Backpacking

waving their forms and yelling "SIGN HERE! SIGN HERE!", I decided to leave the park area before my celebrity ego swelled too much and my hand dropped off.

After a wander through a couple of Japanese department stores, which appear to sell everything under the sun, I headed to the Sapporo Beer Museum. I didn't spend too long there, as everything was in Japanese, but rather headed for the "Bier Garten". Not a garden at all, but an indoor restaurant where I enjoyed a rather Germanic experience of a litre stein of Sapporo draft beer and a plate of sausages.

I couldn't keep away - in the evening I went back to the brewery with Rupert and Jen for the aptly-named "Ghengis Khan" barbequeue - a barbaric and gluttonous affair consisting of all you can eat and drink in 100 minutes for 4000 yen (about 20 quid). The three of us got through the equivalent of a whole Mary's little lamb, and an ocean of tiger prawns, scollops, calamari and salmon, all freshly cooked on a hot plate on our table and washed down with fresh Sapporo draft beer, made onsite a couple of hundred of metres away. Culinary heaven! There were tons of other westerners there, and the bottomless glass clearly went to their heads, as at kick-out time, a huge snowball fight started outside... bloody gaijins...

Day 12: 11th February The Star Wars Cantina

Tokyo, Japan

I could have easily spent another couple of days in Sapporo. I never did get to see Susukino's bars and clubs, or the view of Sapporo at night from nearby Mt. Moiwa, or Ramen alley, a road packed with two dozen noodle shops. These will have to wait for another time - Sapporo impressed me, and I fully intend on coming back!

I had to travel most of the length of the country over the next 2 days to meet Hiro Nishio in Kobe, an MG friend of Dad's. I was planning on overnighting again in Tokyo to break up the travelling. As it happened, Jen and Rupert were also heading down to Tokyo today, so I took trains down with them and we booked into the same hostel.

The "hostel" was little more than a low-rent dive of a hostel on Tokyo's outskirts, halfheartedly given some backpacker "facilities" in order to drag in some more profit. The price was right, though, which was all that really mattered for a stopover: 2700 Yen (about 14 quid). Not bad for Tokyo, and for that I would put up with the box room (about 7 foot square) and questionable smell.