My Egg Noodles

I’m now back in North East Thailand after an epic trip to Japan, and thought I’d dedicate this Photo Friday to my favorite ramen noodle dish! A difficult decision as I can honesty say they were all equally delicious! I have eaten noodle dishes in every country I’ve visited in Asia and Japan wins hands down.

This was called Hokkaidō Ramen (¥1,000 / $11), and was eaten in Ramen Alley – a little street filled with ramen noodle shops in Sapporo. The soup was spiced curry based with all sorts of goodies thrown in including egg noodles, potato wedges, boiled egg, roasted pork, sliced veggies and a small slab of butter. This was easily the biggest ramen dish I had, and was absolutely delicious!

What’s the best noodle dish you’ve ever had?

After getting up nice and early we headed to the train station to get a train to Tiene, about an hour away from Sapporo to do some  snowboarding. Luckily the JR ticket office in Sapporo station sold packages which included snowboard or ski hire, lift passes and transport which consisted of a 20 minute train journey and bus transfers to the club house.

Our train

This was my first time snowboarding so I was full of excitement, like a fat kid just about to munch into some chocolate chip cookies. After sorting out my snowboard and boots, it was time to head out onto the slopes. It took me about 2 hours to get the hang of it, but after that I could go down a 1 star run without falling over. Now it’s just a matter of practice to get faster and eventually learn some tricks! I had such a blast, and the workout was welcome due to over-eating while in Japan.

View from the Tiene train station

While waiting for the bus to take us up the mountain, I watched this guy feed the pigeons!

Getting kitted out!

I’ve just got onto the snow and can’t wait to get up the first slope.

After a full day of snowboarding, I opted for chicken with green pepper pasta with a boiled egg to finish of a great day!

I can’t until next January to get back up to Sapporo for the Sapporo Snow festival and to get some more snowboarding action in!

Today I checked out the snow sculptures at the Sapporo Snow Festival, which were amazing! Some of the sculptures must have taken days to carve out and I’m thankful to the peps that put the effort in as I was blown away by how impressive they were.

Got to love the attention to detail.

Time for a snack. This was a warm cream custard pudding with hot caramel sauce on top. There are no words to describe how good this was!

The Sapparro Snow Festival attracts over 2 million visitors each year, most of which are Japanese.

Impressive ice sculpture.

This was huge. It’s hard to believe it’s all made out of snow.

Every year teams from different countries come to the Sapporro Snow festival to contribute. This sculpture was made from the team in China.

It was time for dinner. A warm hearty bowl of noodles did the trick. Here we have egg noodles with roasted pork, chives and half a boiled egg. Yum!

The yolk of the egg was cooked perfectly… and went so well with the pork and noodles. Dam this was good!

There’s a little random story on how I ended up coming over to Japan. I stumbled upon the Sapporo Snow Festival’s web site a few weeks ago and sent the link over to a buddy while we were communicating  on chat. He thought it looked cool and within the hour we had both booked our flights! So basically the whole purpose of this trip was to come and check out the Sapporo Snow Festival – And boy am I glad we came!

The Sapporo Snow Festival, an annual event that attracts snow artists from all over the world for the last 61 years, is truly under way. There are 3 main areas spread out over town and last night I decided to check out the ice  sculptures while they were all lit up. It was freezing (Google said it was -8oc) with snow coming down so I didn’t take that many images (I preferred to keep my hands in my pockets lol)… and unfortunately the images I did take just doesn’t do them justice.

These guys are so talented!

This ice sculpture had fish and crab in the ice slabs!

Then it was time to get into somewhere warm, drink some wine and have some food. Here we have cheese, tomato and pesto – 3 simple ingredients that when eaten together are outstanding.

Cheese and bread with red wine – A winner every time.

I am so impressed with the Sapporo Snow Festival that I know I’ll be back next year with my girlfriend. It’s perfect for couples in that the whole event with the snow thing is just so dam romantic! Trust me, you guys should put this on your list of things to do!

After arriving in Sapporo to check out the Snow festival and do some snowboarding on my last leg of the Japan trip, I stayed in a capsule hotel due to not booking any accommodation in advance. I thought I’d write down some notes on my experience of staying in a capsule hotel. First up, it’s weird. Fucking weird.

Upon checking in ($¥2,800 / $31), you are given a shoe locker to store your shoes which sits beside the reception area. Next stop was down to the lockers located in the basement of the hotel to store my belongings (the lockers here were so small/narrow).

The locker room in the basement where you store your gear.

Then it was up to check out the capsule. Rows of 2 capsules high running down both sides of the room. Each capsule had a TV (porn was an optional extra at ¥1,000 / $11), radio, lighting control and an alarm clock. The hotel as a whole was really well kitted out with vending machines for all sorts of stuff including hot food. Extra facilities included washing machines, sauna, hot tub and free tolitories.

Fast food vending machine. I’m sure you, as I, can imagine how good this stuff must be

After a few beers out on the town, I feel asleep straight away but woke up a few times due to my little capsule heating up… which was a let down. Overall, I think the concept is a good idea, in that they are normally used by Japanese men who have been out on the town and want a place to crash before going into work the next day. But for me, I’m not going to go out of my way to stay in one again.

The chill-out room