The northern regions were under a blanket covering of snow which certainly boded well for the Snow Festival. Soon we descended as we hit the east coast and spun round to land at Narita. After getting off and finding my legs didn't really work (and visiting the toilet) I got through immigration and got my bags. James' flight was the next one due on the luggage belt so I sat and waited (much to the puzzlement of the Narita staff). Brits started arriving and more and more came but no James. Just as my mind was starting to believe our decision to meet here was a bad one he turned up. We got through customs and went down to the trains. After trying to be sold a bus ticket to Haneda (3 times the cost of a train ticket) we managed to get a train timetable. For a country with one of the world's most famous train services, you'd have thought there would be a direct train between the two airports, but no. We had to get the local commuter service which stopped at every intermediate station. After an hour we still hadn't reached the changeover station and were finding merely being awake tiring. Eventually we limped into Aoto and changed trains. Pretty soon we were at the internal airport Haneda. After finding that the automatic check-in machines weren't as easy to decrypt as the train ticket machines we checked in the regular way. We still had several hours so we wandered up to the viewing area. It's like how UK airports used to be – free and close-up views of the apron and runways. We went back down to a conbini (from this point on, conbinis will be referred to as “kwik-e-marts”) and bought some sushi. Haneda used to be Tokyo's main airport so it's pretty big. It took us 20 minutes to walk to the gate (and this terminal was only for JAL flights: ANA has its own terminal). We boarded the 767 and found that there were only about 30 people on the flight so we could choose where to sit. The plane had pilot cam, that allowed us to get a pilot's -eye view, but after taking off the long day caught up and we fell asleep. Soon we arrived in Sapporo and there was a lot of snow. Despite Tokyo-Sapporo being one of the busiest routes in the world, Sapporo airport is pretty small. The train link to the city was easier to work out than our cross-Tokyo journey and soon we were at the main station.
Thankfully our £150/night hotel (the perils of booking late in Snow Festival season)was very close and we were soon in our cramped (but plush) room. To continue the “beat jet-lag” plan we had to stay awake for a few more hours so we ventured out into the cold to check out the festival. We headed to the Sapporo tower and soon were among the ice sculptures. To say some of them were big is a massive understatement. The big ones are carved from 20x20x20m snow cubes. They depict various things from promotional items (prince Caspian) to just random collages of world landmarks. As it was dark, the sculptures had light shows and one had a small booth with children playing music. At first we though they were simply playing keyboards along to a backing track, but it soon turned out that they were also playing all the percussion, selecting individual drums via a battery of foot pedals. I dread to think how many hours a day these kids had to practice, but it was amazing and a bit spooky. The main street is very long so eventually we headed down a side street and found a MOS Burger. We wandered back to the hotel via a Kwik-e-mart where James purchased a box a of chocolate-covered Leibniz biscuits that were destined to become the snack of choice for the whole trip.
We woke the next day at a good time (jet-lag beaten-Yes!) and soon set off (via a kwik-e-mart for a sushi breakfast), taking the subway to odori koen. We had a wander around the park which was under several inches of snow. It was the end of the Snow Festival so there were plenty of snowmen and other displays still around. Then we started walking back towards town taking in the “smaller” ice sculptures, along the way shelling out 500jpy for possibly the worst sake in Japan. Soon we were drawn into the enticing environment of an arcade. The ground floor contained the usual grabber and print club machines, but as we ventured downstairs we found the real games. As I found out on my last trip, traditional arcade games have given way to shooters and rhythm games with the odd 1 on 1 fighting game knocking around. The level of skill on display was amazing (as ever) with small girls blitzing through the DJ game and skinny geeky-looking guys getting perfects on Guitar Freaks. Eventually, when noone was looking we sneaked on and had a quick go on Drum Mania (easy level of course). After feeling pretty smug with our good scores we were shown hos it's done of hard. We fared a bit better on HOTD4 and then got the hell out.
We continued back to the main street and continued browsing through the vast amount of sculptures. We had the local speciality (well, one of them as we couldn't afford the hairy crab) miso ramen from a side stall. The sculptures became smaller – the entries from the unlikely snow-sculpting nations of Hawaii, Singapore and Malaysia joined other country's entries in the sculpture competition and there were more smaller displays including those featuring Totoro, hello Kitty and Space Invaders. The week had taken its toll on some of them though giving us a glimpse of the insides – including a wooden frame. Is that cheating? I don't know. We also so a sculptor repairing a castle. Now by this point it was COLD. Taking you hands out of your gloves was unbearable after a couple of minutes, but this guy was happily reshaping beams of snow and fixing them them on - he can't have gone home with too many fingers.
We headed back to the hotel via a 100jpy shop and then back to the shopping centre around the station. We settled on an okonomiyaki place in the food court of the big department store. After 2 years of trying to make them myself from the vast array of recipes on the internet this was my chance to see how it's actually made – the secret seems to be yams instead of flour. Afterwards we headed out to find an izakaya. After completely failing to find the recommended places from the Lonely Planet guide we settle on a back street place – thankfully it had an all-you-can-drink offer so we had 2 hours to drink more than 4 pints which we managed – I know who won that one. On our way back to the hotel we stumbled across the clock that our guidebook described as "the most famous sight in Sapporo" and "One of the top 3 disappointments in Japan." As we weren't especially looking forward to seeing it it didn't really disappoint us.
We got up for our last day in Sapporo. Although we'd heard rumours that the snow sculptures we demolished on the day after the festival ended, we decided to go to the Sapporo beer museum. We got the subway out and trudged through the snow to the museum. We got in and after some broken English and equally broken Japanese we were ushered into the lift and up to the 1st floor where we found precisely none of the exhibit was in English. We finally found the reason we'd gone when we got to the sampling section taking a selection of 5 beers (including the Hokkaido-only version).
We headed back to town, got some tempura for lunch and then caught the train back to the airport in Chitose. Whilst our flights out had been near-empty, we weren't so lucky on the way back – and ANA 747 was filling up rapidly and our 777 was bursting at the seems as we were hemmed in the middle seats (3-4-3 seat configuration in a plane designed for 3-3-3!). And both ANA and JAL fly at least one flight an hour to Tokyo each!
Next up - Tokyo! Now if I could just stop playing Mario Kart Wii long enough to write it!
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