雪祭り The Sapporo Snow Festival!

Despite battling unusually warm weather and partial melting (followed by sculpture-covering blizzards), Sapporo persevered with their magical snowy wonderland for the 60th year now!

The showpieces of the festival are, of course, the amazing snow sculptures which take days and many bodies to construct.  Probably the most popular of these behemoths this year was the Disney Dreams sculpture, built to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Tokyo Disneyland:

In addition to the giant sculptures, there are also hundreds of smaller sculptures designed and carved by school groups, individuals, families, and the community.  Would something like this even be possible back home without succumbing to the "artistic" hands of vandals?

One of my favorites...the Build-A-Snowman site in what appeared to be a reproduction of Siberia (note both diagonal and vertical snow)!  Snow storm at a snow festival...BLAGH!!!!!

In my opinion, the night time is really when the entire festival is at its most photogenic:

In the Susukino (すすきの) district, the Ice Festival is on display as well, with about 100 intricately carved frozen wonders:

I LOOOVE the cow in the bowl of ramen noodles...yes, those are REAL ramen noodles frozen in there:

And I have to end with the shot of an amazing nikuman (meat-stuffed bread dumpling) shop I found tucked underneath a parking garage thanks to a snowy stroll through Susukino.  Doesn't the steam and burnt-out lights just BECKON you over for some hot meat lovin'?  Always good after a tromp through the snow, and a grand 'ol time at the Snow Festival.

Japanese-Cuban Birthday Bash

For my 28th life-celebration this year, I had a fabulous gathering at Habana, my favorite Cuban bar and salsa dancing place!  Although the actual salsa dancing went by the wayside, there was an amazing turnout of "old" and new friends, along with mojitos galore!  I can't think of a better way to grow older:

The cake...oh, the cake!!!  Everyone chipped in for one of the most amazing birthday cakes ever!  It was actually modeled off of the cake for the mascot of the Sapporo Snow Festival, and it tasted as good as it looked (in addition to the sweet little chocolate cupcakes that my friend, Steph made):

I love birthdays and I'm always sad when they end!  They just always remind me how lucky I am to be surrounded by such incredible, inspirational, zany, crazy, and caring souls!  With friends like these, growing older doesn't seem quite as daunting!   

If 30 is the new 20, then today I turn 18!

Thank you to all who sent cards, packages, and other birthday greetings!  Here's to another year in my 20s...whoo!

Goodbye, Eri!!!!!!!

My good friend, neighbor, Japanese-teacher, and absolute life-saver here in Japan, Eri, is leaving for 10 months in Australia tomorrow!  Seriously, I wouldn't have a phone, internet, or communication with the gas man, let alone know how to sort my trash, navigate Sapporo, find good flight deals for travel within Japan, or learn any 日本語 without her!

I'm gonna miss this gal...we'll be eagerly awaiting her return next November!  Thanks for everything, Eri!

Spring Cleaning, Japanese Style

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to throw beans at the devil.  No, that's not slang for some kind of death-defying event, but instead a custom performed during the Japanese holiday of Setsubun (節分), or literally, "seasonal division."

Setsubun signals the end of winter and the first day of spring, and brings with it quite a few tasty rituals to cleanse away all of the past year's evil and replace it with good luck for the coming year.  The epitome of this cleansing spree is in the performance of mamemaki, or bean scattering!  The male head of the household dons a demon or devil mask while the family members throw roasted soybeans, peanuts, and sometimes chocolates at him all the while chanting "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" (Demons out!  Luck in!).

Since my own household-devil (aka my husband) was out at work, our neighbors stepped in to help me get rid of those pesky evil spirits and bouts of misfortune that have been plaguing our paper-thin walls.  Obviously, I should have done my homework on the accompanying chant, but all in all, our place feels a lot more...how should I say...demon-free:

The throwing of the beans (peanuts, etc.) are thought to symbolically purify the home by forcing out the evil spirits that harbor bad health and other grievances.  As a part of bringing luck in, one is supposed to eat said thrown soybeans, one for each year of life, plus one for (even MORE) good luck.  To top it all off, beans should be scattered in each of the rooms of the house as well, and then gathered.  I wonder how many devil-spirit-lucky beans go missing, only to resurface with the dust bunnies year after year?

If you want even more bang for your luck-buck, it is customary to eat a special kind of uncut maki-zushi (rolled sushi called Eho-Maki, or "lucky direction roll") in complete silence while facing the lucky direction determined by the zodiac symbol of the year.  For the year of the Ox, I was told that I had to face "East-North-East."  I'm not sure if that means "extra-easterly Northeast" or what...I guess we'll see how good of a job I did with my luck-o-meter in the coming year!

Best Field Trip EVER!

If you can imagine 16 passenger buses plowing through a heavy snowstorm and loaded with almost 700 laughing, yelling, excited high schoolers, then you would have a good vision of how my day began today as we headed out on the all-school ski trip!!  Yes, it's true, an ALL-school SKI trip (minus the 3rd years, who are finished with classes, of course)...my high school trips to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center just really cannot compare with what these kids get to partake in!

We traveled almost two hours to Kiroro Ski Resort where, to my delight, they actually had a ski-lift for the bunny hill...

...which was actually a brief pleasure as, thanks to some private lessons, I can FINALLY "ski!"  Well, enough to get down half of the mountain anyway.  It's amazing how much fun it is without all of the whiplash and bruises!

And here we get a glimpse of my private ski instructor, aka Nakamaru-sensei (one of the teachers I work with at school), in all of his radioactive-green-ski-machine glory (and by "glory" I mean "grory"):

The bare peace-sign knows no weather...it knows no storm:

Although we were chased back to school by some crazy horizontal snow and winds, this pretty much was the best field trip ever.  Along with fresh milk, beer, onions, and algae balls, I guess it's just another one of those perks of living up in Hokkaido!

The Makings of a Snow Festival

This Thursday marks the beginning of one of Sapporo's biggest festivals, the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival), and in preparation for the event Odori Park has been turned into a building-carving-packing-scaffolding-frenzy! Oh, and once again, we get a rare glimpse of just what exactly the Japanese army does:

Blueprints for one of the main sculptures, which is in celebration of Tokyo Disneyland's 25th anniversary:

In addition to the megalithic snow creations, average-Joe's can also try their hand at their own snow sculptures. Residents, school groups, and foreigners alike can enter their names into a lottery for a chance to win their own hunk of snow and ice to sculpt. My friend, Jesi, did just that and I went out to help her work on it this weekend:

The ambitious, but very cool blueprints for her work of art, featuring Sapporo's own landmark, the t.v. tower:

Slowly, but surely, coming along:

Chinese, Korean, and English are becoming more and more prominent nowadays here in town, and that means the tourists are flowing in for the big event! If the sculptures can withstand the unseasonably warm weather and sunshine we've been having lately, I think its going to be a pretty good time! More photos to come!