So the snow kept us more or less penned into the hostel for most of the day. We only ventured out to get lunch, and that simply involved us taking the subway to an underground food court and shopping centre. Winter hit us full-on the face though when we headed out to try and find some bookshop that I wanted to visit. It was totally worth it, though, because they had The Economist! In English and everything! (Do not ask me what I paid for it.)
The evening was a bit more eventful. We braved the snow once more to head back to Ramen Alley. The weather was cold, and the reception we got was chilly (see what I did there?). A couple of places refused to seat us, for reasons we weren't entirely sure of. Were they closing? Did they not like Westerners? Did that lady who kept giving us the stink-eye on the train call ahead and tell them to turn us away? If it was the latter, someone didn't get the memo because eventually we found a tiny 8-seat place run by this great old guy who was very friendly. He didn't speak any English, but we managed to chat a bit and ask him for a photo. It was one of a few positive encounters that we had entirely in Japanese without the local having to resort to broken English.
We took photos of the ice sculptures afterwards. Daniel was in full "professional" mode, making Ali hold an umbrella over him to protect his precious camera from the elements. The snow died down then and we headed back to the Odori site for pictures of the snow sculptures at night. Then it started snowing again. We ran back as fast as we could.
One note - I owe an apology to Mr. Donut. I think I mocked him in an earlier post. His donuts are alright.
We're now into our final day in Sapporo - we do the nightmare journey in reverse this time, taking three trains overnight back to Tokyo before heading on to Kyoto. Hopefully it's an easier trip heading back the other way, but I'm not prepared to bet on it.
-Nik
