Oh my goodness. I'm behind already! Yesterday was quite busy... we started off the day pretty early, had breakfast, and then headed to Miyamoto Unosuke (Taiko shop) so that Paul could place his order. We decided to tag along so that we could have Mr. Donut again. On our way to the store, it started snowing!!
We got to meet Ai, who works at Miyamoto and plays Taiko. She used to live in Hawaii, so she can speak good English She was very nice to translate for Paul when he took his taiko classes. Thank you Ai!
After Mr. Donut, we headed back to the hotel to check out. Look what we spotted! A Panda bus!
We decided to leave early for the airport since flying domestic wasn't our norm. We only had one suitcase and our backpacks, so it made traveling much easier. Aaaahhh. We took the subway to the monorail, and then monorail to Haneda Airport. Check in at Skymark Airlines was not that bad. We went to the kiosk and it had English, so that made it easier. Loved that you could print your bag tags straight from the kiosk. Get with it Hawaiian Airlines!!
Now we had awhile before our flight, so I walked around to see what you could buy. I was going to try the Tokyo Banana, but ended up just getting their version of the Baumkuchen. It tasted like banana cake. I liked the other one we had earlier better. I think I still need to try Tokyo banana- the original version. I also dragged Paul and Akemi to a small restaurant to have lunch. They didn't want to eat, so I had a katsu curry, Yum!
Our flight was delayed, so we didn't leave until about 1/2 hour later. Once we got on the plane, I found it quite nice. It was spacious and clean, and even had a power source under your chair! The only thing I didn't care for was the temp. I guess because we were dressed for cold and it was really warm. I fell asleep for most of the flight, but once I woke up I was very hot. The flight wasn't too long, so I just got through it. Here's the view from our window. Love it!!
Here's Paul and Akemi on our flight.
After a the flight, we grabbed our bag and headed for the train. Little did we know that we got on the wrong car- it was reserved, so a Japanese man started asking me what seat number I had. We panicked and got off the train in case all of the seats were reserved. Turns out we were on the correct train, wrong car. Then we got off the train and transferred to the subway. Here's where Akemi got stuck. I guess she didn't walk through the gate fast enough, so the gate closed on her. We had to call someone to help us. In the meantime, we lost Paul. Luckily we texted each other and eventually found each other. If you follow us on facebook, you probably saw a weird post by me, I was messaging him, but for some reason it kept posting Go figure!
After the subway, we found our hotel pretty quickly. We had ended up switching to a different hotel at the last minute, but I think it was worth it, even though we had to forefit some of the cost. The new hotel is right across the street from Odori park, which is the main site for the sculptures! Yay! That made me really happy.
After we checked in, we went to check out some of the sculptures and ended up watching some extreme snowboarding. Then we decided it was time to eat, so we wandered around and found an open rahmen restaurant up the road. It was really good! I got the crab rahmen.. can you tell how happy I am?
As soon as Akemi saw the snow, she was determined to play. To the point where it was hard to walk with her. Finally, Paul agreed to let her play in the snow to get some of it out of her system. They found the Sapporo Clock Tower right next to the restaurant and started a snowball fight,
Wow! This trip seemed a bit rougher than the others, but you guys still looked like you enjoyed your time. Thanks for sharing all the pictures!
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