Hotel Monterey Sapporo

... 124 34;伸ばして 356;ないけれ
2393;、

その&# 12358;ちキャン& #12500;ングカー であちこち ;行ってみӚ 4;う。

そ| 28;にしても 271;海道は広
2356;。

Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan odekake

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 ...

We emerged from our miserably long train ride exhausted, groggy, unshowered, and...freezing?! Apparently we were farther north than we had realized. Our second problem involved a the time. We stumbled out of the train station at around 630 am. Our hotel check-in time was 4 pm. We were able to dump our bags at the hotel, but we had to find somewhere to go for the next several hours. We grabbed some ...

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 ...

... many stories about the summit such as meeting other groups of indigenous peoples, struggle for coordinating the event, joy of the success, etc. I felt their passion, and I felt great starting to know about such great people. The next indigenous summit will be in Canada next summer. Hopefully I can participate in the event next year. Takashi kept telling about the importance of the education especially for younger generations to learn about multiculturalism and ...

... ski. Enfin, Otaru est connu pour son aquarium renomme que nous avons visite ! On a pu y voir pleins d'animaux et de poissons exotiques pour nous; gros crabes (vivants et non sur des etales), pieuvre, poissons divers et surtout des gros animaux tels que des lions des mers, otaries, phoques et un gros morse, jouant avec les humains (ou plutot l'inverse).

... also happened to be Lily's 23rd birthday. We rented a big van and 8 of us drove about 3 hours into central Hokkaido to an area called Furano, famous for it's lavender. The landscape of Hokkaido looks drastically different from other parts of Japan I've visited, as there is actually a lot of flat land. It felt more like America. There were new red barns, fields of corn, hay bails, wide roads and of course mountains in the distance. Because no one lived in ...

... rain, one's heart falls with them, I feel. After a long, harsh, 6 months winter surrounded by snow and ice, suddenly seeing a park come alive like this breaks the heart. The joy one feels, coupled with the sense of its impending end, sends one into a kind of indescribable nostalgia for the now! One desperately tries to seek out the perfect cherry ...