Soran! Soran! Soran! Yosakoi!

Okay, so the Sapporo Snow Festival gets all of the fame and notoriety, but it's the Yosakoi Soran Festival that is the most awesome, colorful, and energetic high-light of the festival calendar year here in Sapporo! As I mentioned last year, this festival is a five-day frenzy of some of the most amazing dancing you'll ever see. Seriously, it's like all of the shackles of the longest winter ever simply melt away with every shout of "Soran!"

Sapporo holds Japan's largest Yosakoi Soran festival, hosting some 300 teams with about 50,000 dancers! How can you not get pumped up and ready for a whole new outlook on life with 50,000 dancers running about your town!?!

Dancing on a costumed and choreographed Yosakoi team may seem a little breezy, but some of these folks spends MONTHS practicing everyday...they're hard-core serious! Among all of the sweat and hard work however, they look like they're having the time of their lives, which is pretty darn awesome:

Even Coke has jumped on the bandwagon to quench all of your Yosakoi needs (and caffeine fixes):

The best part of this year's festival was that I got to participate on a team as well! Remember what I said about the hard-core serious months-of-practicing stuff? Not really up my alley. Good thing there's the Hokkaido JR team...we not only learned our dance in an hour, but we also got to perform on the same day! Who's hardcore now!?

Our Nippon Ham Fighters naruko. Naruko clappers are required for every team performance in the festival:

Our team consisted of about 50 members altogether, but here are the "Hokkaido University students" (ahem) represented in all their glory:

You don't really get a true appreciation for Yosakoi until you perform your dance about five times down about five blocks under a blanket of intense sun! Um, TOTALLY worth it! It's amazing fun, and one-day is just the right amount of devotion for me:

And with that, the summer festival season has officially kicked off here in Hokkaido!

Happy 28th Birthday, Jacob! お誕生日おめでとうございます！

To the best travel buddy, personal chef, laughing coach, and fun-loving hubby there is! I always love celebrating birthdays with you!!

Lake Toya Marathon

This weekend we took a little journey to the gorgeous Lake Toya area, about 3 hours south of Sapporo. It wasn't for camping or boating or swimming, however, but instead to do a little running:

I participated in the Lake Toya 10K run, and Jacob came to complete the full marathon, his first, which he had been training for during the last couple of months!

Turns out, it was a perfect time to be in Toya...the cherry blossoms were still in full bloom, the sun was brilliant, and there was plenty abuzz with preparations for the races:

I've written about Lake Toya before as it is such a beautiful volcanic caldera lake with crystal-clear waters. This weekend was no exception to how wonderful a place it is:

TOYA!

The marathon start...

...and Jacob's off! Good thing he's easy to spot!

After our races (which I think I actually got my best 10K run time yet!), there was plenty to hold us over while Jacob made his way around the lake, including plenty of photo opps...

...walking amidst all of the yummy "festival" food scents wafting through the air...

...hunting for some crazy runner get-ups (not nearly as many as back home, but there's still hope for the Japanese)...

...and a mochi (sticky rice substance) pounding ceremony:

Finally, the last leg of a long day of running for Jacob:

The happy marathon finishers: Jake and Takada san (who works in our school office):

And, we all know the marathon isn't truly completed until there's a cold, frosty, post-race beer in hand:

The awesomeness that is Lake Toya's many area onsens (hot springs) ensured that every runner of the day got to partake in a free hot onsen-outing, so after redeeming ours in a lovely cave onsen, it was back to Sapporo for us (visions of hearty Indian food and realities of achy joints and muscles abound)!

Jacob kicked butt. The weather kicked butt. All around, it was an amazing time, once again, down in Toya! Can't wait to get back there for some (less painful?) camping this summer!