Error
This video doesn’t exist
In Maruyama Park there was the ski jump stadium for the 1972 Sapporo Olympics. We walked through the park, it was a really nice park. We walked for a while until we got to the ski jump course, the course was so high. The ski jump course was called Okurayama Ski Jump Stadium. In the 1972 ski jumping event the Japanese had a clean sweep of winning the gold, silver, and bronze medals. The gold went to someone named Yukio Kasaya. Talk about home court advantage!
Dad has really got to work on his ski jumping. Unfortunately nobody was handing out free gold medals. Victory for me!
We took a chairlift to the top of the ski jump hill and it was such a good view of Sapporo. This photo shows how far up the top really is. The hill after you jump is so steep. Link
Here is another photo of the view from the top. Sapporo is a pretty big city, it has 1.952 million people and is 1,121 km². When we were at the top we were pretty tired from our walk from the subway station to the hill but it was definitely worth it. 
This is the way down on the chairlift. I call this photo “Feet in Front of Sapporo”. The chairlift was pretty steep. On the way down you really could see how steep it was. The chairlift was very fun and since we had a coupon it was a very good price. We were under budget today! 😀
This is Denise and my Dad on the chairlift. Denise looks so cute in her sunglasses,😎.Luckily we were not in car 13, we were in car 53. 
This is a photo of the hill from the bottom.I wish you were allowed to climb the hill. After we were done going up and down the hill we took the bus to the station and then took the subway back to Odori station.
We went to this huge stationery store called Central Daimaru Fuji. It was so cool, you could fill up a little jar with mini erasers and they were so cute. Denise and I were treated to them by Mom and it was only 378 yen ($4.55).
This is the downtown neighbourhood of Sapporo. The neighbourhood is called Susukino. Our Airbnb is in a quiet alley south of Susukino. 
This is the major intersection in Susukino. There were so many advertisements for different things from Coke to Karaoke. 
We decided to have ramen for dinner so went to a place called Ramen Alley. In Ramen Alley there were 17 ramen restaurants. It was so hard to choose which one to eat at but eventually we decided to go to one called Teshikaga. A pretty standard way to order at a small ramen restaurant is by a ticket machine. You insert your money, press what you want and out comes a ticket. You give the ticket to the chef and then he or she makes what you ordered. Sapporo is nicknamed “The City of Ramen”.
I ordered the Shio Ramen (salt broth), it was really good! It was definitely a great day in Sapporo. Signing off till next post, bye!
Trying to max out the value of our Japan rail passes we’re moving from the southern island of Kyushu all the way up to the northern island of Hokkaido, but we broke up the trip with a few days in the Japanese Alps and one night in Nagano. Before doing a bit of reading for this visit I hadn’t thought about Nagano since the Olympics and had no idea where in Japan it was (kind of in the middle on the west coast). Apparently I’m not the only one: 
But while we were here I remembered watching those games pretty clearly in the McGill dorms with the failure of the nhl’ers to medal (no Wayner in the shootout?) and the Ross Rebagliatti glory and scandal. This was also around the time I had my first cafeteria date with this cute girl from Toronto. She only managed 3rd here in weightlifting – that pocket Hercules is virtually unbeatable:
Yesterday we took a train from Matsumoto Station to Shin-shimashima station. After we got off the train we boarded a bus that took us to Taisho Pond. There was supposed to be a really nice 3.5km walk around the pond but unfortunately it was closed due to snow. Luckily, there was also another walk to a smaller but still pretty pond. Kamikochi has the 3rd and 4th highest peaks in Japan.
Before continuing on the bus that would take us to the next trail, we took in the view and took a few photos of the beautiful scenery. It was hard to believe that there was snow because it was 15 degrees Celsius and we hadn’t encountered snow on our trip yet. It was only snowing because we were in the mountains, there is no snow at all in the cities or towns.
Here is another photo of Taisho Pond. We got on the bus and got to the station and ate a little bit while we waited for Melana, John, Soren, and Annika to arrive. When they arrived we ate a little more and then we were ready to go on the walk to Myojinike pond.
This is Denise, Annika, Soren, and I on the Kappa Bashi bridge. Our family and their family happen to be going to the same places and we have met up with them 4 times. Soren also has a blog, here is a link to it. 
This is a photo of a mountain from the path. The walk was really peaceful and it had pulchritudinous scenery. There is so much snow in this photo. When the mountain was covered in snow in the winter it would have great skiing opportunities. 
This is a beautiful photo of a river that we took a break at to have a snack. We saw some monkeys on the other side of the river. Nobody else was really there so we practically had the river to ourselves. When we finished the hike we took the bus back to Shin-shimashima station and then got on the train back to Matsumoto…
From Away 