Hokkaido cont.

Hello again folks! The weather here in Osaka has been somewhat depressing lately. It has been cloudy for the past 5 days with rain every now and then. If you are like me, this kind of weather just makes you yawn and not want to do anything. This, combined with a somewhat messed up sleep schedule, has led me to miss a few posts... Yes, that's my excuse, I'm blaming the weather.

Back to the story at hand!

If I recall correctly, I left off my last post saying that I had reached my hotel. The hotel was really nice and relatively inexpensive given the time of year. However, like many things here in Japan, the room was rather small. It was functional, had a lot of amenities (even free toothbrushes!), but still really small. The only other down side to the hotel was that breakfast was not included, it was an additional $11 per day. Being the cheapskate that I am, I figured I could figure something out when the time came to it.

After inspecting the room and looking around to see what I had in the room that could fit in a suit case (everyone does this and you know it!), I realized that I still had about 40 minutes or so before the opening ceremony for the snow festival. Having just ventured in from the cold, tired and beaten from a 2 hour flight and having wondered through the streets, I decided to take a quick power nap of 30 minutes...

I woke up the next day around 6am.

Needless to say that taking a 30 minute nap was a bad idea on my part, but at least I was refreshed and ready to wonder on down to Odori Park. Now, I intended to make the first day a full excursion of Odori Park and the surrounding area, so I figured I should jump in the shower and add a few stamina points for the day. If you don't get the joke/reference, then you haven't played many RPGs.

Now, like I said before, the room was rather small. The bathroom however, was even smaller. The Japanese are masters at using space and making such a small space functional. The only down side to this though is that the space is designed for someone of Japanese height. If you are 6 feet tall or taller, and you go to a Japanese hotel, do NOT stand up straight in the shower... You will take out the ceiling fan. Or at least hit your head really hard on it like I did. Also, don't sit in the "tub" of the shower, you might not be able to squeeze out of it.

Anyways, after taking a shower and putting on enough clothing to endure an Ice Age, I proceeded to head on down to Odori Park. I have to say, the sight of a snow covered city in the morning is rather pleasing.

Along the way to Odori park, I found a very nice coffee shop. They offered relatively cheap breakfast items so I decided to sit down with a nice hot cup of coffee (+5 Stamina) and a nice piece of toast with butter and jelly (+6 Stamina). I ended up having breakfast there everyday while I was in Hokkaido.

Like I mentioned in the previous post, Odori Park is twelve blocks long. And I mean city blocks, not those small little town blocks. The first thing you see when you reach the first block of Odori Park is the Clock Tower. Unfortunately, I didn't take a good day picture of it, so you all get a night picture instead.

Okay, seeing as I plan to put a lot of pictures of snow and ice sculptures. I think I will stop here for now and continue this next time... Once I figure out the order of the pictures I want to show.

So until next time folks! Keep on reading!