Snowkaido

So...last weekend I went to Sapporo, the snow capital of Japan. It's on the northern most island, where the weather blows over from Siberia. But this year, all of Japan is incredibly warm. It's spring like right now in Tokyo and in Hokkaido it was raining, which is very unusual. But occasionally, they get a blizzard blown over from Russia, like we got on Sunday. It made for awesome skiing, but it was so bad that one mountain of the resort was closed, which was the good one. Still, it was my first time skiing on powder and it was most excellent. It's very different than the ice I'm used to in PA.

We were in town for the snow festival, this 10 day celebration of all things cold. The town mostly becomes covered in ice and snow sculptures and flocks of tourist from all over the world. It was funny to see families of foreigners eating in little ramen shops. Ramen shops are set up like a bar, so u eat at a bar and they are really small. Usually only middle to old men eat in them, so though it was funny when I saw small children at the bar.

So the sculptures were neat and the whole area reminded me of Pennsylvania (when it snows at least). Good trip overall.