NZ Highlights: an Afternoon in Hobbiton

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” – So begins J.R.R. Tolkien’s first masterpiece, The Hobbit, and so began my happy tumble into Middle Earth as a child. After years of relying on the books, the movies, and my own daydreams, visiting Hobbiton brought Tolkien’s world to life.

There are hundreds of blogs and reviews covering the Hobbiton Movie Set Tour, so I’ll just keep this brief and add a few pictures of my own. Simply put, I loved it. Even J, who is not such an avid fan of Tolkien, meandered around the Shire quite happily (her favorite part was the Party Tree—she desperately wanted to climb it). The attention to detail  is absolutely incredible. I loved all the autumn flowers, the hobbit-sized shirts hanging on the clotheslines, the signposts written in Tolkien’s handwriting… To sum up our afternoon in Hobbiton: we frolicked, we drank cider, we lost the tour guide, and I took entirely too many photographs. How could I not?

Distracted as I was with taking photos and looking around, I ended up missing most of the stories that our guide told. I do regret that a bit… but at the same time, I was just so happy to be there that the experience was perfect all the same.

So that covers our first highlight of the trip: Hobbiton (Day 4 of our New Zealand Itinerary). The next highlight is Day 5: Tongariro!

10 Days in New Zealand: Our North Island NZ Road Trip Itinerary

New Zealand is the PERFECT place for a road trip. As promised, here is our itinerary, finally!

Due to budget and time restrictions, J and I only hit the North Island, but it was enough to sate our thirst for mountains and adventure… at least for a little while! We spent hours researching our trip (we have a 30-page google doc of notes and itineraries to prove it), and due to all of our research, we managed to see everything on our list.

I know I looked at plenty of online itineraries while planning our own, so if you are New Zealand dreaming on a bit of a budget and love mountains and adventure like we do, here is an idea of a successful road trip! Although I’m no expert, I included  few tips for budgeting in NZ at the end.

Day One:  Auckland – Hamilton

The Plan: This was our arrival day. We landed in Auckland at 9:55 AM, and spent a few hours going through immigration / picking up our rental car. By 12:30 PM, we wanted to be on the road, heading to Hamilton. We didn’t plan to do anything else on this day (after 17 hours of flying, we assumed we’d need a break) aside from shower and sleep.

What Happened: Our AirBnB hosts actually invited us to their granddaughter’s birthday party that evening, just hours after meeting them. Our hosts kindly drove us an hour further south to their son’s home, and we spent the evening with their family, enjoying a lamb roast, drinking wine, and playing games with the four grandchildren. It was an unexpectedly lovely first day.

Driving Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes. Accommodation: our Hamilton AirBnB.

Away on an Adventure: Bound for Middle Earth

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

I’ve loved the Lord of the Rings ever since I was a child. I remember sneaking a very worn copy of the Hobbit into middle school assemblies and re-reading it during the school orchestra concerts. By 8th grade, I had finished the trilogy, and I was caught up in the magic of the movies. Perhaps I will never win an LOTR trivia contest, nor do I speak Elvish, but something about Tolkien’s masterpiece has stayed with me, has grown up with me. And something about Howard Shore’s “Concerning Hobbits” will always bring me home.

So I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am currently in Narita Airport, headed to Middle Earth (also known as New Zealand) with my fearless fellow adventurer, J.

Yes, yes, I know New Zealand isn’t actually Middle Earth. But a girl can dream.

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

So after two months of intense planning, J and I are going to be spending the next week and a half road-tripping around New Zealand’s North Island. We’ll be hiking, caving, eating, exploring, and of course, visiting the Shire.

This trip is honestly a dream come true for me. It’s a true bucket-list adventure. I haven’t even gone yet, and already I want to go back! But before I can start planning the next adventure, our airplane is calling. And the road is calling~ you know where I’m going with this  😉

“The Road goes ever on and on,                                                                                                                          Down from the door where it began.                                                                                                                    Now far ahead the Road has gone,                                                                                                                      And I must follow, if I can…. ”                                                                                                                                         ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 

New Years 2017 in Japan: Mt. Takao, Disney Sea, and Kamakura

I went home for Christmas 2016, my first time back in the USA after almost a full year and a half (17 months) of living abroad. Basically, I spent those two weeks travelling from place to place (I hit three states!), catching up with everyone I haven’t seen in the past 17 months, and eating all the food. Highlights included burritos with real sour cream, Wawa everything, bacon, and pizza.

After returning to Japan and resuming work on January 4th, a coworker rushed over and demanded to see photos — as she does after all my trips — and I realized that I really only had three pictures from the USA to show her:

My family, my best friend since 2nd grade, and my cat. And they were all taken on the same night. I guess I was too busy catching up with everyone to think that, “Oh, we need to take a picture together!” So unfortunately I missed multiple opportunities of capturing the moment with my grandmother, my cousins, my college roommates…

Luckily, I remembered how to snap photos once I arrived back in Japan for New Years.

J and I had a plan for New Years in Tokyo, you see. As always, we planned to do EVERYTHING, and of course it didn’t work out; but I was impressed by how much we actually did in three days.

Travelling in Tohoku Part 2: Dewa Sanzan, Yamagata

I had an amazing summer holiday with my parents, and although not everything went according to plan, I still have a lot of places to recommend for future explorations!

This three part series will definitely be more of a photoblog than anything else, but I’ll try to add stories or commentary where needed. For Part II’s mood music, I recommend “Walking With Happiness” by The Best Pessimist. So without further ado, on to our second destination:

YAMAGATA — DEWA SANZAN

For Part II of our Tohoku Adventure, I had planned for us to hike the Three Mountains of Dewa (more commonly known as Dewa Sanzan). In order, they are: Mt. Haguro (the mountain of Birth), Mt. Gassan (the mountain of Death), and Mt. Yudono (the mountain of Rebirth). Haven’t you ever heard of them? Admittedly even my coworkers gave me weird looks when I announced this part of our trip — they all wanted to know how in the world I had learned about Dewa Sanzan at all.

We took a succession of tiny trains from Ginzan Onsen to Tsuruoka (the closest big town to the Dewa mountains), switching at tiny stations that lacked, to my shock, Suica card machines, and waiting hours for the next train to arrive.  We rumbled past endless green rice paddies and distant mountain silhouettes under bright blue skies. And our foreignness attracted quite a few stares. It was true inaka life in every sense of the word. And it was beautiful.

After finally dropping off our bags at our hotel, we caught the first bus out of Tsuruoka and on to Mt. Haguro, the first of the three mountains, the mountain of Birth. Mt. Haguro is the lowest (414m) and easiest of the three mountains, and possibly the most famous just because everyone has climbed it.

This ancient wooden pagoda is the highlight of Mt. Haguro. It was built in 937 without any nails holding it together, and has stood there ever since. It’s actually quite a sight to behold.

Aside from the pagoda, Mt. Haguro is also famous for its 2,446 stone steps that lead up to its summit. We climbed the mountain on a sticky, muggy, sweltering August afternoon, and we all were drenched in sweat by the time we arrived at the summit. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of a view from the top… Mt. Haguro is almost completely forested, although the tall cedars do keep the trail nice and shady while you are hiking!

Originally, our plan was to spend the whole next day hiking up Mt. Gassan and down Mt. Yudono (the two mountains I was really looking forward to)… but unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate. We woke up and it was bucketing rain. We checked the weather and there were thunderstorms predicted to hover over Dewa Sanzan all day. A grim look out our hotel window confirmed that the weather apps had finally gotten it right for a change… dark clouds rolled over the far away mountains.

So, to my disappointment, our plans changed. No Mt. Gassan or Mt. Yudono for me. Perhaps I wasn’t quite ready for the mountains of Death and Rebirth. Instead, scrambling for a plan, we headed for the slightly less cloudy shoreline, to wander around Atsumi Onsen.

It wasn’t the active day I had intended it to be, but it was peaceful. We strolled along the Sea of Japan for a little while before walking along the river to the main town. Atsumi Onsen is a strange mixture of run-down and lived-in. It’s a quiet place, snuggled in the mountains, dotted with towering, half-empty ryokan, cheerful ice cream cafes, and small public foot baths.

We stumbled across some hidden little places during our day in Atsumi Onsen, before heading back for our final night in Tsuruoka (we decided to forgo visiting the self-mummified monks, but they are in the area if you are interested).

All plans hit snags, and the weather was a major one in Part II of our Tohoku Adventure, but hopefully someday in the not-so-distant future, I’ll be back to climb Mt. Gassan and Mt. Yudono.

The Three Stages of Climbing Mount Fuji

Thousands of climbers summit Fuji every summer, which has led to numerous accounts of the adventure, both online and in print. While the experience was quite new to me, I’m sure that nothing I write about the climb will be novel.

Hence, I will endeavor to be brief, at least here in summary: the experience of climbing Mount Fuji was absolutely incredible — we were incredibly lucky — I’ll (probably) never do it again.

The Beginning — From the 5th Station to the 8th Station

Alternate Title: “This isn’t so bad!”

To elaborate a little more:

We started our hike decked out in fancy rental equipment, hiking up through intense fog. About halfway to the 7th station, the fog was burned off by the sun, and from that point forwards, we were hiking above the clouds. Our group moved quite slowly up the mountain, sandwiched between guides who mercifully allowed short breaks every half hour or so. S, J, and I used our breaks to breathe deeply, snack on the trail mix we had bought, and shell out a few hundred yen to get our hiking sticks stamped at many of the mountain huts we passed. At our humble pace, it took nearly seven hours to reach our 3,400+ meter 8th-station mountain hut for the night, where we chowed down on hot curry-rice and tea. Honestly, up until darkness fell about an hour before we reached the 8th station, I kept thinking, “This really isn’t so bad!” But by the time we sat down for dinner at our night’s mountain hut, I was suffering a little from altitude sickness alongside my two friends — we all had headaches, a little nausea, and a general feeling of malaise. We unpacked our bottled oxygen, chugged water and Pocari Sweat, and settled down in our sleeping bags for what turned out to be a rather cold, uneasy two hours of sleep.

What I learned from this part of the hike:

1. “Regular breathing won’t get you to the top of the mountain.” To combat altitude sickness, our guides stressed the importance of breathing deeply every step of the way. I found out that I don’t breathe very deeply to begin with, and I had to remind myself every few minutes to really fill my lungs with oxygen.
2. Being on Fuji feels like walking on another planet. With the clouds obscuring the Earthlings and their earthly cities below, we were walking on Mars up above. The surface of this Fuji planet was sharp red-brown volcanic rock and shrubbery… the moon seemed closer than ever before… the stars, once night fell, seemed to shout that we were in their universe now… the air thinned until a simple 8th station staircase left you winded and wondering how ill-suited you were for this new, beautiful, dangerous planet.
3. Altitude sickness sucks. Canned oxygen is absolutely worth it.

Summiting Fuji — From the 8th Station to the Top for Sunrise

Alternate Title: 100% Worth It

To elaborate a little more:

We woke up a little less miserable and a little more adjusted to the altitude, ready to make it to the top. It was bitterly cold, and I didn’t envy the poor hikers who, without beds booked for the night, had curled up against the howling wind on the wood benches outside the mountain huts — I had seen a few such wretched souls when I woke up around midnight and took a trip to the outside toilet. Our group assembled outside the hut at 2:00 a.m., and I was amazed by the steady stream of dancing headlamps that climbed past us, into the glow of the mountain hut for a few seconds, then disappeared around the corner and back into the darkness. Hundreds of people passed by as we did a headcount — a never-ending line of hikers who materialized and vanished.

The last stretch of our hike (which lasted from 2:00 to 3:45 a.m.) was a blur of darkness, headlamps, and the reminder to keep breathing deeply. Reaching the summit was a bit anti-climatic. Our guide suddenly stopped us and said, “We are at the top!” and all of us looked at him with bleary, confused eyes. We really were at the summit, though, and we hurried to buy hot chocolates and worm our way into a front-row seat for the sunrise. It was a brilliant moment, as the sun rose molten, golden, above the clouds. All assembled were excited and awed, and the summit was at once hushed and boisterous in celebration. Cameras clicked incessantly. S, J, and I had just enough time to satisfy ourselves with photography and add a final two stamps to our hiking sticks before meeting with our group for the descent.

What I learned from this part of the hike:

1. Not everyone makes it to the top in time. One of my favorite parts of being at the summit was looking down below, minutes before the sunrise, and seeing the glowing stream of thousands of headlamps as late hikers tried to arrive  at the summit for the sunrise. Many did not succeed, but all were above the clouds, and the moment the sun rose, the stream of lights stood still to take in the majesty.
2. The post office at the summit of Mount Fuji is not close by. But as long as you buy stamps in advance, you can leave your postcards with the people who run the mountain huts, and they’ll mail all your postcards for you.
3. It’s freaking freezing at the top of Fuji. Bring all the kairo (hand warmers).

The Descent 

Alternate Title:   I’ll Never Climb Fuji Again

To elaborate a little:

Going down Fuji was both beautiful and awful. You are basically zig-zagging down the entire mountain, on a path consisting of loose volcanic gravel-rock. I felt like I was constantly about to fall (many people did wipe out pretty spectacularly) and my body was tense the whole time, which really wore me out. I’ll admit that even in my darkest moment in the mountain hut the night before, queasy with altitude sickness, I had not entirely crossed out the idea of summiting Fuji again at a later date. The descent pretty much killed that idea for me. My friends and I fantasized about a summit-to-5th-station teleportation platform, or — better yet — a giant slide to the bottom of the mountain. When we eventually did make it to the bottom, we rewarded ourselves with ice creams and a trip to an onsen.

What I learned from this part of the hike:

1. “…even dragons have their endings.” To quote Tolkien a little bit, the bad things will end. I complained viciously (mostly internally, I hope) about the descent because it hurt my feet so badly that I half-expected my toes to be bruised and bleeding when I finally wrenched my hiking boots off (spoiler: they weren’t) but I also was comforted by the knowledge that we would reach the end eventually. And I would make it out alive. Fuji is no dragon.
2. Walking across Tokyo with a Mt. Fuji hiking stick branded with mountain hut stamps is a very unique experience. People were staring at us apologetically, and I, at least, was so tired that I didn’t even care.
3. Taking the Tokyo subway with a Mt. Fuji hiking stick is even better. Several people approached us curiously and asked us friendly questions about our hike. Since it’s quite rare for strangers in Japan to strike up conversation, it was a bit of a groundbreaking moment for us — made sweeter by the fact that they used easy Japanese that we could understand and reply to!

So, in the end, was the famed tourist adventure of climbing Fuji worth it? For me, 100% yes. I recommend it without hesitation. That said, would I do it a second time? …Nope. There are many more mountains in the world waiting to be discovered.

Hiking Bukhansan: Golden Week, Abroad

Our day at Bukhansan National Park, just north of Seoul, deserves a post of its own, if only for the pictures.  The main event of the day was climbing Baegundae, the tallest of the park’s peaks at 836 meters. The name of the peak is one of the only concrete scraps of information I can actually give about this hike, though, as I pretty much winged it for much of our journey.

Sometimes, winging it in a foreign country is disastrous, but in this case, I think it turned out pretty okay.

Because hiking is always on my agenda, I took over all the planning for this particular activity on our Korea itinerary. Because precise planning isn’t my strongest skill, this means that I scoured the internet and wrote down a rough idea of  how to get there. And at a very early hour on Thursday morning, my trusting friends followed me onto the subway (orange line) to Gupabal station, exit 1, then we followed everyone in hiking gear onto a bus (possibly bus #34). We got off at the entrance to the park, exactly where everyone else in brightly colored hiking gear got off.

And our adventure began.

Good for the Seoul: Golden Week, Abroad

Tuesday, May 3rd — in the air

At least we were flying with Song Joong Ki ? 🙂

An adventurous little anecdote: Golden Week in Korea started out a little shaky with a #NotSeoulFunny windstorm that caused our plane to get within 100 meters of the runway of Incheon Airport, shaking violently, and then suddenly reascend to full cruising altitude…. twice.

After two dangerous near-landings, the pilot decided to forget flying into Seoul, and instead announced that the plane was headed for Cheongju International Airport… which, by the way, is TWO HOURS south of Seoul. We landed at 10:30 PM, were allowed off the plane by 11:30, meandered through immigration, and finally boarded buses around 1 AM, bound for Seoul. The buses dropped us off at Seoul Station, but surprisingly the subway wasn’t running at 3 AM. So, imagine 70 people politely fighting over taxis on a near-deserted street at 3 in the morning. Yeah. My friends and I arrived at our AirBnB, exhausted, around 4 AM. Shout out to Jeremy, our awesome host, who stayed up all night to greet us and show us around!

Wednesday, May 4th — DMZ tour & Korean BBQ

One foot in North Korea… the line of microphones on the table divide the North from the South

South Korean and American soldiers stood in very precise locations near the row of blue buildings (meeting rooms for North and South leaders). North Korean soldiers watched from the far building.

After a brief hour or two of shut-eye, my friends and I conquered the Korean subway and found our way to the start of our Koridoor DMZ Tour. A trip to the Demilitarized Zone was at the top of our list, and we had our passports prepped.

It’s not necessarily a “fun” tour, but it was extremely interesting to be so close to North Korea and to learn about the sometimes bloody (and always rather tense) history of the site. Our guides inside the fence were American soldiers stationed at the DMZ, and at each stop, they would warn us of exactly where we could point our cameras, exactly where we could stand. No waving or pointing in the general direction of North Korea was allowed. We passed through checkpoints ringed in barbed wire and we drove between fields full of buried land mines. From the base of a hilltop guard tower, we gazed at Propaganda Village, a North Korean ghost town with a loudspeaker that blares Kim Jong-un propaganda for hours each day.

A fun fact: Propaganda Village’s huge flag is the result of a childish competition with the only other village allowed within the DMZ — the (populated) South Korean village of Daeseong-dong. In the 1980s, South Korea built a 98-meter flagpole in Daeseong-dong to proudly fly the South Korean flag… so North Korea retaliated by building this bigger flagpole, which stands at 160 meters. The flag itself weighs nearly 600 pounds!

Another fun fact: time in North Korea runs a half hour behind South Korea. So midnight in South Korea is still only 11:30 PM in North Korea!

My phone on the left was put in airplane mode when we were still in South Korea, so it’s showing South Korea time, while my friend’s phone on the right is picking up North Korea time!

One of the final stops of our tour was a quick look around the train station built inside the DMZ in the hopes of a united Korea. For me, this was one of the most striking parts of the tour because of the genuine hope that seemed to radiate from the place and from the people. Even our tour guide, a bubbly young South Korean woman, was optimistic that the Koreas would someday be united. The train (which only goes as far north as the DMZ at the moment) was parked silently, patiently, at the platform, and nearby was a huge chunk of the Berlin Wall — a reminder that eventually, some walls do get torn down.

Our Koridoor Tour brought us safely back to Seoul in the late afternoon, and we spent a few hours shopping and cafe-hopping around Myeongdong before ending the evening with some friends (old and new) gathered for classic Korean Barbecue!

Delicious grilled pork and beef, fried eggs, hot kimchi soup, spicy bean sprouts, sauteed spinach, roasted garlic, bottles of soju, and even a plate of Yukhoe (raw ground beef topped with raw egg). Believe it or not, the raw beef wasn’t so bad… I went back for a small second helping!

Thursday, May 5th — Hiking Bukhansan & a Jimjilbang

Personally, this was probably my favorite day of the whole trip (as well as my only contribution to our itinerary). Due to the sheer amount of photos I have from this day, I’ve decided to write an entirely separate post about hiking Bukhansan, so look forward to that!

Friday, May 6th — Palaces, Night Markets, and… Acupuncture?

I love seeing cities in the rain. They say that Paris is most beautiful in the rain (and I can personally vouch for that), but in gloomy weather, Paris may have found a rival in Seoul…

Our first stop of the day was Changdeokgung Palace, which is known for it’s Secret Garden. It’s not the most famous palace in Seoul, but it’s less crowded and perhaps a little more special. We wandered around the grounds for a few hours, waiting for the English tour of the Secret Garden to begin, and we stumbled upon a special event: inside one of the buildings, you could meet with a palace doctor for a quick appointment, all for free!

We thought, “Why not?” and so we signed up. I honestly thought it was a joke until I was seated on a sheltered porch, across the table from a nurse dressed in traditional Korean hanbok, and was asked about my symptoms. I’ve always had back pain, so I mentioned that, and she scribbled down my age and my aches and ushered me inside to wait for the doctor.

Which is how I found myself having an actual check-up from a random Korean doctor, who (after a few more questions and a quick check of my pulse) wrote me a prescription for acupuncture, effective immediately! I was led into the next room, told to lay down on a little mattress, and a nurse stuck four needles into my legs!

Yeah, so my first foray with acupuncture was in a Korean palace! It was actually quite lovely, lying there chatting with the nurse and staring up at the intricately painted ceiling, the smell of rain and time and history surrounding me. I did feel more relaxed when it was all done, too.

One of my friends, J, was also prescribed acupuncture, while S opted out of her treatment (and instead got the royal photographer to snap photos of her meeting with the doctor!).

A quick tea break later, it was time for the Secret Garden tour. It’s basically a 2-hour walking tour of the royal gardens, with quite a bit of history thrown in. Generally the gardens are not open to visitors aside from guided tours (which are rather strict in moving along as a group) but that Friday was a rare occasion where they allowed anyone to wander away from the guide and just relax in one of the numerous pavilions. I saw visitors lounging on cushions on the covered porches with books in their laps, lazily glancing up to gaze across the rain-rippled lakes, and I imagined princes from long ago doing the same, waiting for someone to bring them a pot of steaming tea before diving back into their books on rainy days. If we hadn’t had such a crammed itinerary, I would’ve begged my friends an hour to do the same, it was such a peaceful scene.

After Changdeokgung, we made a quick detour over to Gyeongbokgung, the largest and most famous of Seoul’s five palaces. While admittedly impressive due to its sheer size, I honestly didn’t think Gyeongbokgung was any more ornate than Changeokgung. It was just… bigger. It was also much more crowded. Despite all of this, I do think it was worth the visit, and I wish we could’ve seen the changing of the guards at the main palace gate (which was cancelled that day due to poor weather). If I ever visit Seoul again, I’ll definitely spend more time at Gyeongbokgung.

We spent our late afternoon shopping (because by that point, we were rather tired of dodging raindrops… and of course, Seoul is famous for its shopping). And in the evening, we decided to check out the night markets.

Seoul’s street food is scene is rather insane, and Seoul’s night markets are just a huge collection of home-cooked street food at crowded little booths. In our experience, the women who run the little stalls will squeeze as many customers as possible onto their benches and they might chide you a little if you aren’t eating fast enough… don’t go expecting a relaxing dining environment. But it was fast-paced and alive with all the new foods and the spices, and I loved it.

My friends and I feasted on kimbap (korean sushi minus the fish), tteokbokki (rice cakes smothered in spicy red pepper sauce), and japchae (glass noodles). We finished it all off with some fresh strawberry smoothies to help with all the spiciness!

Saturday, May 7th — War Museums and River Nights

For our last full day, we headed to the War Memorial (and Museum) of Korea for a little history. While I could claim that everything we did in Seoul was a highlight, this museum stood apart from the rest. It’s by far one of the best museums I’ve ever been to — high-tech, interactive, with a staggering amount of information and a very chilling memorial hall.

If anyone is ever planning on visiting Seoul, I can’t recommend this museum enough. While it’s fun to do all the touristy stuff, I think it’s equally important to learn at least a little about the country you are visiting. In South Korea’s case, it has a very sad, bloody history and an amazing amount of hope for the future. I could’ve spent the whole day here and not seen everything.

Outside the museum, there are huge statues and memorials along with some tanks and fighter jets. The one that caused me to tear up, though, was this one:

It’s two brothers — a South Korean general, and his younger brother, a North Korean soldier, meeting and embracing on the battlefield.

We eventually tore ourselves away the museum, and we hit up the neighborhood of Gangnam ,  for some snacks (including Milk Cow’s honeycomb ice cream!) and some serious skincare shopping. Although we poked our heads into all the famous skincare stores, sampling and comparing, I ended up walking away with a bag full of Nature Republic products.

And for our final night in Seoul, we bought some delicious fried chicken and headed to the banks of the Han river. Just like in the K-dramas. We sat and we ate and we talked… then we dragged our tired legs back to our AirBnB for the last time.

Serious props to anyone who made it to the end of this recounting! Goodnight!

The April Blues: Golden Week, At Home

And when I say “at home,” I really mean, “in Ibaraki.”

For the first part of Golden Week (which was really just a three-day weekend), my friends and I headed to one of Ibaraki’s most famous sites:  Hitachi Seaside Park! We were among the horde of hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists eager to see the Nemophila in bloom. Apparently, people even fly in from China and Taiwan just to see these brilliant flowers. Luckily, we only had to travel just under two hours by train.

We visited on April 29th, a breezy, sunny, blue-sky, late-spring kind of day.

I’m not usually one for background music, but if you like to listen while you read (or for this post, scroll through numerous pictures), I highly recommend one of my favorite instrumental pieces by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi:

Hopefully the melody will give you a sense of my mood on that brilliant first day of Golden Week. The sea breeze, blue skies, and sea of blue flowers made it more magical than I ever could have imagined.

Enjoy these April Blues!

Probably the most photographed tree in the entire park

Pale blue ice cream and pale blue flowers!

Surprisingly, (or maybe unsurprisingly, after you see the photos?) Hitachi Seaside Park is pretty internet famous as one of the many places to see before you die: I’ve seen it listed alongside some of the most breathtaking locations on earth, such as in this Buzzfeed article (it’s #6)!

Moving on from Hitachi Seaside Park…

The rest of our three day weekend was spent in and around Kasama, where my friend S lives. We went to Kasama’s local  ひまつり  or pottery festival, which exceeded our expectations. Honestly, one of my coworkers told me that he and his family go to the pottery festival every year, and I brushed off his suggestion to go — why would I want to walk around and look at plates and bowls for an hour or two?

In the end, though, my friends and I  decided to check it out, only to find out that not only is       ひまつり insanely popular, it’s also a wonderful little outing if you are in the area. It reminded me of the craft shows and the art shows I used to go to with my aunts in Connecticut. Plates and bowls were just the tip of the iceberg in terms of featured pottery: there were all sorts of beautiful and crazy things made out of clay (including a few dinosaurs)!

And aside from walking around admiring the craftsmanship of all the pottery, there was THE FOOD. This wasn’t your typical Japanese festival food, either. No takoyaki, yakisoba, and buttered baked potatoes. This was artisan food. It seems like nearly every cafe in Kasama had booked a tent at the festival, and they were serving up gourmet thin-crust pizzas, yuzu sodas, grilled teriyaki chicken and rice bowls, iced coffee, German beer and potato pancakes.

Walking through the sea of blue Nemophila and discovering Kasama’s pottery festival were by far the two highlights of my Golden Week in Ibaraki.

After that lovely three day weekend, it was back to work on Monday (unsurprisingly, there were quite a few absent students) followed by a string of public holidays on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday! My friends and I decided to take paid leave on the Friday and venture a little farther from home…

…to South Korea! But that is for another post.

8 Things to Do at the Sapporo Snow Festival

Otherwise known as: how to make all your co-workers insanely jealous.

Sapporo’s annual Snow Festival (Yuki Matsuri) is arguably the most famous winter festival in Japan. It is THE PLACE to be for the second-ish week of February. Attending the festival seems to be high on most of my colleagues’ bucket lists. Like many of my fellow JETs, I managed to head up north for a few days to discover the magic for myself… and I was not at all disappointed.

Without further ado, here is a list of 8 things to do in and around Sapporo during the festival, especially if you only have a few days to enjoy it all.

1. Pose with all the Snow Sculptures at Odori Park  (and intensely photograph the rest).

The Odori Site is especially fantastic at night! Everything is lit up, there are illuminations projected onto some of the larger sculptures, there are light shows, and there is hot food and drinks for sale everywhere! There are also a lot of performances. We saw the end of a Shakespeare play (in Japanese, of course), a few pop idols, and a snowboard jump competition.

Star Wars was a pretty popular subject matter this year. There was a huge Attack on Titan sculpture, too (not pictured) that everyone was very impressed with. My personal favorite, though, was the giant cathedral (especially the when illuminated).

Fun fact: members of the Japanese Army, based in a nearby city, build the massive snow sculptures every year. It’s considered an important training exercise!

2. Be a little adventurous… book a Snowmobiling Tour!

This is also a great alternative to skiing or snowboarding. Because in the minds of many people, Hokkaido = skiing / snowboarding. People expect that you did one of the two in Hokkaido. Surprise them.

My friends and I booked through Snowmobile Land Sapporo. They picked us up at a nearby hotel, and within forty minutes, we were in the mountains above the city, suiting up to snowmobile through an “adventure course.” The scenery was absolutely stunning and the guides were excellent. None of us had ever snowmobiled before (one of my friends doesn’t even have her driver’s license) and yet we managed just fine!

Also, it was a fantastic opportunity to look a little like firefighters. Highly recommended.

3. Eat ALL THE FOOD. 

Because it’s HOKKAIDO. My friend seriously planned our whole holiday around the food we both wanted to eat, and it was AMAZING. How can you resist? Here are my top 3 food recommendations:

1. Head over to Ramen Alley for some ramen, of course! Hokkaido is really known for miso ramen, so be sure to order miso broth. I also suggest trying butter ramen!  I’m sure someone who actually lives in Sapporo could give a better ramen recommendation, but… if you can’t find a local willing to reveal the best ramen shop in Sapporo, Ramen Alley is still a great bet.

2. For something sweet, LaTao Double Fromage Cheesecake is quite sinful (and quite famous). You can find several LaTao shops peppered about the nearby city of Otaru (which you’ll probably end up visiting… because almost everyone who visits Sapporo takes a day trip to Otaru).

3. As for seafood, I really suggest making your way to Sapporo Jogai Ichiba, a roadside fish market located a 15-minute walk from Soen JR station. They sell all types of seafood there, and there are quite a few restaurants serving up sushi, sea urchin, and crab. I splurged for a deluxe crab bowl, and my friends feasted on sea urchin, roe, crab, and slices of fatty salmon. All three of us walked away very, very happy.

4. Release Your Inner Child

I went to the snow festival with 40 other Ibaraki JETs, but my main group consisted of three friends — one from SoCal, the other two from Singapore. They were ecsatic to play in the snow, which led to snowman-making sessions, snow angels, and snowball fights.

If you really want to act like kid in winter, I suggest heading over to the Tsu Dome Site for a more hands-on experience with snow (like free tubing!). Honestly, this is the designated area for families with young children, so nothing is TOO exciting, but it was still a great opportunity to act like I was seeing snow for the first time again, too.

5.  Feel Like an Adult at an Ice Bar

Pick your poison.

I seriously thought that this was one of the coolest parts of the entire Snow Festival. For 700 yen, we were given gloves, chisels, and blocks of ice, and we were able to carve our own glasses. We then chose from a selection of alcoholic beverages and sat back, enjoying life.

Mine is the green drink (J kept telling me that it actually looked like poison)… it’s a light, sweet Japanese liquor called “Midori.” J’s drink was a Bacardi daiquiri of some sort, which actually looked way cooler in the ice glass than I thought it would.

We were the envy of all the parents, I swear.

6. Hold some Ice Lanterns at Otaru (and Take Some Couple Pics)

Otaru is for lovers, apparently. This city has an ice-lantern festival at the same time as the Sapporo Snow Festival, so it’s great to check out both. Otaru is especially pretty along the historic canal, with the huge icicles dangling from old warehouse rooftops.

There’s also a lot of opportunities for slightly bizarre “couple” photos — lots of ice hearts to hold along the canal, and lots of snow hearts to pose in. J and I aren’t a couple, of course, but we were randomly given ice lanterns by some of the festival volunteers and asked to stand in one of the snow hearts, resulting in the above photo! It was really quite funny.

One of our favorite parts of Otaru’s festival was a short, twisty tubing hill built out of snow, and slightly hidden at the old train-track area of the city. The volunteers were so enthusiastic, cheering for every festival-goer who dared to tube down, carrying the tubes up to the top of the hill again, cheering some more. It was really quite heartening.

7. Eat Breakfast with a View

On our last day in Hokkaido, we headed to the 35th floor of the JR Tower Hotel Nikko for a breakfast buffet with a panoramic view over the city. Although a little pricey, it was a fantastic way to end our holiday. The buffet offers both Western and Japanese-style breakfasts, and we were able to sample all the Hokkaido specialties that we hadn’t checked off our list in the days before. Specifically: soup curry, special Hokkaido potatoes, and Hokkaido milk ice cream.

8. Get a Rowdy Group Together for a good time at the Sapporo Beer Garden

All you can eat Ghengis Khan (lamb), all you can drink Sapporo beer, 40-some friends. What could be better? It was a very memorable dinner, to say the least. The Sapporo Beer Garden is located right next to the beautiful old museum and it is the perfect place for a party. Fair warning: it’s smokey inside, but it’s also very cheery and cozy. I only wish I had had time to tour the brewery museum! I would have liked to learn more about this famous beer.

BONUS! Buy all the Omiyage!

Because I am split between 5 schools, and because I used two days of nenkyuu on otherwise normal school days, I bought enough omiyage (souvenirs) for 175 people… and 35 of those people were JTEs or vice principals, so they received an extra gift or two apiece!

My wallet cried. But at the same time, I was more than happy to do it, because of the kindness and generosity I have been shown over the past seven months. (And everyone was very grateful).

Anyways, I recommend heading back to the airport early to buy all your omiyage (you don’t have to worry about it until the end of your holiday). The two most famous (and most popular) gifts to bring back are Shiroi Koibitu and Calbee Jaga Pokkaru — the latter is so popular that there is actually a limit on how much an individual can bring home! Also, note that if you get the bigger packages of Shiroi Koibitu (such as the 34-pack, or the 54-pack), the cookies come in a special tin that some teachers will actually fight over. I also bought some Royce Chocolate cookies as extra, because they were cheap and quite useful to give away to forgotten colleagues.

I’ll end with one last photo. Cheers.