Sorry everyone, I found a 'feature' in my journal software that meant I couldn't post any more entries until I got home and fixed something. Whoops! Anyway, without further ado, here is the summary of the final two days of Yuki Matsuri...

I woke up pretty late on Monday again, and got ready just in time to meet everyone coming back from a morning in Nakajima-koen. Aimee, organising goddess, had planned out a day of activities for us. First stop was a snow playground about 45 minutes from the hotel. It was pretty busy and on first glance, it looked really great. We grabbed some lunch (mmm chocolate coated bananas :D) and started wandering around, only to find that there really wasn't all that much to do. You could build a little snowman, wait in an enormous line to go down an ice slide in a rubber tube or go through a small ice maze, and that was about it.

We were just about to leave when we noticed a girl standing near us in a Pooh Bear costume. She screamed wildly when she saw us looking at her, and came running up to our group to do a dance. She was really funny, and turned out to be studying English at a nearby university. Hearing that we couldn't find much to do, she took us across to the Ice Bar and pulled some strings to get us all a drink for 100 yen each. The best bit was that you got to make your own glass out of an ice block, using a chisel. It was freezing cold, but good fun. At the Ice Bar, they were extremely generous with the alcohol, and we soon found out why - it took no time at all to cut straight through the glasses, haha. Needless to say, there was a bit of a mess on the bar when we'd finished.

After we'd finished our drinks we went to a chocolate factory somewhere else in Sapporo. It was fairly ordinary, but they had a decent shop and a very famous type of omiyage. Hardly any plain chocolate though, to our surprise. We had afternoon tea in the cafe at the top of the 'chocolate museum', which was quite nice. They did fondue as well as ridiculously sized 'jumbo sundaes', one of which I ordered, not realising it was half the size of Niseko :D At around 4:30pm we headed back to the train station and zipped back to Sapporo, then out to Otaru, the final 'main' place of Yuki Matsuri. Otaru is the place of the glowing snow, where people make snow sculptures with candles inside. It's all very pretty, although unfortunately we didn't have quite enough time to explore it all. Still, the bit we did see made it worth it, as was dinner. We hit up a Bikkuri Donkii, which means 'Surprise Donkey'. Rather a nerve wracking name for a steak restaurant, but amusing and tasty nonetheless.

We finished eating at around 9pm and zoomed back to Sapporo and then out to Nakajima-koen. I was in two minds about going out, but eventually decided against it. Despite the good sleep I'd had the past two nights, I was still very tired and still bordering on getting a little sick. So we called it a night and headed to bed at around midnight. We started relatively early on Tuesday, getting up for breakfast then showering and checking out of the hotel. We had about an hour to kill so we headed to Nakajima-koen to do some cross country skiing. It was kind of fun, but I much preferred going downhill, and on a snowboard! At 11:30am we met the girls and headed down to Sapporo station to catch the train out to the airport.

The airport was somewhat of a challenge as we were messed around a lot by the stupid system they had in place. First time we tried to check in we were told to use the automated check in machines, only to find that none of us could read the kanji. So we headed to the counter, where we discovered we were at the International check in area. So we headed to the domestic area, where we stood in a big line for the security scanners to check our baggage in. Only to find that we couldn't check our baggage in without a boarding pass. So we had to go across to a tiny check in counter, with all our baggage, to get our boarding passes, then go back to check in our luggage. Retarded. We finally got there though, and had just enough time to buy omiyage and squeeze in a cheeky lunch at a nice Japanese restaurant.

The flight back was good, I sat next to Michelle and we chatted away for a lot of it. We arrived in Kobe at around 4pm, and were on trains home by about 4:30pm. I finally got home at around 7:30pm. I ducked out to Paone to buy some dinner, unpacked and generally unwound before getting some sleep. To my surprise, I was extremely cold in Ako, much colder than I ever felt in Hokkaido. Which was interesting, as in Hokkaido, a theoretically much colder place, I'd been snowboarding on pure snow, hanging out in a frozen park and wandering through snow sculptures. I guess in Hokkaido though, I spent most of my time in a heated hotel/train, didn't ride my bike around and wasn't near a sea that cold winds come off.

So overall, a really great trip. I saw, experienced and learnt a lot. While the snow scultpures in general didn't impress me as much as I thought they might have, some were extremely cool. And hey, just the snow on the ground was great! We also had heaps of great food and drink, and some good laughs. And perhaps the coolest thing was snowboarding, which I really enjoyed - and want to do a lot more of. Good times. As is always the case after trips like this, I felt a little deflated seeing as the excitement was all over. Thankfully, there's a lot coming up soon though. Only two more days at school now before the weekend, which has Hadaka Matsuri. The weekend after I'm catching up with some old friends (some Japanese, some Australian) and the weekend after that, with any luck, will be more snowboarding! I've tentatively arranged a lot of things with various people and have many more that it's about time I caught up with, so I should be busy for quite some weekends to come. And hey, if it ever runs out, I can just go snowboarding (do_Ob) or jump on the new computer...woohoo, only 15 more days to wait :D