Tuesday 11 March 2014

Hokkaido

So at the two tips of Japan, we have Hokkaido in the North, and Okinawa in the South. Now, as someone who definitely doesn’t like the cold, and has been to Hokkaido before, you’d think I’d say “hey, let’s go to Okinawa for a winter holiday! It will be warm” That, at least, would be the logical thing to do. But I defy logic. I like to stomp all over it. And then, it stomps all over me.



A group of fellow gaikokujin and I all got together and decided to go to the Snow Festival, a famous yearly event in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is hidden under a few meters of snow every winter, so at the end of the year, they gather up as much snow as possible, shovel it into a few parks, and make it into ice sculptures! When I visited last year around December, it wasn’t quite the season, so all we saw was piles of snow, waiting to be transformed. This month, February, was perfect.



The plane journey from Haneda airport in Tokyo only took an hour, so we arrived in the early afternoon. Rather than staying in a hotel, we opted to go with airbnb, which is like a paid version of couchsurfer. Essentially, people living in the area open up their houses as and when they have the time/space/inclination. Airbnb puts visitors directly in touch with the homeowners, who then decide whether they want to take you in or not. Fortunately, Mr. Sangun decided that we seemed a trustworthy bunch, and eleven of us trooped into his house. It was set up rather like a B&B; a simple breakfast was provided – nothing exceptional, though we did get nabe on the last day!





It was quite centrally located, so after checking in, we quickly headed out to one of the main parks, Odori. There were some magnificent sculptures of all shapes and sizes. There were four or five main, gigantically sized buildings – an Indian Palace, a grand mosaic dedicated to the Sochi Olympics. There was even a (possibly life-sized) replica of the Malaysian parliament! Of course, no Japanese matsuri is complete without the food stalls, and so, next to the sculpture was a dedicated stall to Malaysian food! There were a few bona-fide Malaysians in there, churning out satay, teh tarik and other quintessential Malaysian delicacies. I didn’t give them a try as I was already loaded up on seafood and miso soup, but it was a surprising and fun reminder of my childhood.






The sculptures were absolutely fantastic, but even with a number of pocket warmers I was absolutely freezing, so every so often, we’d pop inside the nearest combini to warm our frozen limbs back to life. There were some repeated themes – Funashi, a really popular mascot, and anpan man, the mascot for a particular brand of bread. We trudged along the entire street and back to ensure that we didn’t miss anything. It was all very cool (perhaps around -5 or so, to be precise…)

We certainly appreciated a nice hot dinner afterwards

No comments:

Post a Comment