四番街まつり

There was a small summer festival last week in Odori area. There was free shaved ice, wrestling, kid's games, yakitori (chicken skewers),  and a mikoshi (pictured above).  Mikoshi is a portable shinto shrine that people carry on their shoulders.  I really like the pamphlets they were giving out, which was a illustrated guide to the festival. Cute!!!
To tell the truth my friend Yui and I didn't even know there was a matsuri going on that weekend (neither did quite I few people, I heard later). We were in 4pla doing some shopping during the crazy summer sale when we saw the festival outside.. Needless to say we forgot about 20 dollar shoes and didn't come back until much later.

I had the rare chance to see a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony. Nowadays, most couples usually get the Western style chapel wedding. The bride wears many layers of white kimono, as well as the traditional wig. Actually, I didn't know it was a wig until she told me later that it's extremely heavy!
The rarity of a traditional wedding is emphasized by the fact that total strangers visiting the shrine were taking pictures on their cell phones just because it is a rare sight.

Beautiful couple!!

Hokkaido Shrine

Picture with the bride and groom!

 Introducing アンパンマン! (Anpanman)

Anpanman is a really famous character in Japan for children. So when I saw a bun at the bakery with his likeness I just had to get it! It was filled with red bean paste and super fluffy. ふわふわして美味しかった。

Edamame pastry

Surprisingly, I've run into a lot of pastry and bread shops in Sapporo. For the most part they are tasty, filling, and cheap! My lesser favourite is the imitation pizza bread, which tastes like sour tomato (at least the one I had).

No trip to Japan would be complete without trying out some kind of strange and interesting food item that we don't have back in Vancouver. Thanks to a friend at school, I discovered this Hokkaido ice cream treat. Corn ice cream! It's basically like a corn waffle with ice cream inside. The ice cream is super creamy and tastes a bit like vanilla but also mildly corn flavoured... And extremely delicious. You'll just have to trust me when I say that this corn ice cream treat tastes better than it sounds!

It says "Toukibi" which is basically.. "corn", er no surprise there.

The waffle even has a detailed corn texture.

That ebi is making a break for it. Kaiten sushi in Sapporo

The sushi doesn't travel quite that fast but the iphone camera sure makes it look that way. There is kaiten sushi in Vancouver but I think most of the places have closed down. After the novelty of rotating food on a conveyor belt wore off, we were often left with sub-par sushi that was probably not the freshest of the fresh and sloppily made.

Sushi restaurants are pretty expensive in Japan, so for a casual outing a good choice is kaiten sushi. The kaiten sushi I went to in Sapporo was reasonably priced and delicious. Everyone's bills came to around 10-15 dollars each, and we were quite full. The dishes are priced according to the colour coding of each plate. Even the cheapest sushi which included saba and ika were delicious. Presentation, taste, and price were all thumbs up! Good bye California rolls, for I shall not miss you.

A lot of people have asked me if things are okay here in Sapporo since I came after the earthquake. Before I arrived in Sapporo, I was following the whole Fukushima incident pretty closely. As far as I can tell, everyday life here is "normal". There is occasional coverage on the news that mostly focuses on the recovery effort but oddly I haven't seen anything on Fukushima yet. A minute of silence was held during the Yosakoi festival to commemorate those affected by the earthquake. There's also posters around the city with words like がんばろう日本！I guess that roughly translates to something like "Let's do our best, Japan!".

According to google, Sapporo is about 600km away from Fukushima and there is a government site with updates about the levels of radiation in and around Hokkaido. As far as I can tell there hasn't been any cause for immediate alarm yet.

At any rate I don't regret my decision to continue on with the exchange trip. It's been an amazing experience so far and I've met a lot of wonderful people.