Japan Week 51

July 19 - 25, 2010

It's about time, I know!!! My apologies for the obnoxious delay in the subsequent posts. We had SO much fun with Eric's parents that blogging got pushed down my list, but not off of it.

Monday July 19, 2010 marks the day I recall Eric being the most excited for, well I guess just about anything, since our move to Japan."Welcome to Japan Mom & Dad!!!"

The last time Eric saw his parents was July 23rd 2009. That's FAR too much time to go without seeing your parents. We have been counting down the days for the past few months and when Eric woke up that bright and sunny Monday morning he had a huge smile on his face as he uttered the words, "I get to see my parents today". Fortunately it was also a national holiday in Japan so the ALT's had the day off work which meant it was a perfect day for a BBQ on the Beach!! We only made a brief stop at the BBQ in between our final preparations at home and our drive to the airport but it certainly was a nice day and helped us pass the time! The weather was getting a little interesting but cloudy days at the beach have never bothered me. We went to a new beach, and had a little trouble finding the road that lead to the beach, but what we found on the first attempt was fantastic, a bridge out to a large concrete platform in the middle of the ocean. I'm sure it was meant for embarking on ships or something important like that, but it made for a fun pit stop too. Even if our feet did get a little wet!

Finally, 7:45 pm rolled around, it couldn't have come much slower, and as we anxiously stood on the outside of a very thick glass wall. . .the elevator door opened and out walked Glenn and Patti!!
After gathering their luggage and a long exchange of hugs and kisses we packed liked sardines into our teeny little car and started the drive home. We stopped for a delicious dinner at Kappa Sushi. Patti and I aren't much of sushi eaters but we found other options as well. Kappa is a fantastic place for sushi because most items are 105 yen and the plates of sushi come around on a conveyor belt so you can choose exactly which piece you want! And, if nothing sparks your interest there is a touch screen picture menu full of endless options that will then be delivered via bullet train to your table.
Finally, around 11pm we made it home :) I figured they would head straight to bed and we'd unpack in the morning, but everyone was so hyped up from finally seeing each other live, rather than on a 10 inch computer screen for our lunch dates, that we managed to unpack everything and stay up and have a late night chat before finally calling it a night. I must say, it felt a little bit like Christmas with all of the wonderful and delicious, familiar, surprises that kept coming out of the bags! Our pantries are well-stocked for sure :)

Initially I had planned to spend Tuesday quietly enjoying Eric's extra day off while his parents slept off the jet-lag but they cheerfully woke up at 8am ready to see Japan... so I put my book aside, grabbed the camera, fueled up the car, and we hit the road! We headed down the coast into Fukaura where we showed them my personal favorite gem in Aomori, a giant rock just off the coast with a little foot path leading to it where you can sit with your back to the shoreline and see nothing but the sky and the ocean. Patti loved it just as much as I do!

From there we continued further south to a resort called Wespa we stopped in to check out the glass art gallery and enjoy some Carrot flavored ice cream. While it was delicious, I would not recommend it for a time when you crave a nice cold, sweet, treat; but rather for a time when you want ice cream but don't want to feel guilty about eating it, or when you feel like trying something a little strange. It really was pretty good, as far as vegetable flavored ice cream goes.

From there we drove back towards home and stopped in town at a restaurant right on the beach for a late, and large, lunch. It probably comes as no surprise when I say we didn't do much of anything in the evening!

Wednesday was another surprisingly well-adjusted to the time zone and ready to play kind of day. We opted for journeys on foot as we knew we were setting off on a road trip the following day. Eric and Patti took a nice stroll to the beach, but Eric took her the LONG way, so they were quite relieved when Glenn and I were there at the beach to drive them home. I can't tell you enough how much I love having a beach within walking distance to our house. Even if I don't use it every day, I still get to see, hear and smell it. I don't know how I survived in the desert for 23 years!

Thursday morning certainly came early with a 4:15 am departure to the ferry port in the capitol. The ferry terminal was nothing like I expected, it was spic-and-span and very sparkly clean, and even better than that was our ferry which had only been in service for 3 days! We took the ferry from Aomori, Aomori to Hakodate, Hokkaido. The journey was 3 hour and 40 min and entirely painless. For a short ferry journey I expected a true ferry with long bench seats and a few tables; not quite the miniature cruise ship we were greeted with! The ship was equipped with communal sleeping rooms, a cafeteria, a children's playplace (like McDonalds on a ship) an arcade, pachinko (Japanese gambling), massage chairs, a dog sitter with running track, showers, and private suites with Jacuzzis. It all seemed a little excessive for such a short journey. My favorite part of the excursion was actually driving our car in and out of the ferry's belly! It's pretty cool to be driving inside of a boat!Once we were finally on the Island of Hokkaido we hit the road!! We headed West & North to the town of Niseko. It's a cute little ski town which is full of fun outdoor activities for the summer. We saw a surprising number of foreigners and foreign goods in this small little town. We had an excellent Indian Food dinner and explored town a bit before settling in for the night in our ginormous cabin where we all slept in bunk beds in one big room! I felt like I was at summer camp with the late night silliness and story telling :)

Our cabin was part of the Jam Garden artist compound. And yes, they make homemade Jam in a wonderful assortment of flavors. The cherry was superb! The compound offers pottery classes and an opportunity to create a masterpiece on their wheel. We thought Patti might like to do it because she really enjoys making pottery, and she makes very unique and impressive pieces if I do say so, but she didn't want to eat up road-trip time doing something she can do at home anyway. And so, early Friday morning we set off for our next destination.

We started the day with a short drive to Otaru, possibly my favorite spot in all of Hokkaido. Our Japan guidebook recommended different art classes throughout the city, as Otaru is like one giant art gallery! Most of the shops are filled with hand made crafts, blown glass was particularly popular but woodcraft came in a close second. We opted for glass blowing lessons and it was very cool! Well actually, it was really hot, but an awesome experience! We were able to choose the item we wanted to make, the color and design. We all choose the same mug and then chose our own colors. While the professionals did a lot of the work and told us exactly what to do and when to do it, learning how was certainly a lot of fun!
We took part in each of the steps except for attaching the handles and putting on the initials. Eric's cup is below on the left and mine is on the right. Eric's started with a ball of hot clear glass that was dipped partially into shards of various colors of glass that spread as the glass is blown. Mine was started with clear glass that was rolled in purple glass "dust" so the entire glass is speckled. Also, I choose to have the crackle pattern so while it was still piping hot they submerged it in ice water to create millions of little cracks! It looks very cool in person!

After our glasses were complete we headed to a famous little ice cream stand for some abnormal ice cream, I dont even think Vanilla or Chocolate was on the menu but Soft Shell Crab, Buttered Potato, Pineapple Basil, Tomato, and lavender made the list. I had Pineapple-Basil and it was absolutely delicious! We walked around Otaru a little more, sad we didn't have more time and eventually made our way to Sapporo where we had all-you-can-eat Genghis Khan at the Sapporo Brewery for lunch. Then we piled back in the car and drove to Lake Toya. It poured rain the entire drive, which made us a little apprehensive about camping but as we pulled up to the camp ground, approximately 20 minutes after it 'closed', the rain let up for about 30 minutes which was just enough time to get the tents set up. After we set up camp we embraced the rain and found the playground!

It rained pretty heavily all night and we were quite thankful for waterproof tents! We woke up early as expected and it was still raining but only lightly so we went for a quick walk to see the lake. It was quite breathtaking. Three small pieces of land peeks up out of the water in the middle of the lake, its very beautiful. Eric took this picture of the morning fog on the lake.

The rain stopped just long enough to pick up camp, thank goodness! As we drove away from the camp the downpour started all over again. It was pretty amazing how it worked out so nicely. The morning drive was on roads twisting up and down through the mountain looking out towards the ocean, which would have been beautiful, but we spent the morning fighting to see through the windshield wipers and avoiding the tractors attempting to clean up after landslides. Needless to say, we were thankful when we made it to our next destination...

Noboribetsu, Hokkaido. The above picture is me and Eric "dressed like" the traditional people who were known to be violent warriors. The town is very very small and is famous for its numerous hot springs. There are well over 30 hotels in the small town!! Our first pit stop was at Jigokudani, or Hell Valley. It's a big open area where sulfurous hot springs spout up in many places. The rocks are an amazing variety of colors and it's so interesting to see how plants grow vivaciously in some crevices and then there are vast open areas where nothing can grow and it's all in the same area. The rain was still pretty heavy so we basically had the whole place to ourselves :)

Look at Eric and Patti :)

Sticking out the rain was really worth it to see so much of this:

We also really didn't care about getting wet because our next destination was an onsen! We went to the Noboribetsu Grand Hotel and enjoyed a very luxurious onsen. The outdoor bath didn't look quite this magical because we were there during the day but it certainly felt nice. They had a huge variety of baths to choose from and we of course sampled each of them for a few minutes,

hot, really hot, very cold, salt, sulfur, iron, a rock bath, a roman bath and a cypress bath! I think it's safe to see we were very clean when we left. The baths inside were beautiful. And by the way, no I did not stand around taking photos in an onsen... these are from the website. http://www.nobogura.co.jp/english/index.html

From there we got back on the road and headed to Hakodate. The drive was long, but we took the toll road. We had anticipated paying over $40 for the toll road, but when we got off the toll gate man said, "thank you and please go" so we did just that! Later we learned that it was the first day of a trial period of free tolls in Japan. We were certainly happy! Anyway, we made it into our guest house in Hakodate and immediately went out to get dinner. We attempted to go to a place highly recommended in our travel guide book but we had quite the adventure. We THINK we eventually ended up at the right place, but they had us sit in another restaurant and we're not sure where our food came from. We also anticipated an English menu, but instead had only menus on the wall around the room written in Kanji, so it was very confusing to figure out what to order. In the end we asked for some very common Japanese foods and we got some of them, but not all of them. At least we ended up getting some food! Later that night Patti, Eric and I made a light night food run to "Lucky Pierro's". It's a hamburger joint with a fairly creepy clown logo that's famous in Japan and only availbale in Hakodate. The food was decent but the Elvis decorations were the best part!

Since we were staying in a guest house we all slept on futons on one big tatami floor, the way Eric and I sleep at home. It was a lot of fun, and we felt like a family living life the old way. Patti was very excited to see the Yukatas in the room so she modeled one for us!

In the morning we packed up the car for one final day of road-tripping and we made our way to the Hakodate Ropeway. The ride up is fun, if you enjoy hanging from a cable in a giant metal room looking out onto the mountain thinking about plumeting to the ground... Patti and I sat on the floor most of the way and didn't think about it! The view certainly was pretty though.

The view at the top was beautiful! And we got to enjoy the first day of clear blue skies we had seen all week! It was quite fabulous. Hakodate has very interesting geography. It's a rather large city in numbers but it's very compact because it's on a very narrow stretch of land, hence the name Hakodate with means "Box Mansion". We spent quite a bit of time enjoying the scenery, partially because it was beautiful and the sunshi was nice, and partially because they had to fix the cable car. "Its a Seagull, It's a Cable Car... No, it's Melissa & Eric!!"
With as much as I enjoyed the ride up, the ride down was even more fun with a mechanic riding on our roof to make sure everything was working properly. I really wanted to take his picture but I decided that distracting him was not a good plan!

After our ropeway adventures we scoped out the city a bit. We started in the brick warehouse district along the old pier. These buildings we once warehouses lining a very busy pier, but are now shops and restaurant lining a quiet-small harbor. The new pier was moved to the opposite side of the penninsula.

During our explorations of downtown I spotted a very surprising sign on the side of the road!
It says, "The Oldest Concrete Electricity Pole in Japan".

Now that is something I never thought I'd fine and certainly have never looked for!

Our adventures in Hokkaido had come full circle so in the late afternoon we made our way to the port and boarded our ferry home. I slept almost the entire ferry ride home. Who knew I could be so comfortable sleeping on the floor with a small pillow the shape and size of a brick, in a room full of strangers! The ferry ride sure went fast for me! When we got back to Aomori we drove half way home to Goshogowara and stopped for dinner at an Okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki literally means "cook what you like". You order the ingredients of your choice and when it arrives everything is raw and neatly sorted in the bowl, you mix it up and then pour it on the griddle, wait a few minutes, flip, wait a few more minutes and then you have a lovely pancake like dinner. We all really enjoyed it.
After dinner we made our way home and all went straight to bed. The road trip was fantastic, the scenery was beautiful and we had some really fun times along the way. We covered a lot of ground and Glenn and Patti got to see a wide variety of villges, towns and cities along the way!