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Sapporo: The First Days

I arrived in Japan on March 30th, and stayed 1 day in Osaka before travelling further to Sapporo. Met up with my Korean friend Hoyong there, who took me to my old school in Osaka before we went out for dinner. I got to meet his new girlfriend, Miki, who seemed like a great person!


The following day I went back to Kansai International Airport, for my flight to Sapporo. For the first time in my life I flew Business Class, which was kinda cool as I got to choose from a variety of food and entertainment options. Once arrived in Sapporo, i took the train bound for the city, and once there took a cab to my new home for the next 6 months, DK House. The landlady, a friendly young woman, welcomed me and gave me all the necessary information and handed me the keys. Great compact little apartment, with my own bathroom and kitchen.

I met up with the other norwegian, Steffen, a few days later, and we got along instantly. Used the first days to get to know the city, visiting the typical sightseeing spots, as well as some necessary shopping like kitchen-ware and a japanese electronic dictionary. Also bought myself a Mini Cooper-styled fold-up bike, which will make it alot easier to get around the city without taking the bus or subway.



The people here are really friendly, and it's quite to easy to get in touch with them. They don't seem to mind foreigners at all, and although most of them doesn't speak english too well we still manages to communicate somehow. Rode my bike up to Okuriyama, the ski-jump hill, the other day, and pretty much every person I ran into, kids, high-school girls, parking guards,families etc starting talking to me. And the other day when I rode the bus home,I got in touch with a sweet girl called May who studies english. We decided to meet up again some other time, which will be nice.

School seems great, although it's a bit outside of the city. In total I use about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to the schoolfrom my house, using my bike, the subway and the bus to get there. There are only 14 exchange-students this year, 10 girls from China, one from Australia, a guy from Laos and us two Norwegians.

Everyone seems nice, and we've also been hanging out a little after school and stuff. Mostly I've been with Steffen and a Chinese girl called Koe though, who's awesome at speaking Japanese. However,after a placement-test, we were divided into three classes according to our levels, and as it happened I'm all alone at the 2nd level class. All the chinese girls ended up in the highest class, while the rest (except me) ended up in the lowest one, so it will only be me and the teacher for 5 hours a day for 6 months! That might be a little hazukashii, or weird, but looking at it one way I actually get my own private teacher. Might be a bit lonely at times though, but I have to do my best I guess:) Hope the teacher is nice only!

This weekend I went out with Steffen and a Danish-British girl Jessica. We went to this place full of gaijins, or foreigners, but after a while we decided to go somewhere else. It was quite fun, and met alot of nice people.We also "ran into" a Japanese band called Breakerz with Daigo Stardust. Daigo is the son of a former president of Japan, and later we found out that they are actually no.1 in Japan at the moment, topping the charts! Was kinda cool to see them in person. And on Saturday I went to the movies with another friend to see "Yes Man!", Great piece of film who sort of inspired me :)

Sunday, I didn't do much except going to Sapporo Dome to see Consadole Sapporo vs Kataller Toyama, a J2 match. I went with a Chinese guy called Lee, who lives at the same dormitory as me. Great stadium, that can be changed into a Baseball-ground in only a few hours by rolling the grass out of the stadium and replacing it with the Baseball-field. The match weren't the best though, as Consadole played their 5th match in a row without winning. In front of us sat a girl's children-soccer team, who thought it was really cool to see a foreigner in a Consadole-shirt, so they wanted to talk to us alot. All in all a nice experience though, and next weekend I'm to see Cerezo Osaka play there, which will be great.