We spent the first two days in Hokkaido by ourselves in Sapporo. Patrick showed me some of the fun things in the city he remembered from his mission and we explored some new things he hadn't done before. We arrived in Hokkaido on Patrick's birthday, so we went to the Half Dime restraunt, where we ate and he got birthday dessert. This is probably the wierdest restraunt I've ever seen. When you walk in, you push a button for the door to open, and then steam comes out at your feet and you hear some sort of singing, like in the movies when you are welcomed into heaven. But it's in a cave, so it's weird. All of the waiters/waitresses are dressed in rags and make a funny noise when your food comes. I really liked this restraunt, mostly because it served roast beef instead of fish, so we went twice during our trip. The other picture is of us eating chocolate fondue at the Ishiya Chocolate Factory. This is the funnest place in Japan! It's like a chocolate museum you walk through and then there's a chocolate restraunt you can eat at. At the end, there's also an all you can eat cake buffet. We didn't get to do it when we went through the tour, so we came back to this place again too. I highly reccomend it to anyone visiting Japan.
The next town we visited was Muroran. We stayed with the Yonetta family Patrick knew from his mission. The pictures here are from Jidan Mura, which is kind of like the Polynesian Cultural Center for Japan, but not as big and not as popular probably. It has a bunch of old Japan exhibits and three shows. It was really fun, but so cold!! We were lucky becuase there wasn't much snow, but it was the coldest I had been in a long time and it was mostly outside, so we didn't stay as long as we might have if it were warmer. But it was really fun and interesting too.
These pictures are from the Aquariam we visited while there. It was a really big aquarium, so we saw tons of things and the penguins even did a little parade while we were there. Patrick even made me touch a starfish and a stingray. It was gross, but I lived. The picture with the penguins is us with some of the kids in the Yonetta family.
These are pictures from the zoo in Asahikawa. It was really cold here too, so we didn't expect too many people to be there, but it was the last day of New Year vacation so there were tons of people! but we had a lot of fun, especially watching the winter animals like the polar bears and penguins. The African animals, like the tigers and giraffes, were kind of sad to see becuase they were kept in kind of small areas and they didn't seem to care for the snow. So many people from this area wanted to see Patrick, so they all came to the zoo with us. It was a lot of fun to meet so many people he knew in Japan.
This is the last family we visited. They were so much fun and they even had a cat to play with! We mostly just did a lot of shopping while here, so we didn't take too many pictures, but we had tons of fun with this family too. Overall, it was a great trip and we hope to go back before we leave Japan later this year.
