Thursday, June 23, 2011

Soran! Soran!

The second weekend in June was spent with many good friends at Sapporo’s annual Yosokoi festival.

Yosokoi is a kind of Japanese dance. My understanding is the dance was originally made to mimic moves from fishing in Japan, since it was such a major part of life quite a long time ago.

With a few friends in various teams from Hokkaido, we all headed into Sapporo to see what was happening.

On Friday night, E, K and I stayed with N and J, two Sapporo ALTs. Friday night was dinner and mostly general fun hanging out way too late after a day of work. N made peanut chicken for us!
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Saturday started with a trip to the Station to pick up a filter for my second camera lens and then a walk to Odori Park where the majority of the festivities were happening.
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We weren’t so happy to have the rain start as soon as we got to the festival area.
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Even the Power Rangers came out to see the festival.
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As of that weekend, Hokkaido is finally beginning to look like summer.
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After a few minutes of wandering around, we found a good place to watch the festivities.
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Eventually, we needed a break. Most of us are located in pretty rural places, so we headed to a foreigner favorite – Starbucks!
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We eventually found the mix and match team. Which included characters such as Stitch, Pikachu and Santa.

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 Then we started talking about ice cream and of course, our favorite, Mint Crunky. Which we couldn't just talk about, we had to go find.
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We ended the day with a stop at the amazing Mexican Restaurant near N & J’s house.
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