Beeru Onegaishimasu! Moi Ipai Kudasai!

(translation: Beer Please! I want one more glass please!)

Music: Mad Man Max- Green Go

When we arrived to Sapporo we didn’t waste any time. Everyone knows whats good up in this hood. BEER! At that time they had a beer festival. In the center of Sapporo is a long park, about… ten blocks? Sorry, my memory is failing me and I can’t really remember how long it was, but its long. Along this park is a different beer garden for every block. From Kirin to Sapporo to Asahi, they’ve got it all.

We get some drinks to start off our day. Sapporo was a great town. Small, but still big for us Canadians. Tonnes of happy friendly people who speak even less English than the rest of Japan. The trip ended up being a good practice for us and our Japanese skills…

We spent the day hitting up beautiful parks and the famous Sapporo Beer Museum, where we definitely had our fair share of delicious cheap beer.

For the evening we returned to the beer gardens. When we were there earlier in the day we were amazed at how many chairs and tables they had: “They’ll never be able to fill these up.”

At our return we were proved wrong… Every table was full of girls and boys of all ages; business men, young adults, families, couples, college kids, and all of them were delighted to see foreigners. It was funny being famous again.

Ashleigh: “Are you going to be sad when you go home and you aren’t a celebrity anymor–”

“YES.” Lindzy.

Unfortunately this was our last night in Hokkaido and we had to catch a bus to our ship.

Once we had arrived to the ship a few bad things happened. Actually its safe to say that many bad things happened. First they informed us, once we were at the point of no return, that there was no food on the boat, only some vending machines. Whaaaat. (>-<)

Next: (you all know the drill)

Ashleigh: “Guys, wheres my cell phone?”

On the bus that we took to the port, probably more than halfway back to Sapporo.

Next:

We got a cabin, but we happened to be sharing with one man who snores louder than anyone i have ever encountered. I thought he was choking on his tongue and enough flem to drown eight children. I have never felt so angry in my life and spent most of the morning (four am to 8 am) on the deck watching the water and the sunrise.

It was a tiring, long and ‘Onaka Peko Peko desu’ (the cute way of saying i’m hungry) ride back.

Everything ended well though, as everything does. Ashleigh got her phone back, and we made every train last minute to take us to our next hot spot: the beach. We got a real campsite this time and spent the night dreaming of the waves we were going to catch on our surfboards the next day.

We awoke early to brilliant sunshine. We quickly found out about a man with a surfshop. A kind man who rented the three of us boards and took us to a breath taking and beautiful spot for a day of surfing.

Let me just say, straight up, there is nothing like surfing. There is also nothing like the stomach and leg rash that take over your body the next week after rubbing up against a board for seven hours. There is also nothing like catching a wave for the first time and riding it, even if its just for a bit. There was probably also nothing like it for Kyle, who was teaching me to surf. I was definitely wearing the wrong kind of bikini. His payment for taking the time to show me the ropes was a few flashes of my ‘coppertone ad.’ bum and a pushed up bikini top from the fall into the waves. Gomen ne!

We met awesome, and hot! (KonniiiichiiiwaaAAaaaa) surfers and wicked kids who were starting at a young age. We (mostly me) got sun burnt, beaten and bruised by the waves, but had a total blast being in the water for hours on the coast of Japan. Our friend Seiji from Tokyo showed up to surf for a bit, then was kind enough to take us back to his pad near Shinjuku for a hot shower to wash away the salt and the sand and a comfy futon to sleep on.

Man I love holidays. I am soon to head on my biggest one yet…

Chalk Outlines and Shooting Targets

Music: Don’t Go-Forest City Lovers

Alright, so I know I haven’t been here in a while… I haven’t even finished talking about my Hokkaido trip!  Times have been super super busy, as I’m sure most of you understand.

Like I was saying, Ash, Kyle and I packed up to move on to a new place.  Gotta make the best of our time eh?

We went to this place called Noborebetsu.  It is famous for… ONSENS!  No kidding eh?  You should have seen the Onsen we went to.  For real it was crazy!  It was three floors with, if my memory serves me right, over 20 different baths, massage waterfalls, cold pools, cool pools, pools outside, hot pools, really hot pools, pools so hot I couldn’t even put one foot in.  Unfortunately the one downfall was that all the signs were in Japanese (duh), so we couldn’t be informed about what different types of waters and minerals were in each of the baths.  We spent the whole day there getting super relaxed and just lazing about, hopping from pool to pool.  Also, doing a little naked person judging.  Nothing wrong with that i think…

Noboreibetsu didn’t exactly have the campgrounds we were hoping for to give us a good sleep for a cheap price.  We talked to the fellas at the hotel and got some sketchy information regarding a camp ground not to far away.

We decided to chill out in the town, get some drinks and omiyage (souvenirs) untill we were ready to find this campsite.

We got a cab driver who gave us a deal : “1700 yen to where you are going.” Done.

We get in the cab.  Its a dark night, not a cloud in the sky, the moon is bright.  He takes us onto a street, a dark street that is surrounded by deep darks woods on either side.  We take this dark winding road for about 20 minutes.  The man keeps his promise and turns off the meter once it reaches the agreed upon price.

He pulls over to a spot on the side of the road.  We can’t see anything around us, except for a big old wood shack and a shady building that looks like a toilet.

He informs us that there are places to camp “over there” waving his hands into the dark distance….

We get out and take our stuff, pay the man before he quickly takes off.  We look around us and start walking around.  The big wooden shack looks like a closed up cafe/burger joint/house.  We investigate, possibly snooping around too much… We look up, there are two windows with lights on.  One has a paper figure, often used for target practice.  The other has a man looking on a computer facing the window.  When he spots us he quickly closes the blinds.

We head over to the toilet to see what kind of facilities we had.  There was no running water, no toilet paper, but plenty of bugs and spiderwebs and even a chalk outline of a body on the floor.

Well, here we are, stuck with no place to go.  We head down to the beach and set up camp.  We stay up for a bit, but doze off to sleep to the sound of rain splattering the tent.

We wake up in the morning, nervous and worried about the man in the window and the target practice sheet and the fact that we are on his property; which now, in the morning light appears to be a boat rental area.  We pack up and bravely head towards the house.  We call out a few times, and finally the man comes down to let us in.  The room is indeed a restaurant… covered with stuffed animals.  There are deers and moose and other beautiful creatures, dead and frozen in time.  Awesome.

He doesn’t seem happy about our sleepover, but calls us a taxi, pulls out chairs and makes us fresh coffee anyway.  We chat a bit while we wait…

“So you hunt eh?”

yah… awkward.

The cab came quickly enough and took us to the train station where we hopped on the first one out to Sapporo, the biggest city in Hokkaido.

The Cleanest Camping Trip Ever.

Music: Sea of Love- Cat Power

The trip to Hokkaido was obviously fantastic.  What vacation isn’t?  It was my last vacation in Japan and I went to a place I’d never been before.  I’m really happy I’ve been able to see so much of Japan.  After all that I have seen, Hokkaido was no disapointment.  It felt larger than the rest of the areas of Japan because of its large green or flowered fields, small towns with low populations and many beautiful national parks with lakes and breathtaking mountains.

After my sleep in Shinjuku, I made my way to Ueno station to walk around Tokyo for a bit.  What a great and amazing place.  Yes, Great and Amazing.  (I added the capitals so you would know just how serious I am on the matter).  Whenever I’m in Tokyo, I’m blown away by all the people this city holds.  Everywhere you look there are thousands of people right there before you.  The trains will take you anywhere you want to go, and every where you choose to go holds just as many, if not more people than the last place.  Tokyo is big and bustling, thriving and full of energy.  It’s like everyone in the world is in Tokyo and they are all dressed to impress.  I can fully understand why 33 million people choose to live there.  I’d be a fool not to go back.

I had to leave though.  I got my tickets for Oarai, the town where I would later catch the ferry and hopped on the next train out.  I met a man while on the train who reminded me how refreshing it is to have a good conversation with a stranger.  When he first approached me I was a little uneasy.  These situations can go one of two ways: the approacher could be terrible at English but once he/she has spotted you, sees this as the perfect opportunity to use you to practice this terrible English and keep you trapped in this awkward conversation where you have to use precious brain cells to talk so slowly and use the right hand gestures and explain unknown words, all so that they can look cool in front of the other Japanese people and probably have a story to tell their family at the dinner table.  Speaking laconically for long periods can be more difficult and wearisome than one would think.  Especially with a perfect stranger that I will never see again and is only good for taking up the time I could be spending reading a book.

The second option is much more rewarding and time well spent.  These approachers are actually fluent in the English language and have a certain way that you can tell they are being more sincere than the previously mentioned approachers.  Even if its just for a bit, they want to have a conversation with someone different, someone with something new to say, someone who isn’t Japanese, someone whom they can tell of their own experiences abroad, or understand the problems you may be having in this country. 

The man that I talked to on the train was thankfully the latter.  He’d lived in the UK for ten years so he had a funny little accent.  He had kind eyes and was an interesting person.  The train ride was long though and he didn’t stay on as long as me.

Once I got to the port town, I met Ashleigh and Kyle with open arms.  We were on our way!  It felt adventurous and exciting to be travelling around with a backpack and a tent, heading towards a ship that would take us to a new unknown place.

The time on the ship went by faster than one would think 19 hours on the sea would.  We met the good kind of approacher.  Her name was Hiroko and we all fell in love with her.  She helped us work out some dinner tickets that we couldn’t read and came over afterwards to chat us up.  We were instant friends and spent the night drinking, watching olympics and playing scattegories.

After leaving Hiroko at the port in Hokkaido, we took three buses to Shikotsuko.  By the time we reached our first destination and camping spot, things were closing up.  We managed to get some information on how to get to the campsite.

Unfortunately we were informed that the place we wanted to settle was about a 40 minute walk.  After a few wrong paths and the darkness had started to set in, we got picked up by a friendly young man who GPS’d where we had to go, and got us their much faster than our little legs could take us.

The place we stayed was a beautiful national park, with the campsite right on the water.  It was packed full of tents already and the campers were drinking, talking, playing games and roasting up delicious smelling things over campfires and mini bbqs.  We met a couple school teachers that had a bunch of students with them on a school trip and a telescope to look at the stars and the three moons of saturn… at least I think it was Saturn, I can’t remember which planet for sure anymore…

Our time in Shikotsuko was well spent.  We climbed and saw (or rather didn’t see, because of the clouds that got in the way) a volcano and spent some time in a gorgeous onsen.  We met nice people who picked us up when we were hitchiking and enjoyed a brief and cold swim in a lake. 

The trip doesn’t end here though.  After camping at one of the biggest lakes in Japan, we craved a change and packed up to move on on the third day. 

Onsens and beer tents here we come!