Hokkaido Trip: A Cold Arrival.

Day 1

(Austin)

   On February 7th, Elijah, Ryosuke and I set off to Hokkaido, the most northern part of Japan. Hokkaido is the expansive northern region of Japan where lots of food and other farming is done. It has wide open spaces similar to how the country parts of the south, however, we didn't get to take many pictures of it due to being in Sapporo almost the entire time. 

The entire massive northern part is Hokkaido

   So, when we arrived in New Chitose airport it was cooold of course and it was snowing slightly as well. We were staying in Sapporo for Yuki Matsuri (literally: Snow Festival), so we took the train from New Chitose to Sapporo which took about an hour. When we got to Sapporo station we got off and wandered off to a local food place that had 8 or 9 ramen shops all clustered together, so of course we had ramen for dinner. Hokkaido is the birth place of Miso Ramen, so that is what we all had. Simple put: it was delicious. Real ramen is seriously so good. I'm gonna miss it when we come home.

    After eating we went back to Sapporo Station and headed down the line 2 more stops to where our capsule hotel was. It was at this point that we said goodbye to Ryosuke for the night as he was not staying in the same capsule hotel as us. After exiting the subway station we were met with a brightly lit intersection filled with snow and bustling people. All around us were brightly lit signs and advertisements. With the snow blowing about, it was quite a pretty scene.

    After a short walk we arrived at our capsule hotel and after a bit of conversation in mixed japanese-english, we acquired out capsule keys. Before leaving the front desk they asked what we wanted for breakfast. Apparently the capsule hotel we stayed at had deals with some of the local restaurants for breakfast. As you might remember we ate Yoshinoya EVERY SINGLE DAY for breakfast in Tokyo, so we didn't want to eat there during this trip as well. Sukiya is basically the exact same thing as Yoshinoya. So it was a choice between Mister Donut and McDonalds. In the end we chose McDonalds because a sausage and cheese biscuit w/ drink is better breakfast than 3 donuts. Plus if we were still hungry we could just get another small biscuit.

    After conveying our breakfast requests we went upstairs to our capsules and relaxed.