hokkaido

So after convincing my mom that i wasnt anywhere near osaka-the site of the recent train crash-and that there was no way i could stop using the japanese train system, I hopped on a plane to Hokkaido yesterday. I wont even try to start back-blogging just yet but lets just say that ive been away from hitachi city almost every weekend and holiday since march with lots of fun/scary/weird encounters, and i was all packed and ready to catch a plane back to philly sometime around mid-march. ill definitely post something about that later.

my first impression of hokkaido, large northernmost region of japan, is that its not like the rest of japan at all. in fact besides the people and all the japanese/chinese signs you would not even know that you were in japan, or even asia for that matter. the weird thing is how much it reminds me of the u.s. certain parts prairie-like somewhere in some small kansas town maybe while sapporo the major city here, also happens to be the largest north of tokyo, has a lot of similarities with new york or philadelphia even. the landscaping and architecture, especially the homes, are definitely influenced by the west.

anyway my first 2 days here are research-related and so im up early about to head over to an engineering lab in hokkaido university, actually founded with the help of umass president. fine whatever if i were in hitachi right now id be a work already...the only downside is everyone keeps asking me a million questions about mit and the rest of the u.s. looking for answers that include numbers and percentages i.e. how many nobel prize winners does mit have/what percentage of americans go to church every sunday/how many people live in LA/whats the lowest winter temperature in boston in celsius/what kind of trees, flowers, insects are in america/how many kinds of lobster/how high in meters are the rockies or white mountains////etc etc etc etc i feel like i should buy a book on american culture and pull it out and start reading passages on horticulture, geography, climate, and demographics once a day.

but the rest of my time here is during japans golden week-i love how every other country has more national holidays than the u.s.-so ill be traveling around seeing active volcanoes, onsen resorts, ainu culture-indigenous hokkaido residents who like the american indians have lost most of their land and people thanks to the government cultivation and civilization plans- lets see what else...national parks, sapporo festivals etc. oh another thing about this place that is so different from the rest of japan: lower costs of living and better food.