Website widow
27 February 2003, 07:35
Yes, Matt’s at it again… getting all creative on my arse (who said our relationship was competitive???) revamping his old website, opinios, a creative platform for covert and overt (you know who you are) artists. So if you are squirrelling away a talent as a writer, artist, photographer, cartoonist, or if you have your own travel story to tell, Matt would be happy to hear from you…
Permanent Link Sapporo Snow Festival 2003
20 February 2003, 08:06
For those not acquainted with the term “matsuri”, it means “festival” and Japan has a shit-load of them. In fact, I dare say on any given day of the year, somebody, somewhere is asleep in a gutter because of a local matsuri.
Apparently Sapporo’s Yuki Matsuri or Snow Festival is one of, if not the most, famous matsuri in Japan (and that’s a big call). For Matt and I it was something of a pilgrimage, one of the major events we wanted to see in Japan. I started planning the trip in July last year and even then most accommodation was fully booked. The term “matsuri” incites frenzy into the most docile of Japanese and if the matsuri is a big one, they flock to it with migratory madness.
I could open a thesaurus right now and give you a tome of superlatives that describe how f”@#$ing awesome the Snow Festival was, but I won’t. Because:
1) I am abominably lazy;
2) I was downing painkillers like a Mexican throws back tequila so my rather blissful perspective may have been slightly, ahem, skewed; and
3) it was so good you really just had to be there. Which you weren’t, so here are some pictures.
The background:
Yuki Matsuri began in 1950 when a bunch of high school students built six snow statues in the heart of Sapporo. 54 years later, the Snow Festival has expanded to showcase literally hundreds of sculptures made from both ice and snow, dispersed over three major sites in downtown Sapporo. On the day we arrived it was minus 9 degrees and snowing a gale, a walk in the park for most North Americans, but for a couple of antipodean blouses, it was colder than a nun’s tittie. Even so, by the third day, the mercury had reached a staggering 2 degrees and bits had started to fall off the ice sculptures (nothing vital - just antlers and legs…).
Aside from the obvious aesthetic beauty of the sculptures and the ingenuity of the lighting used to highlight them of an evening, were the sheer logistics of the construction. So complex were some of the bigger statues (made entirely from snow and ice), that 100 members of Japan’s Self-Defence Force were contracted for a month to build one. The Japanese army may not deem their own country’s protection as priority, but you sure as hell cannot question their architectural artistry.
We wandered around each of the sites for three days, eating yatai food (if anyone offers you a deep fried potato doughnut, do yourself a favour and order six), trying not to gape in awe but nevertheless managing to slobber all over the statues, when an odd conundrum presented itself…..
there. was. not. one. hello. kitty. statue. not. one.
Sapporo
Snow Festivals aside, Sapporo itself is a funky city. Firstly, in the winter its a frozen wonderland; the roads are permanently drenched in snow and there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a Japanese filly in stilletto heels go arse over tit on the icy roads. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any of them do that.
What we did see in Susukino, the entertainment red-light district of Sapporo (also one of the major Yuki Matsuri sites) was a rather prominent poster advertising a comically euphemistic “soapland”, touting the virtues of high-school-aged “fillies”. The “is it funny or fucked up?” paradox reared its ugly head just long enough for me to find my camera.
If you happen to mention that you are going to Sapporo, the Japanese will inevitably swoon; “Oh, Sapporo is famous for ramen. You must try the ramen.” (they will also say this if you mention Fukuoka, Kyoto, Yokahama and Kumamoto). So we tried the ramen in “Ramen Alley”, not surprisingly, one of the most famous places for ramen in all of Japan. The ramen was good. It was ramen. How good can noodles and pork in a milky broth get??? Our Japanese friends were happy with us, however, and, in the end, isn’t that what is most important?
Niseko
20 February 2003, 07:38
After my Kamikaze Day One, the remaining three days passed in a merry blur of powdered snow and powdered painkillers. With me out of commission, Matt rode the slopes with enough frenzy for the both of us whilst I relaxed in the Hirafu-tei onsen, an awesome complex with three inside baths and an outdoor bath which overlooked one of the chairlifts/runs. Nothing quite like getting naked and watching hundreds of skiiers cruise down the slopes, the lucky f!@#$ing bastards. More painkillers, please.
More lamb, Mashu-san?
One of the highlights of our “ski” trip was the “All-you-can eat Jenghis (sic) Khan Barbeque” at the Niseko Scot. The hotel had built four private igloos, equipped with benches, a table and an iron grill. The waiters bring you a platter of lamb fillets (the equivalent of half a lamb, more or less) and you cook enough of the lamb to fill you up. At least that’s the idea. In reality, Matt was determined to finish the platter or die from smoke inhalation in the process. He succeeded, but at what cost I can only let you imagine.
Another novel (and appreciated) aspect of our mongolian experience was that it was B.Y.O beer, a concept conspicously absent from Japanese society. However, after inhaling all that lamb, the beer started to seem like not such a good idea…
Take a sneak peak at this gastronomical (and rather chilly) experience (minus the copious belching)...
On our last day, Matt and I made rude snowhermaphrodites and took an onsen where Matt had an “encounter” (what those naked boys get up to in the onsen is something best left unimagined). So in spite of the chronic disappointment of being a side-lined skiier, Niseko-Hirafu was top shelf. Next time I’ll spend the two weeks before the trip, running to the pub, not sitting in it drinking beer…
A day in the life of a Kamikaze Skiier
16 February 2003, 05:31
To say Matt and I were physically unprepared for three days of skiing in the arctic wilds of Hokkaido, would be an understatement. The most exercise either of us has done in the past three months is lifting a beer mug or singing “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with a bunch of Japanese school kids. I was thus expecting a few initial (yet elegant) stacks. I am, after all, able to nail a blue run with all the fervour of Eddie the Eagle and marginally more grace. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was to go completely kamikaze on my first day…
0900
Start the day on a sunny note from our hotel, the Niseko Scot, giggling at a pack of Japanese skiiers decked out in matching yellow suits and numbered and named bibs. Have a pre-run boogie to Utada Hikaru’s new single being broadcast over the PA for the fourth time that morning. (you can listen to the song here - just be thankful there’s only 30 seconds of it…).
0955
Collect a stationary yellow-suited skiier (#180 Suzuki I believe) whom I am sure I’ve killed, because she doesn’t move for about a minute. #180 finally raises a powdered head and croaks “Daijoubu desu ka?” (“Are you OK”) I reply in the affirmative before extricating my skis which have somehow become wedged in #180’s stocks.
1130
Take the rope-tow up to one of the higher runs (I hate any tow that you have to ski up with; don’t even ask my mother about the T-bar incident when I was 10) and as I am about to alight, my stocks (again) get caught in the rope and I plough into the power cord, dislodging it from its socket and causing the entire rope-tow to grind to an ominous halt. On contemplating the situation, I mumble to Matt; “Is that bad?”
1155
Decide if I never hear Utada Hikaru’s song again it won’t be too soon.
1220
Navigate a steep section of the run before ploughing head long into two metres of powder, miraculously coming to rest half a metre from the base of a tree (the Japanese would could this “good-o timing-u”)
1222
Despite the sublime feeling of being cushioned by snow, I attempt to re-establish the preferred vertical stance, to which my arch-nemesis, an old lower back injury, responds by knocking me back to the ground, making me holler sweet bloody jesus. Accept that the horizontal position is, perhaps, best for now.
1230
Demonstrating that logic is not one of my strong points, I insist to Matt (with me lying prostrate in the snow) that there has to be another way to get down the slope than hail a skidoo.
1245
Skidoo arrives.
1248
The emergency siren starts, the skidoo takes off, and in spite of the momentary dent to my pride (“oh look, there’s another foreigner who’s gotten herself into trouble”) decide that the skidoo ride is, in fact, f@#$%ng awesome. I would highly recommend injuring yourself on the slopes just to score a ride in one.
1305
The skidoo makes a deposit at the hotel lobby, then goes back to rescue Matt who has been left to snowboard down the run with my skis and stocks. He tells me this is not easy.
1315+
Spend the rest of the day on my back, clutching my valium and painkillers.
“I’m sorry, have I taken the wrong bus?”
There are a lot of Aussies in Niseko. But if you start to wonder whether you’ve stepped off the plane in Sapporo and accidentally wandered into Mount Hotham, there are some key ways to tell that you are, in fact, in Japan:
1. The guests are drinking Kirin beer for breakfast before hitting the slopes.
2. Your hotel room sports curtains and quilts with a “Snoopy goes Skiing” motif.
3. The Japanese Tour Groups are wearing identical ski outfits and wearing numbered and named bibs just in case one of them gets “lost”.
4. Japanese-pops is being blasted all the way up the mountain and a lot of stacks seem to be the result of mis-timed butt-shimmies. If you didn’t know who Utada Hikaru was before you came to Niseko, you sure as hell would once you left.
5. You ski on real snow and not human faecal matter.
6. The rope-tow attendant thanks you ten times for putting back the power plug you’ve just wrenched out of its socket.
The Residency Conundrum
11 February 2003, 21:53
Now, Japan has fairly strict residency and citizenship laws - in fact the culling process for even temporary residents is a bureaucratic ordeal meant to wrench the wheat from the chaff (so how the hell did we get in???).
However, it seems that the principal commandment for securing permanent residency; “thou shalt not live in Japan for less than ten years” has been waived. For a seal. The Japanese will argue that Tama-chan is “not just any seal” but in a country where Hello Kitty is still legally a british citizen, even this is strange…
