Hokkaido

Ok. It's february. I haven't made posts about anything since New Years. Laziness seems to have taken over. In a vain attempt to get over the laziness, this will be a big picture post about our time in Hokkaido with a little bit of text. Hopefully when the winter holidays are all blogged about, I can finally get on with updating now and again with other stuff. Have to see I guess, anyhow, as promised:

First of all: SNOW! I know to you lot back at home this may not be the most amazing thing you've ever heard due to the recent weather in Britain but THERE WAS SNOW IN HOKKAIDO! It just didn't stop snowing. In some places the snow was upto my knees, which was ace until me and the toya vols went for a bit of hillwalking (if you can call it that, we walked up a fairly large hill and then back down). Due to no one being suicidal enough to go walking in the hills, the snow was untouched, and so immensely deep. Made for a pretty tough walk since I didnt have snowboots and nearly caught frostbite, but was amazing fun nonetheless. I miss the snow =(

During our time up in the far north, we had a bash at snowmobiling. I got well excited at the idea of this because I kind of assumed it'd be a case of: "here's a snowmobile, theres a field and some hills, try not to die", but instead it was a case of: "I'll be driving fairly slowly around this quite boring circuit, follow me and try not to have too much fun, now!". Don't get me wrong it was tons of fun driving a snowmobile, and the sights up there were intense, but it just wasn't quite what I expected. Damn you dad, ruining my expectations by taking me quad biking and go karting too many times.

Toya-ko itself is one of the nicest places ever. Some cracking views, tons of snow and some of the friendliest people I've ever met. Seriously, despite having very limited English ability, these people really tried their hearts out when talking to you, especially the people in the Toya Penshon where we stayed. This old couple owned it, and despite having not a word of English under their belts I had a few amazing conversations through insanely broken Japanese and lots of pointing and hand gestures. I couldn't believe how friendly they were, especially considering the language barrier. Still, despite how much I loved the place, I doubt I could live there. I think I've been spoiled by being sent to Tokyo because I doubt anywhere else in the world will seem even remotely liveable after this gap year, its such an amazing place.