Haunted Waterfall: Heiwa no Taki

I hope you like scary stories!

Late one night several weeks ago, our friend Rob sent us a message:

"Hey, you want to go to a haunted waterfall?"

Being the huge fans of the macabre that we are, of course our only response was a resounding "Of course!".

We quickly made our preparations. Flashlights and cameras stowed, sweaters donned, and shoes laced up tight, we made our way out. In addition, we brought an Oni mask with us. Rob's girlfriend, like many Japanese, is very superstitious and had refused to join us on our excursion. We had hoped to use the prop to take some scary pictures to show her to punish her cowardice. Little did we know, we would have no need for such a device!

After a few wrong turns we made it to our destination. We were greeted by this slightly unsettling memorial.


To get down to the actual waterfall, you have to traverse three sets of slippery stairs and decaying handrails. In more than one spot, the foliage itself hinders your progress. It's as if the very area is telling you that you are unwelcome.


I was not the least bit deterred however. I quickly made my way down ahead of my companions. Alone, I decided that I would do a bit of exploring. There was a small shoreline of moist pebbles around the edge of the pool. My footing was sure, but I suddenly found myself nearly waist deep in the water! I frantically clawed my way out and looked around. I was sure that something had pushed me, but still I was friendless indeed! Needless to say, I was more than a little on edge from this moment on. But, I kept my experience to myself, saying only that I had foolishly slipped on some moss covered rocks. I would gladly endure their mocking over incredulous stares.

The air was unseasonably warm that night. But shortly after my seemingly supernatural experience, a chill set upon us. We quickly took some pictures of the spring and crash of the water and made our way out.


Before leaving we decided we would take a few commemorative shots to hold onto. It wasn't until we had arrived to our homes that we noticed them. Behold!

Is that a face next to me?


Same bench; different angle. Do you see the man?


Child at play?


A woman next to the tree?


To say were shocked at what we captured would be an understatement. The experience forced us to delve further into the lore of the area. There is a story of a local family that met a rather horrid demise some years ago near the waterfall. When they were of this Earth, they frequently came to the falls to spend time together. In the afterlife, it seems that they are doing the same.


-Ryan

Makomanai Park and the Salmon Festival

Finally rounding out our tour of all the parks in Sapporo is Makomani Park. (There's still other parks we've yet to see in/near Sapporo but the weather is quickly becoming colder and I'm not sure it's going to be park weather for long so this one might be the last new park we'll visit.)

This park is about a 25 minute subway ride south and 1 km from the station. We packed a lunch and headed off. We could have ridden our bikes...but I think we wanted a relaxing day. Anyway, the subway ride gave us time to read/play our gameboys. The weather looked great until we stepped out of the station and it started drizzling. Actually it was more like a misting. We seemed to be walking away from the rain but once we got to the park, the mist had turned into substantial drops. Good thing we didn't ride our bikes and that Ryan happened to have his umbrella in his backpack! (Was he a boy scout?)

I remembered that there was supposed to be a Salmon festival at the Living Museum of Salmon in the park so we made our way to the museum. Besides the fact that this event seemed interesting (I really want to see salmon swimming back upstreat!), a museum meant shelter and shelter meant being warm and drying off. When we got to the museum the rain wasn't so hard so we actually laid out our picnic tarp (picked up at the 100yen on the way because we forgot our usual tatami mat! oh the convenience of the 100 yen shop!) under the trees and ate our lunch.

After lunch, we walked around the festival. First thing we saw was a turtle race!! Much more exciting than it sounds, really! You'll see in the pictures that the blue turtle won, the red turtle didn't move at all (she was the oba-chan aka grandmother), and the yellow one, the tiniest turtle, made it half way and then decided to stare at us. Of course, since it was the cutest, the yellow turtle was the crowd favorite. After the excitement of the turtle race we walked around the museum, which had indoor and outdoor exhibits. There were some monster salmon there! They also had other river animals, like water beetles and crawfish and a variety of fish and frogs.

Overall it was pretty fun but I didn't get to see any wild salmon swimming upstream. I WILL see them one day!!

Enjoy the pictures:

Makomanai Park and Salmon festa

Summer's Over!!!

And what have we been doing with these last few warm days? LOTS!!!!

First of all, it has been a hot summer...for everyone, I guess. But for Sapporo?! We have neighbors who didn't even own fans until this summer. Coupled with the unusual humidity...everyone was exclaiming: 蒸し暑い (むしあつい　= mushi atsui = humid) and wiping their necks with their handkerchiefs the last few weeks. We are finally experiencing some cooler weather, though this is a far cry from last September when the first snows were falling in the northern Hokkaido mountains already.

We missed the Summer Festival Beer Garden in August because it was too rainy but I don't feel too sorry for that. We more than made up for missing the beer garden in our own ways:

BBQ!!!

Learning Japanese drinking games!!!
I think they are more enjoyable than American games!

Drinking at Liebspeise Beer Garden...
Otaru Beer is supposed to be the best beer in Hokkaido (?) and their recipes are actually based on German beers. Very interesting flavors- such as strawberry and banana. The Pilsner was my choice. Also, it was all-you-can-drink for 3 hours at only 2000yen!!!

And karaoke, of course!!

So, I think we did enough partying that we didn't need to spend the night in Odori drinking as well.

At the end of August we were also able to watch the Hokkaido Marathon. There were 9000 runners in it!! I put an album up with some random shots and then a few of people in costumes. I was so excited when I noticed on the TV that they were coming close to our apartment that I ran out to the refreshment and sponge tables up our block and forgot to load my camera with its SD card. Luckily Ryan brought it down to me just in time for the first runner...However, when I saw him, I was in so much awe I forgot to snap the picture!! Besides that, he was too fast to catch on film! Hahaha.

It was so hot that day and the race started at noon! I made the mistake of crossing over to the same side as the refreshment table and was basically trapped for an hour as 9000 people ran by. Ryan says his favorite part was buying a Pepsi from the vending machine and standing in the shade of an RV in a parking lot. Hahaha.

Hokkaido Marathon

Lately, we've been hitting all of Sapporo's parks. This is a truly green city. After today's rainy excursion to Makomanai Koen (koen = park), I think we've only got one or two left to go. So you're in for a treat 4 park picture albums!!

First up, Sapporo Geijitsu No Mori (Sapporo Art Park).

Sapporo Art Park and the Ghibli exhibit

I really wanted to go here because they were having a big Studio Ghibli exhibit- the makers of anime such as Princess Mononoke, Totoro and Spirited Away. This exhibit was gigantic!!! I mean, the amount of work they had on display...I guess it makes sense- they were basically showing sketches for the movies- but I was only 1/3 of the way finished looking at all the work and I almost gave up! Many of the pieces were drawn Hayao Miyazaki himself! The exhibit organizers did their job well- I gained a lot of appreciation for the work that goes behind animation. You'll see in the album pictures of me laying on Totoro's stomach and of the kuro-kuroski (black dust balls) that I drew for their wall.

The art park itself was wonderful. They have studios that you can rent and do work in and a crafts building where they teach crafts (really?!). I think there's even a music hall. My favorite part of the park was the pond. There are stairs that basically go into the water and when I first walked up to it, I noticed a mother and child throwing pieces of bread into the water. I thought they were feeding ducks but as I got closer, I didn't see any ducks near them. I only saw that the water in front of them was swirling and writhing. Holy crap! I thought. There's a sea monster in this pond! Well, that's a silly thought- it'd be a pond monster, if anything. Anyway, you'll see from the pictures that my pond monster was actually gigantic fish. They were practically walking up the steps!

Next, Takino Suzuran Koen. Actually, maybe this park doesn't count as a park within Sapporo. It was a 35 minute bus ride south of the city.

Takino Suzuran Park

This was a kind of spur of the moment trip. We decided we needed to take advantage of the good weather and I decided on this park because it supposedly has one of the 100 most beautiful waterfalls in Japan. Well, you'll see the album has zero waterfall pictures. Actually, there are waterfall pictures but it wasn't THE waterfall that we were aiming for. We were still pretty happy to see a waterfall (see pictures).

What we did get to do was play in what I think is Teletubby land. Actually, I think it was the Children's Valley and had lots of things to do like rolling giant red balls up and down a giant hill, various slides (some so dangerous kids were wearing helmets!) and a really cool underground play area with a giant net that kids jumped around in. It was awesome!! There was also a giant anthill.

We're going to revisit this park soon so we can check out that waterfall (and probably play again!!).

Next, Maeda Forest Park. We went there this past weekend because even though the forecast said it would rain, it was bright and sunny and once again, we had to take advantage of the good weather. (Did I mention that lately the weather has been nice and warm EXCEPT on days we have off?)

Maeda Forest park

So we decided to ride our bikes there- a nice 10km ride. All in all it's a beautiful park with a really long canal leading up to a building that websites say is supposed to look like a castle but only sort of looks medieval. I was lucky enough to spot two girls wearing costumes and having a photoshoot. So, of course, I asked them if I could take some pictures with them. Don't ask me what I was trying to do in the last picture. I think I said "I'm going to look scared now!"

It seems like a great park for runners and dogs. We saw a lot of those. We also saw some men putting together an RC car. Japanese people always have such interesting hobbies!

The last park is Makomanai Park, which we visited today. I'm glad we finally got to it since I'll be running my first 5K race there in less than two weeks! But I haven't uploaded the pictures yet so you'll just have to wait for the next post!!! Until then, enjoy the pictures!!

(I'll try to caption them ASAP as well though I tried telling their stories in this post!)

As if I really needed ANOTHER blog...

Trust me, there WILL be actual updates soon...there are so many pictures and stories to tell but it's been like Grand Central station over here! (That means, really busy, right? Probably means something more like lots of people have come through here...even then it applies!)

Anyway, just wanted to inform you all that I've started another blog solely for tracking my Japanese studying:

Ganbari Jane!

So...enjoy!

Blast From the Not So Distant Past

Well, I never finished my "Blessed with Snow" series which should have been a three parter- with the さっぽろ ゆき まつり ("Sapporo Yuki Matsuri" = Sapporo Snow Festival) being the conclusion. So here it is!

For those of you who don't know about Yuki Matsuri, it is a festival celebrated in Sapporo every year in February. Hundreds of snow and ice statues are built in three different sites- Odori Park has small and large snow sculptures, Susukino has ice statues and the Tsudome Dome is basically turned into a playground made of snow and ice with funny activities such as Waku-waku Tappy Land and Snow Crystal Watching.

The 2010 festival was the 61st. The festival was started in 1950, when a group of high school students built a few statues in Odori Park. Five years later, the Japan Self-Defense Force decided they wanted in on the fun and started building massive snow sculptures. The Self-Defense Force is actually in charge of bringing in all the snow and has to bring in snow from outside Sapporo when accumulated snowfall is low. This is considered a training exercise for them!

I can't even remember what day we went to the festival but it's only a week long, so we must have gone on a weekend night. I don't think I've ever seen so many people in Sapporo before and I probably won't again until next year. It was freezing but worth it just to see the amazing things they built! I did not expect the statues to be so big but three or four of them were actually stages.

On to the most important part: the pictures! Enjoy!

Yuki Matsuri 2010

Long Time No See!

Well, it certainly has been a long time since I've written anything here hasn't it? It's been a bit slow here in Sapporo since the ski season ended, but let me get you up to speed on a few things that have happened since our last conversation.

Early April (or was it late March?) our friend Ruky came to visit us from the U.S. She came along with one of her friends that was stopping over on his way to return home to Taiwan. Their visit consisted mostly of traveling around the main island of Honshu, but they managed to trek up North for a weekend.

Arriving late on a Friday night, we assumed that they'd be some combination of jet-lagged, hungry, and shocked by the still frigid weather of Hokkaido. So, it was only natural that we feed them our city's comfort food: Soup Curry!

Jane has mentioned this once before but let me give you a little more in depth description. Soup curry is an Indian influenced spicy soup usually made from a tomato or beef stock. Though, we've seen other varieties including coconut and seafood. Curry houses and Indian food in general are very popular dining options in Sapporo and there seems to be quite a large population of Indian immigrants on our island. We're not really sure why that is in a country as homogeneous as Japan, but we're quite happy with it seeing as Indian food tops our list of favorites. Digressing, you can have pretty much anything you want with your soup curry. Jane and I prefer mame chizu which is a vegetable option with two large pieces of mochi smothered in cheese. Delicious!



The next day, we took them to all of the popular tourist attractions in Sapporo. Unfortunately, Sapporo isn't terribly interesting unless you're planning it as a hub on your winter sports excursion. And frankly, I'm having a hard time even remembering exactly what it was we did this day, so let's just skip to the next day shall we!

Besides skiing/snowboarding, Hokkaido's other main attraction are onsen. We had already visited a very famous set of onsen in Noboribetsu when we first arrived. This time we opted for something a little closer in the towns of Hohekyo and Jyozankei. Our good friend Midori also decided to join us for our little excursion. A short bus ride later, the five of us were in the town exploring the many nooks and crannies it had to offer.

First stop, a foot bath!


I'm probably breaking every rule there is, but I'm relaxing the only way I know how!

Afterward, we walked to an interesting local shrine.


Built into the ground below is a narrow tunnel housing many Buddhist statues. It was kind of a tight fit for me but a very fun adventure nonetheless.



There were several other hot spring attractions, such as this little waterfall.


The water is actually hot enough to boil eggs!


For the last part of the day, we took our friends to the onsen for the full Hokkaido experience.

Coming up next: Jane's naginata training, our experiences at a Filipino Pub, and more!

-Ryan

And then it was spring...

April went by quickly...Spring break wasn't really a break (worked almost half of it); Ruky came to visit for a few days (Yay!); The weather was bitter cold and rainy (Ryan often reminded me that spring is NOT the best season); Then Golden Week came upon us (More on that later); And last night while we slept, someone did this to our tree:



It is finally はなみ (flower-viewing) season in Sapporo!!! I'm sorry this is going to be short. I assure you I have a backlog of posts that will be published sooooooon but I have to admit now that the blossoms have arrived, I might be a little distracted. I was feeling a bit sorry that winter was ending in April (I would trade freezing rain for a blizzard any day!) but today's warm breezes won me over! Happy Spring, everyone!