Enjoying Snow Festival in Sapporo

I'm tremendously blessed by having a business trip to Japan, whilst other people may have to wait for their lucky turns. The trip was on 6~13 Feb, 2010. Along with our business partners and Sony expats, we headed to Tokyo by SQ. Traveling to Tokyo was a brilliant experience for me as this was my first trip to the city in Japan that famous for its beautiful sakura. I have none words except being grateful to have an opportunity to dedicate myself to work in Japanese company, in which many times a year I always have flied to many countries I haven't visited in my life for business trips. I paid my personal trips only a few whilst many of them are free,  amazing isn't it?

After more than 7-hour having a rigid seat, I finally could have my back and toes relax a bit by strolling around the airport. Thanks to Narita airport for having the warm heater inside the building, otherwise my fingers and nose are deadly numb.
According to my Japan colleague, Sapporo is the 5th largest city, in terms of population, in Japan. The city is famous for winter hosting and chocolate biscuits.

Freshen up for a few of minutes, we continued our journey to Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido. To know more about Hokkaido, please visit this website: http://www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/foreign/english.htm

We visited the snow festival during that time. Surprisingly, we met Indonesian delegations for ice carving competitions. Even though Indonesian team didn't make it as the trophy went to Thailand team, but I thumbs-up salute for their spirits to join this remarkable international event with their own funds.

Skiing in Sapporo was really a bad idea as I spent more than 3 hours to get myself down from top of the mountain to the finish point. The temperature at that time was -8 degree C and my runny nose was really killing me for hours.

The next day, we visited the serene and beautiful city, Otaru, northwest of Sapporo, located in Shiribeshi, Hokkaido. We enjoyed strolling along aside the canal to see many Victorian-style street lamps. The snow piles was miniatured into some creative artworks and lighten by candles. I recognized that most of Japanese people pay attentions to details in their works. It's one of the cultures that I always admire and the reason why I let it affected my professional working style in a positive way.

Before leaving Otaru, we dropped by in local stores to bring home some chocolate bars and cookies for families and friends.

From Sapporo, we flied back to Tokyo. On the 2nd day in Tokyo, I splitted with my boss to take our business partners going to Kyoto, one of my tremendously favorite cities I ever visited in my entire journey life, by Shinkansen.

To efficiently enjoy this city in a day trip, we agreed to take a local tour to show us the must-see sightseeings and to make us understand its history and cultures. The tour guided us to visit a few of hundred-of-years aged and sacred shrines. Too bad it was unexpected raining and make our shrines visits miserable.

Despite it's hard for me to appreciate the temples as I did not understand the history behind it and my limitation of Buddhism was not helpful either, they were extremely beautiful and very interesting architecturally. Some of them even have shukubo (Temple Lodging), and do provide an unforgettable stay experience in atmospheric setting. Guests may enjoy shojin ryori (vegetarian food for monks) and participate in religious rituals or meditation. But we skipped it since we didn't have luxury time to do so. My boss kept reminding me that guests safety are primarily important, thus we had to go back to Tokyo no matter what. So I memorized this short journey in my book, in order to get back to Kyoto again with my family to stay at least two days there to enjoy it thoroughly. Bear in mind that Kyoto is one of the most expensive cities, besides Oslo and Tokyo, in the world. The data I have obtained based on surveys by ECA, UBS, Mercer and EIU, may be varied and different amongst each other. For instance, Mercer and ECA nominated Tokyo in rank#1 as the most expensive city to stay whilst UBS put Oslo, capital of Norway, as the most expensive one. Well, there's only one way to find the truth by going to those city and get experienced by yourself. My motto is "seeing is believing".
 

Okay, enough sharing my experience about spending times in those cities. Let's jump into culinary topic. I had to finish this writing since the clock already showed 12:32am and I had to get up early in tomorrow morning to continue completing the demo installation in a hospital in Semarang. There's no free lunch in the world, how true it is, eh?

Before I started my food review, let me ask you a simple question: how many times do you eat sashimi in your life? One or more than five? It's not good enough to make you to be considered as Jap cuisine lover. If you're countlessly having sashimi in your lunch or dinner, you likely to be the one and may consider to try sashimi from its origin country. The advantage is not only to have the fresh food and its epic serving style but also to have the chance to try other authentic Japanese foods that you hardly find in your home country. You will know what foods I was talking about in the next line...

I dare Andrew Zimmer for trying foal and cod brains as they are extremely pretty bizarre.
I could handle foal meat as its taste is similar as beef but the flavor of cod brains was strange and strongly fishy. I respect my meals as they were killed and served on my plate now, but having them all in my stomach was a shitty experience in my life. In Japanese tradition, wasting your food may be considered as impolite attitude.

As closing to my story, just to share with you about my former boss and I...
Whilst I consider myself as gastronome, my former boss is connoisseur of art culinary. As epicure, he not only knows where to have the best food but also understand how to value it in traditional way, and for this I respect and thank him to share his Japanese cultures with me. :)

Well, for sure I would like to visit Japan again very soon. I missed my Japanese ex-colleagues, too. Together we have been in a deep dung when the company was not in a good shape and yet together we rise and back again as survivors. Haha... *I hope he will read this story*
Till we meet again.

私の物語を読むためのありがとう! :)