went back out into the cold to walk to other places.

It was basically blizzarding outside. And cold, really cold because of the wind. We stopped in Le Tao sweets bakery shop. But we didn`t buy anything from these places. We then went to look in on the famous Kitaichi glass shop where they had various glassware and jewelry displayed throughout the place. We went back outside and went into the Venetian glass museum. Now that was cool. They had glass pens that you would dip into ink to write with. And glass animals and even a Venetian boat in the middle of the room. heh. Then we started heading over to the canal where the Otaru Beer factory was.

We were hungry and cold, so once we got in it was such a relief to sit down in the warm room. The place looked like a German beer hall with large copper machinese that brewed beer in the center of the room. All the waitresses were in somewhat strange looking barmaid outfits. It didn`t feel like we were in Japan anymore, especially with my company of awesome foreigners. haha. So we ordered the famous Otaru beer and I got the special of the season, the Bermberger. The glass was huge and thick and the beer was good. We also ordered food, food that we couldn`t get in normal Japanese restaurants. I got myself a steak plate with fries, salad, and garlic rice. My friends got dark pretzels that tasted so deliciously good, and there were also canellonis and some kind of interesting bread roast. I took a picture of it if you look at the pics on facebook. Oh, and while we were eating you could see groups of people getting tours of the factory. THis place is half factory half restaurant. lol

After that we braved the cold again to go outside to see the canal at night. It was very pretty, but sadly, because the wind was so strong outside the candles that were floating in the river were mostly all blown out. And it was so crowded it was hard to see some of the sculptures made to hold candles. But it was pretty nonetheless. Afterwards we walked back to the Otaru station and boarded the train and went on back to Sapporo. In Sapporo we went back to the yuki matsuri since the weather seemed better and it wasn`t closed. So we walked around, bought some wonderful food, drank amazake, and watched shows. THen the weather turned bad and we decided to head on back to the hotel. We originally wanted to go clubbing and everything, but majority of us were really tired and exhausted. Apparently, for everyone, this entire week was quite tiring. So when everyone came, they were already all ready to pass out. =( But at least we were able to be in a group and chill with each other.

That night we passed out, and I was able to get the bed this time. Yay!

Feb. 7th Sunday

Got up at 8:30 for breakfast and met up with Collin and his gf there. They finally got up for breakfast. haha. Anyways, we all decided today to just chill around Sapporo. Since Collin`s gf had to go check in another hotel, we decided to split up for lunch and then meet back up at odorikoen. Steph, Erika, and I went for lunch at an Omurice place. We all got hamburg doria omurice. It was good, but we weren`t able to get extra sauce. boo...We sat and talked for a while and then went to the yuki matsuri to meet up with them.

At the yuki matsuri I was able to get a picture with our amazing mascot, Marimokkori. He`s the ball of algea with an erection and perverted happy face. lol Look at my pics for him. hehe. I love this mascot. Whoever thought it up is a genius. Who would`ve ever thought of an algea ball having an erection eh? >D

So we met up and walked around seeing the sculptures we weren`t able to see before when it was blizzarding at night and stuff. We saw a couple of awesome international snow sculptures because there was a competition going on there. It was pretty cool as there were people from all over the world there building these things. We then went to eat some international foods. We got stuff from Brazil and Greece. Nummers.

After that we headed back to Sapporo station to chill at a starbucks before I headed off first to get my train back home.

Otsukare for reading guys! Sorry about that weird random exerpt. Look at the pictures!