So I’m sitting on the bus, uploading the full memory card’s worth of photos I took at the Ainu Museum and realizing that they’re probably not going to let me get up to put the computer away since we’re leaving in about two minutes, so I decided to just keep her out and write up what the last few days have been like.
We left the hotel at about 10:00 on Sunday to meet Kim, Nora and Viktor in Shinjuku (check out time was early enough that we figured we’d just meet up there and hang out to wait until we went out to Tokyo station). We spent about an hour in a Tully’s (JAPANESE COFFEE SHOP YAY!!) and then found a cute little soba place for lunch. Then we headed out to Tokyo station, shlepping our bags the whole way. Once there we met up with the other HIF folks and got on a bus to the waterfront where we boarded our BOAT TO HOKKAIDO!!!
(Videos to come with new internet connection)
After we got on, we hung out for a little while, made some friends, and had dinner. After dinner, Katie, Kim and I hopped in the ofuro (basically a mini, more low-key onsen) before bed. I got a little sick in the morning (probably because I hopped in the ofuro again and confused the heck out of my body with the temperature changes), but took a little nap and got over it pretty quickly. Other than that it was a totally successful, awesome ride. We docked at about 1:30 and hopped on another bus that took us to Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido where we checked into our hotel for the night. I met the girl that’s going to be my roommate for the next two weeks. Her name is Yoh and she’s from Taiwan. I’m REALLY looking forward to it; she’s really sweet and totally adorable. After I got moved in, I wandered around Sapporo with the rest of the Pomona posse (James, Katie, Kim, Lisa, and Nora), which involved Kim getting extremely excited about marimo
(Video to come with new internet connection)
which are basically little balls of algae that you keep as pets. I seriously considered getting one for Max, but I figured it would die before I got it home to him. Sorry, Dude. We found a cute little crab place for dinner, which was pretty cool; apparently Hokkaido is pretty famous for their crab. Actually, Hokkaido’s pretty famous for all of Japan’s awesome food. I’m REALLY looking forward to eating with my host family for the next two weeks!!! After dinner, we wandered back toward our hotel and found some of the Obon (the HUGE Japanese summer festival) festivities in full swing.
(Video to come with new internet connection)
Everybody but James and I took part in the dancing, which looked like tons of fun
(Video to come with new internet connection)
I’m actually kinda bummed that I skipped out, but my first response was to record the whole thing. *shrug* Whatever, they’ll thank me in ten years (and I got to dance today, which was even COOLER. But more on that later).
Once that was done, we wandered over to this place that we’d walked by earlier with SUPER DELICIOUS ice cream.
('Before' picture to come with new internet connection)
The thing was a monster. But between the seven of us, we devoured it in just over five minutes.
('After' picture to come with new internet connection)
AWESOME.
After that we went back to the hotel, watched a movie, and went to bed.
Today we woke up RIDICULOUSLY early for breakfast and to head out for the day. First thing we did was stop at an Ainu museum. The Ainu are a group of indigenous peoples from Hokkaido with a lot of history separate from the Japanese. While we were there, we went into one of the main buildings where one of the people who worked at the museum explained a lot about the building and the things in it. He kept translating pieces of what he said into all the various languages the people in our program speak, which was kind of cool but mostly just really annoying. It also meant that a lot of the time that he could have spent explaining things to us was used up in repetition rather than explanation. In spite of that, he was kind of entertaining, and it was a decent intro to the museum. After that we had a display of two Ainu instruments and two Ainu songs that I’ve imbedded below.
(Videos to come with new internet connection)
The last thing that they did for us was to perform a traditional Ainu dance. Not only did they perform it, they let us join in!! They really encouraged people to join in, but no one looked like they were going to take them up on it, so I jumped up and went for it. A few others, including Kim, joined me and it was TONS OF FUN.
Of course, being me, I decided to join in not just with the dancing but with the singing too. The woman dancing next to me started helping me out with the words and pronunciation, which was tons of fun; she’s the one on my left in the picture below.
(Photo to come with new internet connection)
It was pretty entertaining taking these pictures; the standard Japanese thing to say when a photo is being taken is “cheese”, like in English, but, because of the way Japanese changes foreign words to make them easier to pronounce (“chii-ZU”), if you’re not careful you can wind up with a face more like this:
(Photo to come with new internet connection)
As a result, she was convincing us all to say “sushi” instead of “cheese”. Even better, once we had finished taking the photos one of the other women came by and suggested that we say "okanemochi" (rich person) instead of “sushi”; we all got a kick out of that.
We also got to try some of the dried fish that you can see hanging form the ceiling in the photo album with the museum photos imbedded below. After that we did some shopping and headed back out to the buses. Right now we’re going to a restaurant of some sort and then they’re going to take us to the cities we’ll be staying in for the next two weeks. I’M SO EXCITED!!!
(9/23 Edit: Associated photos can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036735&id=1186934580&l=b6991df378
Enjoy!!)
~ Anna
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