Every year in the summer, there are tons of festivals (known in Japanese as matsuris) in Japan. Right when we got back from Hokkaido, there was a festival in Misawa! We got ready in our festival gear and headed out the door!
One thing we learned at the festival is that Forrest loves to dance! We couldn’t get him away from the music!! He also invented a new dance that appears to be a cross between a rain dance and the chicken dance. Video posted below!
Hokkaido is the island in the northern-most part of Japan. We’ve been to big city Sapporo before the “Yuki Matsuri”, or Snow Festival, that happens in the middle of winter, but we’ve never seen the rest of the beautiful island. With 5 days off, we decided to make the most of our time and see as much of it as we could!
When we landed in Sapporo, we were greeted with the ongoing Summer Festival! Seriously, do they just party there all the time? The current festival was a beer festival, broken up into 5 parts. The first part was all the Suntory beers, second was Kirin, third was Asahi, fourth was Sapporo, and the fifth part was beers from around the world.
We stayed the night in Sapporo at a hotel with onsen, free nightly ice cream and ramen bowls, and free morning Yakult yogurt drinks. The next day we took off for Noboribetsu, a city known for its volcanic activity and fantastic onsets. The hotel we stayed at had 5 different types of onsens! These included a ferrous sulfate onsen, salt onsen, sodium onsen, and a sulfur onsen. Each has different minerals that provide different healing properties.
In Noboribetsu, we went to “Hell Valley”, which has tons of active volcanic activity. No wonder the onsets here were so great!
Next up, Otaru, a city known for its European like architecture and canal. Here we went to a Brew House to try the local craft Otaru beer, the canal of course, a music box museum, hand-crafted glass stores (glass blowing is a specialty in Otaru), and shopping on the side streets.
Next up, Furano, a city known for its flowers. When we went, lavender was in full bloom. One of the places we went to in Furano was Ningle Terrace. This is a cute woodsy area with tons of little handicraft shops, all of which are log cabins. The atmosphere was so beautiful, and here we found Forrest’s favorite dessert: baked milk.
Seeing Hokkaido in the summer was such a great experience! Hopefully we will get to continue to explore even more of Japan while we are here!
On the way to Morioka, we went to Koiwai Farm, one of Japan’s oldest and most famous dairy farms. It’s a huge farm filled with tons of activities and fresh ice cream and milk.
One of the things we did in Morioka was to see castle ruins. Unfortunately there really wasn’t much left to see.
We took Forrest to the zoo!
At our amazing onset hotel, they had nightly performances. This one was about the famous festival that takes place in Morioka every year. They loved playing with Forrest.
There comes a time in every child’s life when he must choose his starter Pokémon. These are Squirtle, a water-type Pokémon, Bulbasaur, a grass-type Pokémon, and Charmander, a fire-type Pokémon. My starter was Squirtle and Leanne’s was Charmander. Who will Forrest choose??
Of course, we think it’ll be Bulbasaur because, well, he’s Forrest The time has come Forrest! Choose your path!
Forrest has been making lots of sounds and most have been nonsense gibberish. He has also been saying “dada,” but it never felt intentional until yesterday. He kept asking for Dada at the store, and was so happy when I joined Leanne and him, and he saw me! Then later we said, “where’s dada?” and he looked right at me, every time we tried!
So it’s official. Forrest’s first word is “Dada”!
Living near the snowiest region on Earth has its perks! The last couple of weekdays we had Forrest in daycare and went skiing at Okunakayama, about an hour and a half away. The first ski day was with my guy friends in Misawa and the second was with Leanne’s coworkers from the hospital.
Leanne was shredding the black diamonds and I did a jump over a ski ramp! Can’t wait to go skiing some more, especially while it’s so close and so cheap!
Japanese New Year is a lot like how my family celebrates New; it’s a very Family Central holiday. Leanne and I went to the grocery store early to get osechi, which are Bento boxes with lots of little different items Each of which is supposed to bring a separate fortune or luck for the year. Leanne also got everything needed to make peanut butter noodles, so we were fully ready to bring in the new year. On New Year’s Eve in japan, the main television channel of Japan nhkg plays a New Year’s Eve show called “Kohaku Uta Gassen,” or “Red White Song Battle.” A lot of the top bands in Japan, both modern and traditional music, will play in the red white battle. The red team is led by female singers, whereas the white team is led by male singers. However, it’s a very long show, so it is broken up by different random events. One of them was a huge room filled with dominos that we saw fall down into cool designs with, oddly enough, traditional Japanese music playing in the background. Another is a world record for most balls on the cup in a row. Either way, it was a very interesting and fun way to ring in the new year!
