anyway, my vacation weekend began with a Friday night of KARAOKE! We did the 'all,' aka you pay about $15 and get a small room from 1-8am and nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) from 1-3. It turned out we were all having so much fun singing that we barely touched the alcohol. I was really surprised by how many English songs were in their system- we probably only sang 5 Japanese ones, and they managed to have most of the English ones that we searched for. I wasn't expecting to have too much fun either (usually me+singing = banana dance), but it was awesome. Notable moments include Banzai (the Middlebury favorite), a lot of 90s music, and waking a snoozing Xiao up in the middle of "My Heart will go on" - because we really were singing that loud.
It didn't really help that immediately following karaoke Emily and I decided to go to a memorial service for the 200-some Christian martyrs killed in the 17th century in Japan. It was in Japanese so we had a hard time understanding most of it, but it was held at a temple (outdoors = sooo cold!) with a plaque dedicated to the martyrs which was blessed by the priests. We all got to lay flowers in front of it. Also, you know you're in Japan when there are cell phone pictures being taken of the mass. By a priest. One interesting difference in the mass procedure itself is that the Japanese all do mini bows instead of shaking hands for the sign of peace. Seems a little impersonal, but hey, you can cover a lot more ground that way!
Then at 7:30 on Monday morning, Xiao, Emily, Joe and I were Sapporo bound! Flight was nice and short and the super-nice-for-the-price-we-paid-hotel was right across the street from the train station. It was six blocks to Odori Park, where we saw a lotttt of snow sculptures!
a couple notable ones: (click for larger size, believe me the details on the animal one are ridiculous!! there was even a light on the plane in the corner that blinked at night)
some of them were so intricately carved that it's crazy. I feel bad pic-spamming the blog, so check out my fb album for more!
We also took an elevator to the top of the TV tower (cool, but it was all glass, you got bad glass reflection and you couldn't walk in the open air which was laaaame), looked at some ice sculptures, ate delicious corn butter ramen, grimaced at advertisements for milk seafood ramen, went to the zoo to look at fuzzy cute animals, got lost A LOT, slipped on icy sidewalks (they don't believe in shoveling), and checked out the Sapporo Beer Museum. Where they have CHOCOLATE BEER for Valentine's Day. Okay, so still not my favorite drink by any means, but it did improve the taste, and they get points for trying...
Emily and I by Sapporo TV Tower on a beautiful night!
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