Snow Cruise Onze

We are slowly but surely going down the list of popular Hokkaido ski resorts and visiting them. This weekend we decided to take a quick trip to a nearby ski resort called snow cruise onze. It's located in Zenibako which is a little town on the Sea of Japan coast.
It was pretty nice! The mountain is very small- only has 2 lifts and maybe 7 courses and a halfpipe and a small terrain park. The snow was a little wet because we had a bit of a warm weekend but it was soft and felt great under-ski. But maybe the nicest part was the unique view that Onze had to offer: the ocean for as far as the eye can see!

It was cloudy on Sunday so the view wasn't optimal but it was still awesome to behold. We got flurries in the late afternoon which added to the beauty of the mountain.
As for the skiing, it's a pretty easy mountain. The only challenging run was the mogul-y one but this one was very short. In fact all of the runs were pretty short. Great place to learn or practice though. I'd say 90% of the people on the mountain were learning to ski or snowboard.
I took very few pictures but here's an album anyway:

Onze

2010 Christmas Ski Trip And End of the Year Recap

Hello, readers! Jane here. It is an unusual weekday night for us- we decided to stay in and relax instead of going to BJJ. Winter is in full force now- it has been snowing everyday for the last 10 days and the forecast is for more snow every day for the next 5 days. And after that? Probably more snow.

We definitely didn't get this much snow in such a short period of time last year. We are running out of places to put the snow! The snow in front of our apartment building has reached the first floor balconies and the building is occasionally shaken by accumulated snow falling off the roof. The school next door already has quite a sizable ski hill for the kids to practice on. The sidewalks and the streets are now separated by 5 foot walls of snow and pedestrians are side stepping each other on the narrow pathways. It is a true winter wonderland! I only hope that this keeps up because it is tons of fun for me and bodes well for an awesome ski season.

So how much skiing have we done so far? Well, admittedly not as much as we should be doing. But we'll be remedying that soon! Actually, the season was delayed by about two weeks at most resorts and if they did open, courses were limited.

The best time for us to go on an extended ski trip was for the Christmas/New Year week. We visited our favorite ski resort, Furano and tried out a new place for us, Kamui Ski Links. Both resorts had basically opened around the week before we came and conditions were less than stellar- certainly not up to par with last year's conditions. Still, it was great to be back skiing at our favorite ski town (even though our favorite runs were closed still!). One shouldn't really complain when there's good hard pack on the ground, no lines at the lifts and good weather.

After skiing three days in Furano, we transferred over to Asahikawa city. This is the second largest city in Hokkaido, boasts a fine ramen and is home to the northernmost zoo in Japan, which is the first place we visited after we checked our luggage into our hotel. (And beyond those three things, Asahikawa offered little else.)

Asahiyama Zoo is an extremely popular zoo. I even read that it is often competing only with Ueno Zoo in Tokyo in annual number of visitors. They even have a special zoo train that runs between Sapporo and Asahikawa, complete with cars named after animals and animal shaped chairs. Have you ever seen a giraffe in the snow? How about a lioness in the snow? Maybe this happens in zoos in America but we never thought about it?

In the winter, the zoo's most famous attraction is, of course, the penguin walk. It is actually as awesome as it sounds. Twice a day, they open the penguin exhibit and march the penguins around. The penguins walk right past you. Watch the video- I am not zoomed in at all. Those penguins are IN MY FACE. (You might have to click the picture and have another window open up to watch the video.)

From Christmas Ski Trip 2010

Two other features I really liked was the vertical tube that the seals would swim through and the underwater view of the penguin exhibit.

From Christmas Ski Trip 2010

From Christmas Ski Trip 2010

We spent the the next three days skiing at Kamui Ski Links. The conditions were similar to Furano. The resort is bit small- could have spent one day exploring it but it was pretty fun and relaxing. I especially liked the link run between peaks. It was a slightly narrow, ungroomed run that caused me a lot of anxiety but was also a lot of fun. We watched some guys practicing some competitive mogul skiing and pulling some awesome tricks. Kamui was also full of racers of all ages. Overall, a pretty nice mountain and is probably great when the conditions are better.

We arrived back in Sapporo on New Year's Day, after an uneventful New Year's Eve. (We watched Dynamite MMA on TV until we got sleepy and dozed off as some drumming and cheering floated into our room from outside.) New Year's Day in Sapporo was hectic. I don't think I've ever seen the station so lively. There were huge sales in all the stores and fukubukuro (lucky bags) aplenty. Basically you buy a fukubukuro at a set price (usually somewhere between 5000 Yen and 10000 Yen for bigger stores) and you can't see what's inside until after you buy it. You might end up with something you already own or something you wouldn't ever wear but you'll have gotten it at a killer bargain price!

Christmas takes a backseat to New Year celebrations here in Japan. Oshogatsu (the beginning of the year) is a time for visiting with friends and family, going to the temple, eating symbolic food and drinking lots of sake. On January 2nd, we were invited to eat and drink with the family of one of the teachers Ryan works with. I ate whale soup and salmon jerky. Ryan drank lots of "demon killer" sake and was even able to meet a maiko (apprentice geisha).

From Oshogatsu Celebrations

And to round out my oshogatsu, I visited the Hokkaido Shrine with a friend of mine and paid my respects to the kami (spirits/natural forces/gods).

It was a whirlwind trip and a whirlwind new year...and it didn't end there for me- I went to Hawaii less than a week after coming back. But that's for another post.

Please enjoy our new layout! The background is Ryan in Furano, patiently waiting for me to stop taking pictures and start skiing! Some of the new pages are still under construction but it'll all be done this week. Thanks for reading! And please view the rest of the pictures at the links below:

Christmas Ski Trip 2010

Oshogatsu Celebrations

Naginata

Wow, we've been quite remiss in updating lately haven't we?

As it turns out, November and December is crunch time for teachers in Japan. In fact, the old name for December in Japanese (shiwasu) can be translated to mean "Teachers Run". Our lives were no exception, and we're desperately wanting winter vacation to finally arrive.

In addition to our heavier than normal workload, we also had the extra stress of an impending Naginata competition back in November.

"What is Naginata?" you might ask.

About a year ago, to the day, we wrote about our experience with Kendo. Naginata (officially called "Atarashii Naginata" or "New Naginata") is essentially the same as Kendo but using a Japanese styled halberd instead of a sword. The same rules apply: you must call out your target as you hit it with proper technique to score. Besides the difference in weapon, Naginata adds an additional target than can be hit with the inclusion of shin strikes. Needless to say, this leads to many a bruised foot and knee.

It is traditionally seen as a woman's martial art. Indeed, in Japan the women outnumber the men by a large percentage (outside of Japan, men dominate the art for social reasons). It was believed that because of the longer reach it provided, the weapon was a better choice for the naturally frailer woman who could not hope to match a man with a sword (likewise the bow was also paramount to Samurai women). But training in the weapon has always been an important endeavor for both sexes of the warrior class.

As for our own history, I've been training since August and Jane started back in April.

This is actually Jane's second time taking part in a Naginata competition. Her first time around she only participated in the Kata section however. Though, she did manage to win one of her three rounds there. Surprisingly, we were able to do fairly well for our first fighting competition.

I took 15th and Jane took 20th out of 32 competitors.

There were only two clubs representing all of the participants (there are at most four total in all of Sapporo I believe). Ours is the sole adult recreational club. The club is mainly comprised of elderly women, so we only had six members participating; 4 men including me and 2 women including Jane. The rest of the competitors came from a single High School and were all women save for one European exchange student.

The format was a little strange and probably too difficult to type up here. But it was basically a kind of a marathon round-robin with three matches going at all times. You cycled through as many matches as you could in the time limit (about 2 1/2 hours). To keep track of your results, you would have stickers placed on your bogu (armor) for each match, points scored, and victory. At the end you added up all your stickers and the person with the highest score won. I ended up with around 50 points and actually somehow won the majority of my matches. The top three spots were taken by the other three guys in my club and their bogu looked like light-brights. I think the highest score was around 140. The girls from the High School actually weren't too far off from that. Here's what mine looked like:



Jane and I both got pretty banged up (my hands and feet were all kinds of purple and her shoulder had a pretty ugly bruise on it) but we had a great time and are eagerly looking forward to our next competition.

Here's some videos for reference (not of us):

Women's Championship
Men's Championship
Naginata vs. Kendo

-Ryan

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!