Tokyo!

Jan 8
Today we went for a visit to Yokohama, Japan's second-largest city and more or less a giant merged metropolis with Tokyo. We met Ellen at the station again after dropping our luggage off at House Ikebukuro (we arrived back in to Tokyo at around 10am, and could see snow and cloud-covered Mt Fuji in the distance from the final train home). Fanta World U.S. Hip Hop is a vile drink and nobody should try it. >_> In Yokohama we wondered around Chinatown (the largest in the world), walked past a beautiful-looking temple and through a park nearby. We tried some fish-shaped fried desert thing (not actually made of fish, but pastry filled with sweet filling in the shape of a fish) which was not actually cooked yet but still delicious, and had a baked round dumpling thingie that I can't remember the name of for lunch, as well as semi-gross bubble tea.

After that we wondered to the Yokohama Landmark Tower and the shops beneath, went into the Pokémon Centre (4 down, 1 to go!) and H&M, had a break at a nice, cheap and fast-serving café, planned the rest of the week, and then came home. Finally got our washing done, and are temporarily staying in a room which is basically a bunkbed inside a glorified linen closet (half the price though) before our normal room is given to us for our last 8 nights in Japan. Tomorrow: Tokyo tower/city area (and the last Pokémon Centre we're visiting =P) and then karaoke at night.

Oh, and I finally bought fogbag, the bizarre spray on hair wax that looks like it's in an eyeglasses case, so will see how that goes.

Jan 7
Our second day in Sapporo was spent getting up in the morning, struggling to find a locker to put our stuff in, and then catching a metro train to a nearby suburb which houses an awesome and incredible CHOCOLATE FACTORY. This rivaled Koyasan as my favourite leg of our trip. Even though the building can't be over 200 years old, it was incredibly opulent and old-fashioned, and looked exactly like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory from the Gene Wilder movie from the outside, complete with wrought iron gates, massive CHOCOLATE FACTORY lettering above it, and covered in snow and Christmasy decorations. It looked magical. Inside it smelt AMAZING, and had a beautiful water fountain, ceiling frescos, stained glass windows, huge collections of old hot chocolate china from loads of different countries, old chocolate ads and packaging from worldwide, a pretty awesome history of chocolate display, views of the factory, and ended with a shop that had INCREDIBLY intricate and fiddly cake decorations you could buy, cakes to order, and a posh little café/restaurant complete with expensive-looking pianola. After that was an awesome toy museum, with toys ranging from a century or so ago to toys from our generation as kids. Outside were miniature houses of different themed outside. The whole experience was amazing, the chocolate cookies and chocolate milk they produced were DELICIOUS, and I want more.

After heading back to Sapporo, we caught a train to Otaru, a resort-style town nearby that's famous for its canal and seasideyness in summer; however it was freezing cold, and while the lanterns made of snow were kind of cool, there wasn't much to do. We headed back, bummed around some more in the department stores around the train station, and then caught the 12 hour night train ride of death home, complete with ridiculously over-heated (again) train carriages. Blurgh.

Jan 6
It was cold. It was constantly snowing. It was the second day of the Sapporo Snow Festival. Did I mention that was it cold and constantly snowing? Well, it was freezing and snowed a lot. Just as we headed into department stores to warm up, the snow stopped, and just after we wondered outside again, the snow started. Joy. It was heavy. And cold. And snowy. ARGH!! After having a breakfast of soup, tea/coffee and bread pastry things at the hotel, we headed out to view everything. There were ice and snow sculptures everywhere, and lots of crowds, but it was pretty awesome to watch. We did a fair amount of shop browsing/buying (Pokémon centre 3 of 5!), took some awesome snow-themed purikura, and that's it really. Lots of photos. At night we had a massive bowl of soy ramen for Y380, possibly the most amazing value meal I've ever bought. On the way home we looked at the ice sculptures all lit up, which were really nice.

Jan 5
Sapporo! We took 10 or so hours' worth of travel to get to Japan's northern-most major city, fifth largest in the country and the most logically laid out as its relatively new and was a planned development. The train's were ridiculously over-heated but the journey was pretty nice otherwise. We checked in at 10pm, had some food and headed to bed after watching a dodgy as hell yet hilarious Japanese soap that involved the hero fighting off something akin to the crazy 88 from Kill Bill before they chased him down the wedding aisle where he stopped his love from marrying a sadomasochistic old man. The old man handcuffed the bride to him; she started slapping him (which he enjoyed), and so she used her magic to bring down the church. Hilarious and full of WTFness, and Prue's quite sure that the hero is one of the Arashi boy band members. We went to sleep in preparation for the Snow Festival viewing the next day.

Jan 4
We got up in the morning and met Ellen at Ikebukuro station (after going to the wrong gate) and headed for Kamakura, famous for its massive Daibatsu Buddha statue amongst other temples. The Daibatsu's by the coast and used to be in a temple, but the temple got destroyed in a tsunami in the 1600s and so the Buddha remains alone, its copper turned to green while it sits serenely. It's smaller than the one in Nara but its pose and artistry is more highly regarded. We had our photo taken in, I went inside of the statue quickly, and then we headed for another temple in Kamakura. I can't remember its name, but its gardens were beautiful, with lots of waterfalls, ponds and koi everywhere. We explored a small cave beside it full of icons of a chief goddess, and then walked up the steps of the temple for a nice view of Kamakura's bay. The steps were lined with icons, apparently of the goddess for miscarried/aborted babies - if each icon represents a life lost then that's quite sad. We took the train back into the main tourist strip of Kamakura, had some sweet potato/vanilla ice cream, ignored the rickshaw vendors trying to pull us in and headed back to Tokyo for Shibuya.

Shibuya is insanely busy, making you feel like an insignificant spec, with its world-famous scramble crossing really fun to watch and participate in. After taking photos at the Hachi statue (with a story like Greyfriar's Bobby in Edinburgh but a Japanese Akita) we met up with some backpacker friends of Ellen's, explored H&M in Shibuya and then sat up in the Starbucks located above the crossing for about an hour and watched/filmed all the people scrambling across. We had yoshinoya again (I wish this place were in Australia) and then headed out for drinks at Gas Panic, with Thursdays offering awesome Y300 drinks. After getting a bit drunk, we did the whole Maccas thing (BUT IN SHIBUYA off the crossing!!!, took some purikura (which didn't turn out all that bad), hurried for the last few trains and then ran back to our hostel before midnight curfew.