sapporo revisited

Meet Shimo (means "frosty" in Japanese), my very first snowman! :)

Nestled in the cold winter weeks of Japan is a wonderful 3-day holiday, perfectly situated as to let people visit Sapporo for the annual Snow Festival. I had been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time, ever since the previous year’s trip. Hostels were reserved in November, plane tickets were booked in December, and plans were finalized months before the actual event. Sapporo, here we come ;)

For me, February in Yamaguchi was spent curled up in front of a heater cursing the essence of winter while movies like Blue Crush and Lilo and Stitch played in the background. Fast-forward to our Sapporo trip, where thousands of people joined together in celebrating the beauty and wonderment of winter. A very different spirit indeed.

Who knew cold could be so much fun? At the many festival sites were assortments of ice sculptures resembling that of beloved cartoon characters and famous buildings. We also tried our hand at snow tubing –a not-so-popular pastime in Hawaii ;) There was even a snowman building booth at one of the snow sites, where I aided the Canadian in the construction of my very first legitimate snowman. His name came to be Shimo (“shimo” means “snowball” in Japanese). The Canadian was pleased :)

There was so much fun to be had. A dinner buffet every night (the first being crab, the second being mutton), snowboarding at the magnificent Teine Ski Resort, a trip to the Sapporo Beer Museum (well…to the tasting section at least), soup curry with friends, and the most amazing display of snow and ice artwork I have ever seen…an amazing time indeed.

a wake-up call

It's been a relaxing couple of weeks here in Yamaguchi. Between March and April, time goes into a sort of limbo: the school year ends and a new one awaits, teachers are shuffled and reassigned to different schools throughout the prefecture, and winter slowly fades into spring. I've found myself relaxing at home, watching movies, and saving up for the vacations to follow in May.

In the spirit of money-saving, Kyle and a Japanese friend of ours decided to go out for bowling and drinks Saturday night. Bowling was a great success, 1,050 yen (about $12) for 3 games. I racked up a whopping 144 points...my total of the 3 games :P Feeling good and realizing it was only 10:30pm, we head to a favorite bar spot in Kudamatsu. The bar is a small, intimate 15-person space, where customers sit together on 2 benches cornering the bartending area. Customers will sit and drink together as ABBA soundtracks and cigarette smoke fill the air.

The perfect setting for a relaxing Satuday night, right?

The only problem with having such an intimate setting is when all the people just don't fit right. My friend is Japanese-born and raised-but moved to Europe for many years. His English is amazing. After hearing our English conversations, one of the drunken barmates kept asking him things like, "Are you really Japanese?" and "You're not Japanese! Where are you from?" I began to wonder if things like that bothered him. To be told such a thing. The drunken barmate continued his interrogation, asking him where he worked. I coud tell he was uncomfortable and quickly stepped in to change the subject.

We were just about to leave when the drunken barmate offered to buy us drinks. In Japan it's considered an insult if you refuse someone's offer, and since the man was clearly drunk, we stayed for one more. Finally, the drunken barmate's friend walks in and sits down. He notices Kyle, as his friend pushes him to speak the English he knows.

And then, the wake-up call. He says in Japanese, "We're in Japan, (I order you to) speak Japanese!" He's clearly speaking to Kyle, as I'm always assumed to be a local. The thing is, I'm just as foreign in Japan as Kyle is. I can't speak fluent Japanese. I don't know all of the Japanese customs. I'm not Japanese. What the man had said really bothered me, so much that I couldn't stop thinking about it all the way home. We're in Japan, (I order you to) speak Japanese! Those words rocked me to my core. It was the ugliest thing I had ever heard in my life. Are there really people who still think like this? There was nothing I could do about it. Even if I had wanted to give him a piece of my mind, I couldn't; one, because my Japanese language skills aren't good enough and two, because it wouldn't have change anything.

It was truly a wake-up call for me, that hate exists in the world. All I can do is positively influence the future generation of Japan, one student at a time.