Sapporo.. you know, like the beer.

Today was super exciting.

We got up early, said goodbye to Kevin's parents, hopped on a train, and sat on it for six and a half hours, ugh. 

At one point we even went into and underwater tunnel! It was very dark.

All this work to get to Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Anyway, one good thing that happened to stifle the boredom, was 

that I met someone I could actually talk to. I noticed her when I got up to throw something away. It was obvious she was a fellow gaijin just from looking at her, although I wasn't sure if she actually spoke english.

Once I worked up the nerve to walk up to her and risk seeming like a weirdo, it turned out that 

she spoke english, and was more than willing to hang out and pass the time with me. 

Three hours later, long story short, she is from Canada and is in Japan to travel around and see the sights. We also talked about playing music and vegans too (we had plenty of time, let me tell you). We even tried to see if we could somehow coordinate a way for her to hang out with us in Sapporo one of the nights she would be staying, but it never worked out, we were too busy. 

Anyway, I was really glad to meet her, because I was not looking forward to being on that train with nothing to do. Thank you Paula!

Anyway, once we arrive in Sapporo, we call Kevin and Masahiro (who are getting on a plane in Tokyo soon to fly out and meet up with us). Well, it turns out that they haven't even gotten on the flight yet, so it looks like we have some time to kill.

We go out front of the train station and pull out or shamisens; we want to see if we can make some dinner money.

Ironically, we make some money, but not from any Japanese people, but from someone who saw Mike play a show with his band back in the states and recognized him. Small world...

We also meet another gaijin who gives us a good recommendation for somewhere to eat while we are packing up. Who walks us down to the small soba bar in the basement of the train station and 

we eat there. It's cheap, and not bad. Although Mike heard the owner of the bar talking about us, and how weird it was that we were there. So we left since Mike was feeling weird about it naturally.

We sat around and waited for a call from Kevin. We got one. 

We took a taxi to Masahiro's parents house.  I 

met his dad, Hiroshi, pretty much as soon as I got into the house, and his mother came in a couple hours later. We sat around in the living talking and playing shamisen for awhile, and then we went to the bath house to wrap up the night. While there, we also took an awesome photo booth session in the arcade that was located in the same building (those Japanese are all about convenience).

We got home and were all ready to pass out.