Hokkaido Trip (Day 1)

Yay! We're going to Hokkaido!

We met at the airport at 9.30am. There were seven of us - all but Drummond, Brendan, and Rushen - as well as Katherine's friend, Adriana, Kanashima, and her friend Notomi. We all got our tickets and made our way to the gate, however Adriana got stopped since she had a knife-shaped corkscrew and a gun-shaped lighter in her bag, which she had to subsequently check-in. All was well, however, and we all safely boarded the plane and flew uneventfully to Hokkaido.

Upon our arrival we grouped by the lady with the correct flag, and were shuffled onto a tour bus. We drove to our first omiyage (souvenir) shop, where the Japanese tourists spent there money and we ate as many free samples of chocolate as we could get away with. We gawped at the endless white of snow all around us in the middle of nowhere, before clambering back onto the bus.

We drove on, with the tour guide still nattering on in Japanese with her random facts about Hokkaido: it's land mass, population, onion growing, etc. We soon came to realise that she was not about to relent in her fact giving, a truth that was hammered home when she managed to talk non-stop for 1 hour and 30 minutes. I was slightly envious of her ability to talk Japanese so constantly, but we all soon started plotting ways to shut her up.

After one more omiyage stop we went to an "ice town": a few huts and sculptures made entirely from ice. It was cold and slippery but an amazing feat. The huts themselves were rather plain, though each had a different ice sculpture of a cat or squirrelt inside. There was also a larger cave, containing icicles and a little window overlooking the rest of the site. We drank a strange , milky, "sweet sake" inside the onsite shop, though most of us could not drink it all. It was only 50p, however, and was interesting to taste. It appeared to have curdled milk as one of the constituent ingredients.

We finally drove to the hotel, where a banquet was awaiting us of weird Japanese food. It was obviuosly an expensive feast, of which I attempted to make the most of. However, there are only so many scallops that I can ea, even if they are drenched in cheese.

After dinner, we went to a samurai play, though we thought it was not very good so we left. We returned slightly later for some singing and dancing, though this turned out to be androgenous people waving fans around to strange 80's Japanese rock music. We left again.

We changed into our specially provided, large yukata dressing gowns and sat around near the front desk, drinking beer bought from one of the vending machines. We chatted for a while before we hit the hotel's onsen. Only James and I went together to the men's onsen, since Ciarán wanted to have another beer beforehand. I am becoming accustomed to the Japanese onsen lifestyle, having once vowed never to enter one. I think the trick is not to wear your glasses, since you cannot see anyone else that way, and you have no idea where they are looking either! There were three indoor pools of varying temperature, and two outdoor ones: a hot and a cool. The hot one was how I had always imagined a Japanese onsen would be like, and hitherto had been disappointed at not finding. James found the heat intolerable, though we both outlasted a couple of Japanese men who chatted to us for about a minute before bolting.

Us three guys slept together in one room, with Kanashima, Notomi, and Lauma in another room, and the rest in the final room. It was a Japanese-style room, which means sleeping on futons on the floor. It is more comfortable than you might imagine, though it was very hot since the controls on the heater were locked permanently on.