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Around 20 9years ago, I traveled from Okinawa to Hokkaido for the annual Yuki Matsuri, or Snow Festival. With the freezing cold weather (I had requested to be placed in Hokkaido during my JET Program interview but ended up in the southernmost part of Japan), amazing food, and giant ice sculptures, my memories of Sapporo were magical. So I decided to book a trip to the Snow Festival for my husband and I to relive the magic. Now 20 years ago, the organizers of the trip had inside knowledge of how to make the airfare and hotel a little more affordable: go a week early. By then, the sculptures were complete and it wasn’t nearly as crowed as it would be during the festival. Sure, the festival activities and food stands wouldn’t be running, but the city had so much to do, it wouldn’t be a problem. Fast forward two decades later. I planned our trip to take place the week before the actual festival happened. Smart, right? Nope! Thanks to decreased support from volunteers and global warming, the giant ice sculptures weren’t ready by the time we got to Hokkaido. Instead of marveling at a giant Hello Kitty ice sculpture onsen-ing in a ramen bowl, we just saw lot after empty log. The good news is that there was lots to do and it wasn’t too crowded. As it was my husband’s first time in Sapporo, we still had a blast going to the Sapporo Beer Factory and Ishiya Chocolate Factor. We were able to eat unbelievable ramen that warmed our bellies in 25°F weather. On a side note, I was 3 months pregnant so I didn’t drink alcohol and I had pretty bad morning sickness. And I caught a cold towards the end of the trip, which was terrifying since COVID-19 was making its way throughout Asia. But overall, the trip was still so much fun and actually turned out to be a babymoon. Here are a few highlights of our trip!
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 Too relatable, Diane, too relatable. Bojack Horseman is one of the best TV shows ever. It’s clever and silly and deep, too. It’s like the writers followed Joss Whedon’s advice to, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.” Season 6, the last season of the series, has an episode called “Good Damage.” It’s about the writer Diane, who struggles with writing, which she’s good at. Writing is her passion. But writing about her trauma is too hard and she ends up writing a fun young adult novel about a teenager who solves mysteries at a food court mall. Diane says that she doesn’t want to write this type of fluff because, “That means all the damage I got isn’t ‘good damage.’ It’s just damage.’” This resonated with me because even though I say I like writing and am good at it, I have a hard time actually doing it. I struggle and struggle as I force myself to write scripts and stories. I stopped blogging because it was too difficult for me to articulate my convoluted feelings. I got caught up trying to convey everything going on inside my brain. And as a result, the creative tap ran dry. But after watching a cartoon writer struggle with writing, I decided to just write. I vowed to leave behind the complicated semantics tangling up my writing process and write about things that are interesting to me. It doesn’t have to be witty or insightful. This attitude lets me off the hook. I can express myself without the pressure of being deep or whatever. Not writing for fun makes me feel sad because I’m not using my self-perceived talent to enlighten the world. So this year, I’m experimenting. I’m writing for myself. No expectations, no self-sabotage. Just me. And hopefully that’s enough.  Though she was truly outrageous, I would've preferred to watch Jem a little later in the day. When I was a kid, I pictured the future in two ways: 1) The fun utopia of the Jetsons, or 2) The frightening dystopia ruled by Skynet. But here we are in 2020. Things have definitely changed since the 80s and I guess we live in a kind of the middle ground between flying cards and robot overlords. Things change, life goes on. I think the technological breakthrough I appreciate the most is streaming and on-demand services. Even when I was a child, I hated having to tune into Saturday morning cartoons on Saturday. I complained about the TGIF lineup as constricting to my adolescent schedule. I wished that we could choose what to watch and when to watch it. This belief was further reinforced later in life by the TV show, Lost. At first, my friend and I would be excited to get together and watch it every week. But as the years went on and the storylines because more convoluted, watching Lost became a chore. Yet we didn’t want to stop as we’d been doing it for so long. And there was no way we’d wait for the DVD to come out a year later. So, we became Lost addicts, wanting to quit but not having the fortitude to follow through. I think of Netflix had been around back then, I would’ve skipped the show all together until it ended and binge watched the entire thing in a month. That’s my favorite way to consume TV shows. In fact, I used to do something similar when I lived in Japan in the early 2000s. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer so much but I they didn’t show it in Japan. So when the DVD of the season became available in the US, my friend would it to me. And then I’d watch it in one glorious weekend while eating andagi and soki soba. Anyway, it’s exciting to see all that’s changed in the past 30 years and I wonder what the next 30 years has in store! What a time to be alive! |
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