Sapporo

Well, although we had been joking about not being able to get home all day on Sunday, we never really believed that we would be stranded. That is exactly what happened though. We got on the bus and it moved so slowly through the snowed under streets, and arrived at the airport a couple of hours later. We struggled over the sheer ice outside the entrance and eventually got all our stuff up the escalators.

When we got inside we could see lots of delays on the boards and braced ourselves for a good long wait. As we got closer we could see suspicious yellow kanji flashing next to our flight number, and we couldn't believe it when it switched to English and said "cancelled". Not delayed, cancelled! There had already been lots of flights cancelled that morning, so there were thousands of people around the airport, and we joined a queue which never moved for information. After a couple of hours (while Kumi, who had organised the whole trip and felt personally responsible for the weather, was on the phone to the travel agent) we had been talking to other people around us. One woman said she had been issued with standby ticket number 1470 and they were just calling 99. She had been told the earliest she could probably get on a flight was Tuesday. A little while after that an announcement came over the tannoy that they had stopped issuing standby tickets for the day. The worst part is that in Hokkaido, all standby tickets are scrapped and reissued at midnight, in case people have found other ways to travel (or something equally baffling), so even if we could get them (25 of them!) we would still have to hang around for the reissue later on that night.

At some point, the decision was made to forget the idea of stand-by tickets and just book our place on a Tuesday morning flight, since that was the earliest we were looking at anyway. The travel agent negotiated for us to stay at a Sheraton hotel for a reduced rate for 2 nights, so at least we didn't have to hang around the airport. Now we just had to get out of the airport!

We lugged all our bags down a stationary escalator, wondering why it had stopped until we got on and realised just how many people were trying to leave. It would have been a pile up! We queued along a huge corridor with thousands of people, and when the train came there was a mad rush to get on. There were 3 small children with us whose parents decided that the train would be too traumatic late at night with so many people, and they went back to get a taxi to the hotel. We were wedged into various corners all along the train, and it crept along at a walking pace because of the weather, but eventually we got to the hotel at 10.30pm, much better than we had expected. When we got there we rang to see how the families were getting on - they were still about 20th in line and didn't make it to the hotel until after midnight. Every way of leaving the airport was jammed, and we saw on the news afterwards that over 2500 people slept in Sapporo airport on Sunday night.

A wedding Kimono in the hotel
The view from the breakfast room

As we had been so lucky in getting out and getting a hotel, we felt able to relax a little the next day. Some of the group decided to have another day skiing, and went to a ski resort about an hour away on the bus early the next morning. We didn't do that as we were running out of money (2 extra nights in a Sheraton hotel that we didn't expect), and we also had to think about school the next day even if we weren't going to be there. Among the group there were three laptops, and we connected in the rooms as everyone had to email work in for their classes. 7 people came to us, and since we only started at 11pm, it was a late night. Most people were reasonably quick, just sending enough to occupy. Our increasingly self-centred friend Mary however, decided she would send through everything, including the worksheets to be printed and photocopied, just as if she were there to teach the class! She just happened to have them all with her on her clip drive, which she promptly lost just as she was getting onto the computer (last, fortunately for everyone else). After a lengthy search which turned our room upside down, she sat down to send her work at 12.45am. By 2.45 she was just about finishing up, and we were falling asleep and hinting at her to bog off. She said she was done so I stood up to turn off the computer - only to find she had plugged in her camera to download some photos onto it, because she was having trouble saving them at home and the memory card was full! If I had had the slightest bit of energy left I may have killed her, but I was half asleep and just stood there with my mouth open.

Will, Pippa, Tomoko, Thomas, Benedetta, Aja, me and Graham
Will and Pippa at lunch

The next day we sleepily decided that as we had some time in a new city we should really go and see it, so we went the the beer museum.

The Sapporo Beer Museum

We wondered around in the snow and had a fantastic lunch - Gengis Khan lamb barbecue. We were also hoping to see some snow sculptures, as Sapporo hosts a huge ice festival every February. It was no good though, they had all been taken away.

Benedetta, Thomas, Pippa, Aja, Will, Graham, Tomoko

Cool round moss. Very old

In the evening we felt we had to try some seafood (Hokkaido is famous for shellfish) so we found a map and navigated our way to the most amazing little fresh fish restaurant. It was izakaya style, sitting in the floor without shoes, and we ate king crab, scallops, prawns, loads of sashimi, grilled salmon and even tried whale! I quite liked the taste, but knowing what it was I found myself wanting to swallow really fast and not think about it. It was Baird's beaked whale, which is supposed to be not endangered by the level of hunting, but I still felt really uncomfortable.

Aja with cheese and beer. She's so happy
My weird orange drink and the even weirder beer crackers it came with

We had to leave early the next day to get the train back to the airport, and we checked in and went through security only to find we were delayed again! It is a short flight and we were only delayed by an hour, so fortunately we were on our way soon. We went straight to school from the airport, as we all felt so guilty for having to have our lessons covered by other people for 2 days. I was there just in time for a double period. The kids were quite excited to have so many of their teachers off stranded somewhere! One girl asked me if I had had any sleep, as I had "huge bags" under my eyes. Thanks a lot! We went straight home, and started unpacking and washing, and more importantly, getting into some very welcome clean clothes. An early night for me I think!

The things people do when they have had a drink. Anpanman is a Japanese cartoon character

Thomas in a 'beer can'