of ferry rides and curry

As many of you may know, we set out for Sapporo this past weekend to visit my host family and see life in a big city. I was very excited to be able to revisit my family and also excited to show Melissa and Molly “my city.”

So, Friday night it all began. With limited knowledge of how exactly everything travel related was going to go down, we stumbled up to the dock after a rather entertaining midnight taxi ride. The boat left at 2:40 am and we had no clue how to claim our tickets or anything, with the added pleasure of doing the should-be simple tasks in Japanese. Luckily we were able to do all of our little tasks in not much time, leaving us about an hour to sleep upstairs of the ferry terminal building. Little did we know, that our travel night was also the night that all of the Aomori bikers would be suiting up to take their hogs across the open seas.

As we lay face down in the splendid comfort of a wooden table, we began to hear a squeek. I never really watched Friends except for when my sister had it on, but I recall an episode where Ross had on leather pants that squeaked everytime he moved. This guy, apparently unaware of the volume of his attire, felt the need to walk all over the room. Imagine a place like an airport with people sleeping face down in tables or across rows of chairs. Then imagine that of all the people in the room, a man wearing a red leather jacket, black (super tight) leather pants, and boots that resembled ski boats more closely than any other shoe, is the only man that feels it necessary to walk ALL over the place. I could not figure this one out so much, I just loved that of all the people to walk it would be that guy. I am sorry I was not able to snag a picture.

As much as that guy annoyed me, but more in a funny way, what would happen upon arrival on the ferry would be much worse. We wandered on around 3am after waiting on motorcycles and cars to load up in the underbelly of the ship. As we walked the stairs into the main cabin, we suddenly realized that the comforts of the boat would be nonexistant. Basically there were sections of floor sectioned off by 3.5 foot walls that could fit just about 25 people in them. Within these sections was…floor. No seats, no pillows, no blankets…floor. So we kicked our shoes aside, cuddled up with our luggage, and rolled up jackets beneath our head. Looking back I can’t really decide if the concrete hard floor, makeshift pillow, or lack of blanket with only a t-shirt for my arms was worse, but the experience was not nearly as exciting as you may expect. If you haven’t seen Titanic yet, don’t. That movie is full of lies about the glamour of ocean travel.

Later our first night, after the night of ocean travel and 5 hour bus ride to Sapporo we were able to meet with my study abroad leader, Jason. With no surprise to me, Jason met us at his favorite restaurant for Indian curry. Along with Jason, we were also able to meet up with Naoko, a friend from my university that even came with Jason at one point to visit me in the States. So we got started on what turned out to be a marathon of eating and drinking. Jason kept ordering and even treated us to dinner and dessert on one of the best nights in Sapporo, and certainly the best for an introduction. The curry was SO good and Melissa and Molly are begging to go back “at least twice” this week. Also, Jason brought a key to his house and left it with me because he will be out of town and he has prepared the place for us to stay there if we would like; what a guy! So the tally from that night is as follows:

Food: curry pita chips, nan, lamb curry, assorted curry chicken

Drink: two glasses of water, lassi (a sour yogurt drink…actually quite good), beer, 3 glasses of Nepalese wine, and of course chai tea

So after a marathon eat/drink that I thought would take my life, Jason and Naoko insisted we go across town to Susukino for “the corniest romantic experience.” The place he chose was an ice cream shop that was as strangely decorated as they come. It was dark with only dim lamps and Christmas lights to light the room. The ice cream was no ordinary dish though. The catch was each bowl of ice cream came with 3 small glasses of hard alcohol. So seeing as there were 5 of us, we got a total of 15 alcohols to choose from. The alcohol was then to be dumped on top of your spoon of soft serve vanilla, creating a completely unique flavor. It was a wonderful night with wonderful friends and it was just a shame it can only happen so seldom. What a joy it was though…

some of the ice cream alcohols we tried: tequila, rum, cherry blossom, green tea, black tea, coconut, gin, orange, blue stuff?, caramel, coffee, and chocolate

Adam

ps – sorry for the wall of text. Prepare for more as I try to catch up on the day-to-day of this week that I have gotten lazy with and would like to record for later recollection