Grand Sapporo

... 12540;をし ;に来たもӛ 5;なー。

Ô 71;海道には 393;んなとこ
2429;があるの&# 12363;、

楽し& #12415;だ。

行 ってみたい ;ところもӓ 6;っぱいだz 90;

Today we were unable to go to the lavender fields like we had planned, so we improvised. Sapporro being the beer capital of Japan, we headed to the beer museum. Fascinating though it was, we were still below Japan's drinking age and therefore felt a little left out of the festivities. The beer museum was adjacent to a crazy huge shopping mall and we needed some lunch, so we decided to head in. We grabbed some ...

... been to. Unlike our small hotel showers, however, this bath had a sauna. I've been to several saunas, especially when I was Sweden. I enjoy them usually, but this bad boy was in a league of its own. The thermometer on the inside ready 90 degrees. Celsius. That's a balmy 195+ degrees Fahrenheit.
After the death-defying, stroke-tempting brush with the sauna, we headed home and beaded down for the night.

My friend took me to the Moerenuma Park (http://www.sapporo-park.or.jp/moere/en glish.php) where a famous Japanese-American architect/designer, Isamu Noguchi designed.
He's famous for those Akari series lights (you can see these at IKEA often).

I heard this place was just for garbage dumping... and the city of Sapporo decided to have a nice park here.

We had a nice lunch at "Yuuhi ...

... government has begun to have cultural consideration in decision-making and projects. This whole dam incidents became a trigger for the movement. Now, there's a museum showing Ainu traditional lifestyle, culture and people. I watched the video of 'Kumaokuri (gods (bears) sent off)". It was like when I watched the bull fights in Spain. At the beginning, I felt disgusted killing an animals... but after learning why they do this, seeing how they do this, I ...

... and Land Rovers. Only a few Fords and all of them were left-hand drive like in North America and Europe! Japanese cars are all right-hand drive! What are the marketers at Ford thinking?! Overall, our bike ride was great but, if you haven't rode a bike in a long time, it can be very tough on the rear-end! We're both suffering a bit this morning but the sights were great and it was good exercise. Well worth it....

... nice, cheap and filling. It had been a long day especially after the train so we headed back to the hostel. On the way we past the JR tower. At 160 metres, the viewing platform was higher than the TV tower 90, so we stopped for a look. The night time view was great and I'm sure better than the day as Sapporo was awash with neon. A ferris wheel lit up in the distance could be seen, every city we had been to so far had one in Japan. At the hostel we had missed shower time but sneaked in anyway.