Blog about Yoo, but me

A bit late on the update but here’s how my Hokkaido trip went…

Well it first started with me waking up at 5:30am to catch the bus to Kagoshima airport with Urishibata-san and Kamada-san. Our flight was at 8am to Haneda airport. We slept on the plane to catch up on our sleep.

We arrived in Tokyo and had to change to terminals. Our flight to Sapporo was at 10:45am. Not a long flight. About 2 hours. Slept again. So tired.

Finally arrived in New Chitose airport. It was cold. But a good cold. Like Canada cold. We had to make our way over to Sapporo by train. About a 30 minute train ride. We arrived and put our stuff in lockers so that we could explore Sapporo.

Sapporo is a nice city. Well nothing special really. There were a lot of people because of the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival). But before that we had some Ramen. Sapporo Ramen! It was good. I love ramen.

We headed over to where the Yuki Matsuri was. We met up with Kamada-san’s friends. I forgot their names. Anyways, the Yuki Matsuri was pretty cool. They had lots of snow/ice sculptures, food stands, and what not. Other then being really cold, I really enjoyed it.

We headed back to the station to meet with Phyliss. She’s another intern from UofT working in Nagano. While she checked out the festival we ate dinner. Nothing special, just some Japanese curry.

We had to catch the train that was bound for Niseko. A relaxing ride. By then it was all dark so couldn’t see outside. However, we could see that it was snowing as we got closer to Niseko.

We finally arrived. Snow EVERYWHERE. It was overwhelming. I mean too much of it. So happy. We took the shuttle bus to Niseko and to our accommodations at Grandpapa pension. We all met Jacob and his coworkers, Yamamoto-san and Ijiri-san. It was late. We decided on a place to eat for tomorrow’s dinner and headed to bed.

Next morning, had breakfast. It wasn’t too bad. Toast, cereal, eggs, and bacon. Myself, Phyliss, and Urishi-san need rentals. We had ski hire pick us up. We got our rentals and they took us to the hills. Oh and they brought back our shoes to our pension for us. That saved us the trouble because it’s a bit of a distance from our pension to the mountain. Otherwise, great service I must say.

Anyways, from then on it was just pure snowboarding. Powder and more powder! We did some backcountry and tree runs too. That’s where all the powder was at. Like snow up to my waist. Crazy! The regular runs were good too. Just too many mini moguls. Well it’s hard to go too much in detail about the snowboarding part but all I can say it was awesome the first day.

After boarding for so long we were all tired. Well I was. We headed back to our pension and to an onsen right by our place. Ah!! The onsen was so nice after a long day of snowboarding. Later we had some seafood dinner. Crabs, oysters, shrimp, etc. So good. We were all exhausted by the end of the day. But we still had another day ahead of us.

Next day, again amazing! The conditions were awesome. It hadn’t snowed the night before but the skies were clear. So we could see the mountains of Hokkaido quite clearly. What a view. Snowboarding was awesome as usual. My legs were aching but we kept going. We snowboarded till 7pm. So exhausted. So onsen again and seafood again. I had seafood hotpot, and some sushi. Awesome. We played some darts and fooseball. Then called it a night.

Next day, we had to head back. We had a long day ahead of us. Bus to New Chitose airport, plane to Haneda, plane to Kagoshima, bus to Kagoshima Chuo Station, and walk/taxi to home. So ya, it was long and tiring. Not to mention, our flight was delayed at New Chitose so missed our flight at Haneda to Kagoshima. Being how amazing the customer service is in Japan. No worries, we got on the next flight at no charge. It would have 40,000yen ($450).

Overall, the trip was awesome. The snowboarding was awesome, the food was awesome, therefore Hokkaido awesome. I would definetly go back again.

Next time, I want to do more backcountry. Maybe even back in Canada I can do that. Anyone want to join me?

Other than Hokkaido, there’s other stuff going on too.

I found out I’m moving back to Markham (well Thornhill) by the time I get back. That’s good. Closer to Toronto! A lot of renovation has to be done though. So looking forward to that. And I’ve been looking to build a Home Theatre PC and a unRaid NAS server. Lots to do.

I also have been eating too much. Gained some weight. Need to workout hard this week.

A Bic Camera opened in Amu Plaza. Awesome. Lots of electronics to be had! Lots of people on the grand opening and on the weekend. A lot of new stores as well. So I’m happy.

Also, I should mention that Junior is leaving today. He’s going back to Australia. Gonna miss the big guy. It was good chilling with him. Some food, karoke, randomness. Fun to be had.

Played mini volleyball and some softball. Love playing sports.

I had to read some Bible verses in Japanese in front of the church congregation today. I was a bit nervous. I’m sure I made a lot of mistakes. But it was a good experience.

Anyways, that’s all for now.