To celebrate my birthday, I took a few days off work and spent last, last weekend in Sapporo to see the biggest winter festival in Japan, Yuki Matsuri. A few of Callie's friends, Leah and Coleen, were up from Gifu-ken so Justin, the two of them and I spent most of the weekend exploring around Sapporo. On the Friday we took a bus out to an onsen town called Jozankei to soak in its rheumatoid arthritis-fighting mineral waters. We weren't in a rush so we took our time in the onsen and wandering around the town for a bit. By the time we got back into Sapporo, our quick jaunt to the onsen turned into an entire day trip. That night the girls went off salsa-dancing while me and Justin walked around the Susukino red-light district looking for the infamous maid cafe. We couldn't read any of the signs and came across soap bars, love hotels, nurse cafes, an entire block dedicated to gays & lesbians, and men standing in the streets promoting "blonde" haired Japanese "models" instead. We've heard of certain places charging a seating fee when you leave so, deciding it would be safer if we knew where we were going next time, we ended our search to find a normal bar instead. We went to the "500 Yen" bar (where everything from lamb ribs to a glass of pop is 500 yen) for a few hours before meeting up with other JETs and heading to another bar, not getting home until early in the morning.

We all woke up the next day around noon and got a late start to the day exploring the city. The four of us started off our morning (in the afternoon) by going to a cafe where we discovered the joys of Tim Tam Slams. It was 3 o'clock when we got out of there and realized there wasn't enough time to go to the Sapporo Brewery Museum, so we headed down to Odori Park to look at all the snow sculptures instead. Sapporo prepared for the Snow Festival by building snow sculptures on all 13 blocks (1.5 km) of Odori Park. Some of the snow and ice sculptures were massive undertakings, taking weeks and 50+ people to build (one was built by the military) while others were smaller team-built sculptures. After freezing our fingers and toes off for an hour, we headed to another indoor cafe to warm up before heading to Kraps Hall where Callie was performing in a Hip hop performance that night. Word spread about the show so a bunch of JETs showed up to give her support. Our big circle of gaijin in the middle of the crowd got the attention of the MC (Callie's dance teacher) who made english jokes all night. A bunch of different groups performed, some good some not so good (including one brave girl dancing to "Milkshake"), and was capped off by an amazing 8 or 9-man breakbeat showcase. After the show, the 15 or so of us wandered the streets looking for somewhere to eat but, being a large group of people, it was almost impossible for us to all come to a decision. China already knows this lesson. While we waited, the five of us ate delicious, delicious street corn and solved that problem ourselves. Inevitably, everyone broke off and went their own way.

The next morning Leah and Coleen headed off to the airport and Justin and I went and got some shopping done before we returned back to The East. It was fun to be in the big city again and to see the famous Snow Festival. There isn't much going on in Sapporo in the next few months so it'll be a while before I'm back there. My next big adventure will be during Golden week (end of April) where I'll be heading down to Kyoto for two weeks! Stay tuned.