Sapporo Is Ichiban!

Posted by John Nguyen

I spent an amazing five days in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido. There was a three day Welcome Orientation for all the new Hokkaido JETs from August 18th-20th that ran from Monday to Wednesday, so I decided to go up early on Saturday and spend the weekend exploring the city. My friend Callie lives in Sapporo and was kind enough to lend me some floor space (literally) at her place. There were a bunch of festivals going on in the evening that weekend so during the day she took me around to all the big tourist spots. The first thing we did was walk around Nakajima Park which is gorgeous park just outside downtown that has a lake and houses the Sapporo Concert Hall. After an hour of walking around we started to get hungry so we went to for Jingisukahn, which is a popular Hokkaido delicacy where you cook mutton and vegetables over coals on a special hot plate (see picture way down below). Deeelicious! After that stumbled upon "Sega World" which is an arcade chock full of arcade games, crane games aannd... photobooths! Neither one of us had done purikura before so we thought it would be fun. It was a blast! On our first attempt (the one on the left) we couldn't read the instructions and only ended up with one picture. We tried it again a second time the next day and the results came out much nicer! After the pictures are taken you can spend time outside the booth decorating the pictures with millions of little images (we spent half an hour on the second set..) to turn your bland poses into wicked "Only in Japan" creations. Before that we did the taiko drumming game which I would highly recommend! It would be the first of many taiko sessions that week.

Afterwards we walked down to the Susukino district (which turns into a red-light district at night) that is lined with 10 story buildings full of stores and restaurants and neon lights. After that is the Tanukikoji Shopping Arcade which is a covered street that runs for 8-10 blocks and is lined with tons of shops (It's walking only, so kind of like Stephen Avenue in Calgary...except a lot cooler). A few more blocks down is Odori Park which is a huge greenbelt in the middle of downtown where a lot of festivals are held. A couple of blocks more is Sapporo station which has the main JR Rail train station underneath it and a huge mall above it. The mall spans over four blocks and is connected through underground tunnels that also has stores in it. It was massive. There's also an underground shopping mall directly underneath Odori Park and they're doing construction to connect the two underground malls. If your a shopaholic, you could easily spend a few days (or all your money!) in Sapporo.

That night was the Bon Odori festival in Odori park. There's a children's version and an adult version and they both have their own 5-6 step choreography to it. Taiko drums are on a raised platform with paper lanterns hanging up everywhere and the same folk song is played over and over while people dance around the platform. The dance started at about 6:30pm so me, Callie, her friend Olivia and Olivia's friend watched the children's dance for the first little part. After a while, Olivia wanted to join in and wanted us to join in too. We were all for it! There were at least a few hundred people watching us attempt (and not quite getting..) this dance so we added our own western flair to it. Callie and Olivia are both blonde and stand out like sore thumbs in a sea of black-haired people so cameras were going off left, right and center. The Japanese watching were loving it! We ended up dancing this one for about an hour and then it was time for the children to depart to make room for the adult dance.

The second dance was a bit more sophisticated because everyone was dressed up in yukata (summer kimono's) or traditional clothing...except one guy there who was probably doped up on something. He had a yellow shirt on and wasn't following the dance at all. It looked like he was tweaking out; it was hilarious! (Check out the video on Callie's blog here). We were standing in the crowd watching when a guy standing next to us recognized us from the dance before. He told us we should join in but we said we were tired and were just going to watch. He kept trying to urge us and then yelled "Challenge!". This is what Japanese say when they want to pump themselves up. We decided why the hell not so we joined in the adult dance too. It was just as fun and lasted just as long as the childrens dance so by the time we ended - around 9:00pm - we had been dancing for almost two hours! We were pretty sore afterwards so we went to a place where we could sit down and eat amazing curry.

We woke up early the next morning and didn't waste any time to go exploring downtown Sapporo again. We hit up the Nijo Fish Market which is a complete block of fish and seafood stalls. They were selling different kinds of seafood, massive 10,000 yen ($100) crabs and weird stuff like bags of squid beaks, mmm. Then we hit up the Sapporo Factory shopping mall and saw dogs at the petshop (Callie has a dog obsession), played around Toys R' Us and then hit up another arcade for another taiko sesh. From there we headed back downtown to watch another matsuri (there was seriously a festival every day) and then went to meet some other JETs, Justin and Eddie who had just arrived from my area, to explore more of the city. First, we all went to Ramen Alley (which is literally an alley crammed with ramen shops), then we showed them the Tanukikoji Shopping Arcade and then, of course, more...taiko! We wanted to check out the Hokkaido University so we headed there next and wandered around the beautiful campus for a bit. From there we took the streetcar (*arigatou gozaimasssssu...*) to the base of Mt. Moiwa where we got the tourist discount and took a ropeway to the top. We got to the peak right at dusk so we were able to get some amazing sunset and night shots of Sapporo from 531 meters up. It was a perfectly clear night too. We stayed up there for about an hour before our stomaches forced us to find a place to eat. We hadn't had okonomiyaki in Japan yet so we set out to search for an okonomiyaki restaurant. It was surprisingly difficult to do. After much searching and asking random people on the streets we finally asked some people who knew where one was but, not knowing how to explain how to get there in English, proceeded to just take us there.

The Sapporo Orientation officially started the following day. All the new Hokkaido JETs from around the island (about 102 of us) congregated in Sapporo for 3 days of informative goodness and socializing. The first day was filling our heads with general information on how to be safe in Hokkaido from earthquakes, tsunamis, STD's and whatnot... and then that evening was the welcome enkai (I'll just skip to the good part..). It started at 7:00pm at the Kirin Beer Gardens where we paid 4,000 yen for 100 minutes of unlimited drinking and Jingisukahn (All you can eat meat! how I missed thee). We had to wear body aprons to protect us from the fried grease (and probably vomit...if it ever came to that). Of course I don't drink, so I had to pull my weight in food, which I am glad to say I did successfully. The meat literally started to taste different by the end of the night, which I don't know is a good or bad thing..

The nijikai that followed (what you would call an "afterparty", sometimes followed by sanjikai or the "afterafterparty", and so forth..) was held at a nightclub called A-Life that opened on that night specially for us. It was a smashing good time full of dancing and drama (which I won't go into here, lol) that provided a good topic of conversation the next day. Me, Callie and Eddie were the first to get our grooves on until the point when everyone else got sufficiently drunk enough to start dancing too. It was midnight when I called it a night but some others went out for karaoke afterwards until 3:00am.

We all had to get up early the next morning (unnghh...) for the second day of the conference. We learned a bit more about our jobs, how to teach our classes and received some example lesson plans. It actually made me feel quite a bit better about what to expect in the classroom and some of those handouts were lifesavers on my first two days. That evening after the conference was a bit more mellow than the night before. Me and Justin hung out at Callie's place for a bit and then met up with some other JETs for our last night of an okonomiyaki-like substance called monjyaki. It looks like cat vomit but tastes like delicious, fried cat vomit (but seriously, it's pretty good). Afterwards, the others headed out for a 60 minute nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) session so me and Callie went to explore the city at night and ended up at an arcade called Sugai! for some wholesome fun of more taiko (seriously, we are addicted) and bowling!

The next day was our last day of the conference and consisted of a scavenger hunt and a tour to the Historical Hokkaido Museum. For the scavenger hunt we were split up into groups based on Japanese language ability and given an hour and a half to find certain landmarks in the city. It was pretty fun getting lost downtown, finding random places and scaring strangers when six white people started talking Japanese to them. It was funny because they were asking one old lady how to get to a place when I walked up to the group. She automatically turned to me, mid-sentence, and starts explaining to me how to explain to everyone else where to go. I think she assumed I was Japanese (and ergo, fluent) but I only understood every 3rd word she said. It's been happening to me a lot since I've been here; people assume I'm Japanese or exclaim "Nihonjin mitai!" when they find out I'm not. No superstar gaijin status for me. It's actually great because I can blend in anytime I want by simply not speaking or using my Japanese skills, then "become a gaijin" by just opening my mouth. Some other friends are less fortunate and say they get tired of being stared at all the time.

Anyways, after that we boarded the buses for the Historical Hokkaido Museum. There's a tower there that looks exactly like Isengard from Lord of the Rings but we weren't able to get up close to it. I promised myself I would go inside it next time. Instead we played around the kids section of the museum for about an hour playing with stilts, teeter-totters and swings. I also had sakura flavored ice cream (cherry blossom) which tasted remarkably like cherries and tree leaves blended together! After that we headed back downtown where we said our goodbyes and departed for our homes. It was a little sad after hanging out with all these people in Sapporo and then being sent to opposite ends of the island, back to our little inaka villages. I'll be back in Sapporo again one day, but until then I'll learn to love my small town.