Three day trip in Hokkaido!

I am back from Hokkaido and I want to get a record down of all we did and saw.  In short, it was a wonderful trip.

Tetsu and I were up and out of the house by 5:30 in the morning and he took me to the next town over to meet the airport bus to Haneda International airport.  Three of my friends, Eiko, Hiroko and Kaoru, had already caught the bus a few stops ahead of me and so we all waved goodbye to Tetsu and were on our three hour way to the airport.  It was a rainy day in our part of Japan but it didn't look like it was going to affect our trip.  Along the way we kept getting messages from the other two members of our group who were making their own way to Haneda.  Sachiko, from the Nagoya area and Mari, from Tokyo.

Yeah!  The 6 of us were together! We occasionally get to see Mari-san (in the white jacket,) but we haven't seen Sachiko-san since our last trip in 2024.

We checked in and went to our boarding area to wait.  As an aside note...  We all cleverly were traveling with small carry-on bags so that there we could move quickly and not have to go collect luggage... EXCEPT for Kaoru-san who is our seasoned traveler!  SHE sent her luggage on ahead of us directly to the hotel!  She was completely hands-free during this trip!  Letting you know, anyone who comes to Japan, this is a normal way to travel in Japan!  There are delivery services that will come to your door and pick up your luggage the day before and the luggage will be waiting for you in your hotel room (or the airport etc.)  OR you can send you luggage from the delivery center at the airport and have the luggage at your front door the next day!  A few years ago I thought I was going to be able to use a similar service in America, to send my luggage on ahead to Takumi's house while Tetsu and I continued traveling to visit Leiya, and I found out that there isn't a delivery service at the LAX airport (or any airport in the States?)  I had to have Takumi drive two and a half hours from his house just to pick up two suitcases (and of course he had to drive 2 1/2 hours back home) while Tetsu and I continued on with our transfer flight to Indiana...  Just letting you know you don't have to lug around luggage in Japan!

While waiting in Haneda, there was an announcement that our plane would be taking off 15 minutes late because Prince Akishinomiya and his wife were flying out on their government airplane to Norway to attend the former Norwegian king's funeral.  There they go! (the plane with the red dot on it's tail.)

Yeah!  We've arrived in Sapporo!

After a brief stop at the hotel to check-in, we headed off to find lunch and to do some sightseeing.  The first stop was to eat some Sapporo Ramen.  And then we visited the renovated Former Government Office Building called Akarenga (Red Brick).

This first evening we enjoyed the night view of Sapporo from a TV tower, but it had begun to rain so there wasn't much to take photos of...  On the way back to our hotel we stopped for dinner and ice cream!

Breakfast at the hotel the next morning was a buffet filled with delicacies, with lots of seafood choices as Hokkaido is famous for all sorts of great seafood!

And then we were off for the highlight of our Hokkaido visit, a trip to an Ainu museum and park called Upopoy, situated on historical Ainu grounds.  

Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan, and the museum's purpose is to protect what little is left of the language, customs and culture of the Ainu people.  It was such a fascinating place!

The weather was wonderful (whereas the rest of Japan was having horrendous rain storms that were flooding cities and stopping train lines), and it was a lot warmer than I'd expected Hokkaido to be!

The park covered quite an area but this little tram ran around the nearby lake and a few of us chose to move around that way while others of us got a bit of extra exercise.  Do you see the designs on the tram?  They are based on Ainu designs found in wood carvings and on clothing and I fell in love with and many patterns seen everywhere.

Even on vending machines!

We saw some Ainu dancing and heard their eerie voices and musical instruments that call up the images of wild animals and open spaces...  The dancers wore costumes similar to this one, mostly in browns and blues and reds.

Here is another example.  The designs remind me of celtic designs and even Guatamalan Mola designs!

There were workshops and a few of us tried our hand at embroidering Ainu designs.  Another workshop was on wood carving and another on the Ainu language.  We even tried out bow and arrow shooting!

And how is this!  I got a chance to try on one of the Ainu gowns!

The village was so picturesque!

So of course I had to try and paint it.

Another ice cream break!

We were running out of energy but we still had one more place to see on our itinerary.  Mt. Moiwa!

We took a ropeway up to the top of the mountain overlooking the city to see the sparkling lights below. This was especially exciting for me to see because this is the place where Takumi proposed to Julieta in 2019!

So romantic!

From Mt. Moiwa, we went out to dinner and had another great meal with a lot of seafood!  We all shared the big fish!

Our last day in Hokkaido we visited Hokkaido University and wandered around the beautiful campus for a couple of hours.

The campus seems to be well used by the local nursery school because there were loads of little children dressed in matching smocks playing by the quiet stream that runs through the university.  After a short rest AND MORE ICE CREAM we caught a train to the airport outside of Sapporo.

And here we were flying back to Tokyo!

These were all the sketches I did of our Hokkaido trip that I put together into a collage.

And this was a spread I now have in my bullet journal so that I'll always remember our wonderful trip.  

Hope you enjoyed my three days in Hokkaido!

September has rolled around

It is a rainy day here today and the forecast for tomorrow, Monday, is that there will be heavy rains so school has already been canceled for all Nikko elementary and jr. high schools.  I'm hoping the weather will clear by Tuesday because I'm taking a flight to Hokkaido for three days with some friends!  Hopefully I'll have something to write about when I get back.

I'm looking forward to this trip but I'm a bit concerned too because this past week Tetsu hasn't been able to walk well!  He has always liked fiddling around in his garden and has always taken upon himself to do the weed whacking up and down the road in front of us.  I nag him to get out of the sun or forget the road as it's not his responsiblity but he basically ignores me and goes ahead... and looks for his chance to go outside and attack nature when I'm out of the house.  Well, one day a couple of weeks ago he decided that a whole block of lower branches needed to be cut back along the road, and he managed to  injure his shoulder.  Even so, a couple of days later, he wanted to get outside, and figured he could just quietly do some weeding in our yard sitting in a low chair.  He didn't realize that without the use of his shoulder it would be hard for him to get up and down from the low chair position (and he was getting up and down throwing buckets of weeks into the forest) and three hours later (I was out of the house again that day) he had strained both knees and has since then been unable to walk...  And the pain in his knees and shoulder leaves him unable to sleep etc. and it just keeps spiraling.  He did go to a doctor and he is being tested for rheumatism now... 

Despite all this, I'm still planning to leave him on his own to go on this girls' trip my friends and I have planned for months...  Tetsu can still drive and limp along to the pool so he claims he'll be alright.  I've arranged for the vet to board John though while I'm away as Tetsu would never be able to pick him up to go in and out for potty trips... John has his own weak leg issues... Sigh...

During the sweltering hot summer, M-san and I opted to stay out of the hot sewing room and we did some floral zentangling with Kelli Blouin's website..  I cut up some papers into 3 1/2 inch squares and each week we zentangled two or three floral patterns and in the end we each had a L-O-N-G garden of zentangle flowers.  That was sort of fun but now it's back to sewing.

I have been doing some buttonhole applique on this quilt while sitting in the air-conditioning.  Mrs. N had wanted to make this quilt and I thought I should try at least one block so I could tell her the steps.  I sort of got carried away and went ahead and made the whole quilt.  This is from Lynette Anderson's "It's Quilting Cats and Dogs" book.  I don't know when Mrs. N is going to get started on this but at least I know it can be done.

This was my illustrated pun for the Senior's English class that I help teach.  For the class I drew something similar on the white board but as I only had black, blue, and red markers it wasn't half as much fun...  The students liked it.

This is a humorous page now in my bullet journal that I thought about doing in the Seniors' class but decided that it might be a bit risque and too hard to explain to the class...  But I had a laugh.  I put this in my journal because I went bra shopping the other day.  I went to the department store in the next town over because I know there I'll get help with sizing, and customers are treated royally.  I got to the department store before it opened and was standing at the doors when it was unlocked to let the public in...  All the department store clerks stand at their stations along the aisles and bow to you as you make your way across the store.  I felt just like the queen walking past her subjects as every few feet someone else standing at attention would make a deep bow from the waist as I passed by!  Arriving at the ladies' undergarments' section, I was directed to a carpeted and curtained fitting room and the sales woman donned her white kid gloves and proceeded to ask my preferences, take measurements, compare them with the measurments someone had recorded in their computer the year or so before (I always buy my bras at the same shop) and then she ran back and forth throughout the shop pulling things that I might like, getting different sizes, giving opinions on fit, etc.  It's quite nice not to have to keep pulling clothes off and on to go search for oneself.  

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Leiya's family is enjoying their new life in Indianapolis...

I love this picture of Tony and the boys!

And that's about it for the past two weeks...  

I'll be back with photos and stories from Hokkaido.  Keep Tetsu in your thoughts!