Sapporo

The other day we went to Sapporo because I decided to go back to Canada earlier than I had expected and I had to speak to JAL to change my ticket and pay a little money. I'll be coming back to Canada on March 6th now (and no, we didn't break up so don't have to worry). The picture on the right is out of the train window on the way to Sapporo - I have no idea which city it is.

But before we left for Sapporo we went to the speediest noodle restaurant ever. You order your food, instead of from a menu, from, what looks like, a vending machine, at the front of the store. It prints you out a receipt, you hand it to the waitress that is running around like a crazy girl, and within minutes you have your food. My gf and her brother got their food mere moments after we found a seat and sat down. I was really suprised. It puts McDonalds to shame in every respect. It's faster, tastier, healthier, more filling, cleaner, employees are more friendly, and the price is almost the same (a "combo" I guess it would be referred to as, is about $7.00 - What I ordered was $4.50 and I was pretty full after). Iced green tea is a complimentary drink for every customer so you don't have to worry about buying a drink either.

Sapporo is a really nice city and it's downtown really feels like Japan - much more than Asahikawa. Sapporo is somewhat similar to Vancouver population wise but is more crowded. In the picture it doesn't look very crowded but I think it's mainly because it was snowing like crazy and windy to boot. Chilly chilly. But check out the cross-walks! Notice how they crisscross all over the intersection. In Japan pedestrians all walk at the same time at busy intersections and cars wait. It's kinda neat.

Japan is really... unnerving. There are call girls everywhere and advertisements for them posted all around the place. In Japan, they say "T-Back" for "G-String" so you can try reading this advertisement on the left and see if you can guess what they're trying to say. There are Japanese/English advertisements and signs everywhere also - most often they have some kind of spelling mistake or the grammar just doesn't make sense haha. Actually... I was just watching TV and found out that the highest paid "Hostesses", as they call them in Japan, get paid upwards of $10,000 a month. The highest they had on the show is paid $30,000 a month which is $360,000 a year. It kinda makes me sad that these girls, whose only job is to talk to desperate guys, have a higher salary than almost everyone who has gone to school for years and years and has, what we think, a high paying job. I'm happy this sort of work is illegal in Canada. Actually there are "Hosts" in Japan also - and you guessed it, they're males who chat to girls for a fee. Weird eh? Whatever happened to meeting people on your own? In Japan you can just buy temporary friends - saves the trouble of making real friends haha.

But besides that, Sapporo is really pretty. We changed my flight time first and then we went to this giant covered stripmall. It's 7 blocks long and has shops along both sides the entire way. Cars can't drive either - just for walking. But each block there is a cross street which cars drive along. Also each block is numbered so its easier to figure out which "mall" your favorite shops are in. First we went to sing some karaoke, as usual haha. The place we went to had a beautiful entrance but the rooms were cramped and kinda old. Also one of the microphones smelled so disgusting we couldn't even sing with it. But it was fun none-the-less =D We stayed for about 2 hours and then it was off to find something to eat. Actually we got sidetracked by an arcade and decided to play some medal games since they're so fun. They had our favorite machine but we weren't so lucky that day and our medals were depleted a lot sooner than usual but I finally have a picture of a giant medal machine!! hahaha (because I know all of you are so interested in it -_-'). There are... 12 stations I think? or 16? I can't remember. And there's a giant rotating screen in the middle and there's balls all over the place and metals flying this way and that and music and lions dancing and pounding numbers which creates more flying metals and balls. It's really fun.

For dinner we went to an "all you can eat" bbq. Each table has a hot plate in the middle of it which is used to fry your food! Who would have thought =D The table was pretty small though... so it was difficult to eat haha - but tasty! and cheap. It was １５００円 per person for all you can eat with no time limit. We ate our fair share. Both of us were pretty stuffed before we even finished our food. I wanted to drink beer for some reason so I ordered a beer. There were 3 sizes to choose from. Small, medium and large. I thought large would be fine - that it wouldn't be large... but I was wrong. I've never seen such a big mug before... nor so much beer in anything except a pitcher. I know in the picture it doesn't look that big, but trust me - it is. Compare it to my hand or to your hand. It's about 3 fists high. Make a fist, put it on the table. Make another fist and put it on top of your first. Now move your bottom one above the 2nd one and there you have it (it's about the height of a pitcher of beer).