Snow Fest, Part 2
Is it bad that I want to stay in bed and read all day? Every day? I’m such a slug.
Also, despite my mothers frantic fears, there was no tsunami action in Tokyo. Should you have been worried, let me quell that by saying that we’re just fine. We spent the day in Tokyo (shinjuku and shibuya, mostly) eating ramen, wandering about, and drinking in the streets. With the exception of some rain showers in the morning, it was a very water-free day.
Part two of our Yuzawa trip, coming at you. In this episode, Jon and Michelle find a place to sleep and look at snow sculptures!
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You’ll remember that we came out to the mountain town of Yuzawa without a hotel booked for the night. (scroll down if this doesn’t sound familiar. you probably missed part one!) We stopped in to the tourist association and found someone that spoke a small amount of English. Boy, what a help!
We really, really didn’t want to spend 300$ / night on a hotel (which seemed to be the going rate for most of the places we had found, and was also the reason why we didn’t book something BEFORE getting on the train). Other than that financial limitation, we tried to communicate to the guy that we didn’t really care about much else. Remember, I was okay with sleeping in the train station if it came to that!
A few phone calls later, he circles something on the map and tells us that it would be $50. … okay? okay! well. we still have no idea what we’re going to, but at least he circled it on the map. That will probably come in handy later.
We’re in the mountains this weekend to visit the Tokamachi snow festival, which is a 30-minute train ride away from where we were at. I think a lot of people were in town for this snow fest, because the trains were crazy packed.
The japanese need very little encouragement when it comes to having full-costume mascots. This is the suica (train pass) mascot! I hugged Suica the Penguin! Isaiah, are you hearing this!!?
We wander out to the streets and follow the crowd into a snow-walled off area filled with tents and sculptures. Speaking of trains, look at the level of detail!
This area is known for growing rice, so there’s a lot of sake makers around too. (remember, sake is basically rice wine) $1 for sake? count us in!
I love that this culture embraces drinking in public so wholeheartedly.
SUMO snow man! This isn’t the kind of stuff we made in our backyard. Tokamachi’ans really don’t mess around with their snowmen!
Just look at the level of detail!
But you know, not everyone… got the hint. Shouldn’t there at least be snow in the snowmen? Nice try, folks.
Boy. All this walking around in the snow is making me hungry. If only there was a guy selling meat on a stick around here somewhere…..
Did I mention how cold it was yet? And wet? Cold and wet!
Unlike jon’s (much more practical shoes), my tennis shoes aren’t waterproof. My toes were angry with me, and so when the opportunity came to warm myself with a beer around a trash-can-fire, like a hobo, my toes simply wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
They do this crazy thing all over Tokamachi & Yuzawa. Having lived in both Wisconsin and Colorado for some time, it struck me as odd that I’ve never seen anything like this before. It appears that the snow melt runoff is piped into the streets to keep them from freezing. Neat, huh? Neat that is, until you accidentally step in it and get your (already angry) toes more wet.
but you know, it’s okay. We’re having a good time and we’re together. And we did come for the snow, after all.
