To Hokkaido and Back

Synopsis- A bunch of teachers go to Hokkaido to see the annual Hokkaido Snow Festival.

So it was at the beginning of February that about sixteen or so English teachers left the busy work of entertaining bored children and took off to the northernmost island of Japan, Hokkaido. Hokkaido is a place that not many people in Japan just drop everything and run off to. I mean, it is kind of famous for its temperate summers, and its unbelievably snowy winters (great for skiing), but it takes a little more than a promise of weather to get your average person to shell out the tremendous amount of cash that it costs to travel in Japan. And that's what the Hokkaido Snow Festival is all about. It not only makes use of the mountains of the powdery white that isn't in use at the ski slopes, it also offers an incentive for thousands of people to travel to the coldest land in Japan every year.
The snow festival lasts for about a week. Preparations for the snow festival are astounding. From what I heard, they spend weeks gathering snow into dumptrucks and bringing it to the capital city, Sapporo. The Japanese Army (or "peacekeeping force" or whatever) is forced to work overtime for the three weeks before the festival building the gaint snow and ice sculptures (apparently Snow Construction falls under jurisdiction of the Japanese Army). The snow sculptures are put into three different areas: Most of the smaller sculptures, plus the extremely large building-sized ones are built in the heart of Sapporo. Then there's an area about 5 minutes from there by taxi that has all the ice sculptures. Finally, there's an area about 20 minutes by train from there, slightly outside the city and closer to the Army base, that houses all the theme-sculptures. Like we're talkin' 60 foot high cartoon characters, freestyle ski jumps made out of snow, slides for the kiddies, stages for events, that sort of thing. Us

"Us" consisted of about 16 teachers like me who heard about the trip from the organization that we belong to. AJET hosts a lot of these kinds of trips- there were trips earlier in the year to Mt. Fuji and Kyoto. They're made so that we can actually get a taste of Japan without having to worry about planning out an extensive vacation in any major detail. All that we have to do on our part is to shell out a large sum of money and show up. The enormous strain of keeping everyone together and making sure everything goes as planned falls on the shoulders of a volunteer, which Wasn't Me (thank God).
The itinerary went something like this:

DAY 1 (Thursday) Beg for Paid Leave from the Board of Ed. Arrive at Maebashi station in the afternoon Get on a bus there, take a 4 hour ride to a port At the port, get on a Ferry Ride the Ferry, trying as hard as possible not to be sick DAY 2 (Friday) Arrive in Hokkaido at night (After an 18-hour ferry trip) Get to our resort Ryokan (Japanese-style hotel) Eat Head for the Onsen Collapse DAY 3 (Saturday) Wake up EARLY Go to Sapporo Spend the day wandering around, looking at the snow sculptures Go to the Sapporo beer garden at night Eat. Drink. Be merry. Until they throw us out Return to our Ryokan Hit the Onsen again Collapse DAY 4 (Sunday) Wake up early again Head into Sapporo, agian Wander around until the afternoon, buying gifts and catching sights you missed Get on the bus and ride for 2 hours to Ozawa (I think), a port town Consume Bucketfulls of Famous Ozawa Sushi Get on the ferry Crash hard on the ferry DAY 5 (Monday) Arrive in Niigata after 15 hours on the ferry Ride a bus through hellish snow and traffic for 5 hours Arrive at Maebashi station at night Beg a friend for a ride home Make lesson plans for tomorrow's English class Continue the story Jump right to the pictures Go back to the Stories page