Go North, my son.

The great thing about this job is how much I get to travel while not actually working. Case in point: Hokkaido. For those of you "not living in Japan", Hokkaido is the Northern-most island of the 4 main islands that make up Japan. We went for Lisa's birthday (Feb, for those of you who don't have it memorized), which meant one thing: snow.

Unfortunately, we were only able to stay for a weekend, and so only really got to see some parts of the city. But, during that time, we experienced the "beautiful snow on the ground", "snow blowing in your eyes during a storm" and "snow melted into slush and giving you soakers when you cross the street". As Lisa pointed out, it was like experiencing a proper Canadian winter all in one weekend.

The highlights included:
-Sapporo beer museum, where a group of tourists obviously rushed through every exhibit without even so much as a glance to get to the place that serves super-cheap beer at the end (200 yen for a glass, where 500 yen is considered cheap).
-Chocolate factory, which also included a chocolate museum. We got to make food, which is always fun.
-Overpriced onsen (kind of like a sauna, except super-awesome, with lots of different types of baths, and fully clothed female workers going about doing their jobs in the presence of lots of naked Japanese men and one naked foreigner).
-Walking around in beautiful snow covered city and parks

Will post pictures below when time and laziness permit.

On a somewhat realated note, I've started bringing my laptop to work, so posts should become much more frequent. Don't know why I didn't do this before.