Hokkaido - The Adventure, Pt. I

So this past weekend, I went to Hokkaido to go snowboarding for the first time in my life. Why did I choose to go? Well, my good friend Sarah (who's picture you will see below) told me about it at a fall bbq sometime back in September. They were use 誕生日切符 or birthday tickets, which are 12,500yen one-way, or for Japan, a deal.

Due to some strange problems or rather inconveniences, the plan was to fly out of Okayama on Saturday morning, and return through Kansai on Monday night, but as usual, things didn't go as planned but this was not for the worse actually.

First off, who did I go with? I went with my two Interac (another program which sends foreigners to Japan to teach) friends: Sarah and Rosey (shown below).



We all stayed overnight at Sarah's house northwest of the city, rode into the city on train then got on the bus (490yen one-way) to Okayama's airport. We did this carrying all of our luggage and borrowed (at least in Rosey's and my case) snowboards and boots. A little bit cumbersome, but possible and done nonetheless.

Sarah did all of the planning (she was playing the role of big sister), so she bought the tickets. She might have been complaining about something in this picture, but this shows the flight (379) in the background to Sapporo as well as the amount of stuff each of us was approximately carrying.



Now off to our gate! We bought Omiyage (presents usually representative of a place/prefecture visited) for Taka, who was a Japanese near-pro snowboarder who was going to come and join us on Sunday (unfortunately there was so much snow on Saturday and Sunday that he mailed that morning to say it was too dangerous to drive up to the mountain).

On the way, we came across this priceless view of the hedges spelling out OKAY(ama)!



Don't have much to say for the plane ride other than it was packed. Why? Because there is only one flight a day leaving Okayama for Sapporo. Just one. It being a weekend too, yep, as you would imagine, it was packed. I had an interesting discussion with Sarah on how her father asks her questions about her vacation such as: How packed was the plane? Or how far from the city center was the hotel, and was breakfast free, and if so, continental or western? I consider these normal and imformative vacation questions whereas Sarah preferred the classics: How was your vacation? And did you have a good time?

Here was our first view of snow, from the video screen on the plane showing the movement of the plane and descent (this is supposed to lessen the effects of motion sickness because you have visual cues of movement to supplement those that your inner ear feels).



Then it was off to the bus to go to the mountain in Niseko. Times and all had already been researched on the web, so there was no hastle, struggle or stress, allowing us to dine at Mos Burger. Here is what Mos Burger's burger menu looks like.



This is a picture of the first witnessed snow. Walking outside we realized a bitter truth, it was ridiculously cold in Hokkaido, even moreso than the already annoying biting cold temperatures of Okayama.