At the beginning of February Shane and I went on a VACATION....ALL BY OURSELVES (no little ones)!!! As much as we missed our two little people...we really enjoyed this time alone. We are so grateful for wonderful neighbors (The Bartons) for taking our kids for 3 days & 4 nights. Our kids were having so much fun that I don't even think they realized we were gone. Thanks again you guys!!!
We went to Sapporo to see the Snow Festival. Sapporo is in Hokkaido (Japans most Northern island) It's a 1 1/2 hour flight from Tokyo. Hokkaido is where Shane served his mission. We had a wonderful time tracking down church houses, the mission office, and a restaurant he loved eating at. We were on a tour with our base so we couldn't go too far but we're going to try and go again next Spring and hopefully spend more time traveling around the island visiting his friends and favorite cities he served in.
DAY 1:
Ainu Museum
The Ainu people are similar to the American Indians.
A Crane dance. Interesting :0
An Ainu man.
Another interesting dance.
They hang their salmon out to dry and then eat the meat like beef jerky.
Shane free skating on a frozen lake.
Otaru
Us in front of Otaru's famous canal.
A lovebird snow sculpture.
We couldn't resist buying this yummy 5 layered ice cream...even though it was freezing outside.
Sapporo
Our all-you-can-eat Lamb dinner.
The smoke from all the grills.
It was a fabulous dinner! So tasty!
Everyone else had all-you-can-drink BEER but we had all-you-can-drink Orange Juice in a little teddy cup :)
The Snow Festival
A hand carved building made out of snow.
These next two were about 10 feet high:
We were so excited to see a Darth Vader sculpture that we had to take a picture for Jayden.
This picture CRACKS us up! What are the chances that a snow flake would fall right between the camera and Shane's face?
Ha ha!
Much better!
DAY 2:
Snow Festival
Some of the fun things they had for kids:
A train ride.
And ice slides.
When I made it to the top the worker looked at me then looked behind me to see my kid. I then pointed at myself and said "me" with a big smile on my face. He kind of laughed and nodded "okay". I was missing my kids at this point. Shane was really embarrassed :)
I believe this was the China snow sculpture. Aren't the details on the building amazing?!
The Lion King
I think this was another China one (you can see the great wall up to the right).
The snow board jump....tempting...but I didn't want to die while on this trip.
Shane in front of the Sapporo tower.
10 minutes later...
No joke...10 minutes later we walked out of the tower into this!
So then we went UNDERGROUND to their shopping mall/underground walkway. Great idea Sapporo! We walked for about 20 minutes until we made it to our next destination.
Ramen Alley.
We had some nice, hot ramen. Yum Yum!
Chocolate Factory
We went on a tour of Sapporo's Chocolate Factory. It was fun and smelt really good!
At the end I convinced Shane to sign up for a "cooking decorating class" with me. He wasn't too excited, but ended up having a great time.
My cookie.
Shane's cookie.
The little tubing hill outside the Chocolate Factory.
On our way back from the Chocolate Factory Shane recognized the street we were on and was sure there was a chapel not too far away. We walked and walked and walked (thank goodness we didn't have our children) and we were not going to give up until we found it...which we finally did. Yay! This is the chapel they had Zone Conferences at.
We had some extra time before we needed to go to the Ice Festival (to see the sculptures lit up) so we went searching for Shane's mission office.
After much walking we found it. Nobody was home, but It was fun listening to Shane share old memories while we were standing there (peeking inside windows).
Side note: we went back the next day and the office was open. We had a good chat with a Phillipino Elder about the mission and the current mission president.
The Ice Festival
These sculptures were made out of ICE.
Illumination Lane
Me in an ice car. So cool! :)
Snow Festival:
Watching them at work
These next few sculptures were a competition between a bunch of countries. I believe they had the whole week to work on these. We were only there the first 3 days. The results of the winners are here.
I guess this is how they do it. Spray paint and chisels.
Portland, USA : Day 2
Portland, USA : Day 3
(fish jumping out of a river-they still had a few more days to work on it)
Hong Kong : Day 2
Hong Kong: Day 3
This is what Finland made. They ended up being the runner up.
Finland : Day 3
DAY 3:
Outdoor Wholesale Market
We ended up having no plans on our 3rd day because we did them all on the other 2 days (it's amazing what you can do without kids). We thought it would be fun to go to an Outdoor Wholesale Market. Thinking "Wholesale" meant fun things like Japanese knick knacks, clothing, trinkets, etc...we set out on our way.
When we got off the train didn't think we needed to ask for directions...and just started walking...
...and we walked, and walked, and walked on NEVER ENDING paths like this until we finally found a security guard...and I convinced Shane to just ask. We then ended up walking on these NEVER ENDING paths BACK to where we started from and there it was...
Not exactly the kind of Wholesale Market we were thinking of. RATS! What were we thinking...we're in Japan...of course this is their kind of Outdoor Market.
Oh well, it was fun seeing Crab for almost $300 a piece...WOW!
We still had lots of time left so we went back to Shane's Mission Office and ate at the first restaurant Shane ate at on his mission. It was also the last place Shane ate before he left the mission.
It even had the same people running it. Shane was pretty excited! The Tonkatsu (breaded pork) was great.
Ice Skating
To top off the trip we went ice skating. I felt like I was 12 again and roller skating at the Skating Rink in Santa Clara. It brought back fun memories and Shane and I made some new fun memories! What a blast!
We will DEFINITELY be planning more of these trips (without little ones). It was so fun feeling young and not so serious again :) We both needed & loved it!
