A couple more pictures

Here we all are with  the Sapporo bear!

In our lovely beer garden aprons

Not from Sapporo;  took this purikura today after a buffet pizza lunch in Ikebukuro

After we had eaten all the meat

Sapporo

Mongolian barbeque at Sapporo Beer Garden, all you can eat and all you can drink

Sapporo Beer Museum beer tasting!

This is the apron they gave us to eat in

Snow aquarium!

Snow palace with some sort of pop performance going on in front!

This was a giant ice organ

Indian palace made of snow!  Check my earmuffs that I found on sale for 100 yen

Japanese snow castle!  

Karaoke Sapporo style, naturally!

Here's the woman in her bubble playing the ice organ

Sapporo bear!

Sapporo snow festival sign.  I look so cold!

Snowboard jump!

Ice organ again. 

A few more pictures

At Meiji Shrine on Jan. 1.  It's completely dark but it was only like 5pm

Still Meiji shrine

Mt Zao

Night snowboarding

The videos are out the window of the bus going from Yamagata to Zao, and at the bottom of the slope at Zao.

Snowboarding pics!

Me and David at the top of the slope

Me!

Me again!  This is after a successful run with no falls, haha

One of the ski slopes

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope you all will have a wonderful Christmas day.  I talked with my parents on skype this morning (although it's still christmas eve in America!) and opened some presents, it was very nice!  Now I'm getting ready to start the day, I'm having a Christmas dinner party later tonight and I still have some last minute preparations to do.  My parents got me some nice soft pajamas and I don't feel like doing much besides lazing around my room in them, but I have to get going!  They also got me a nice makeup kit though, so that will be fun to experiment with after my shower.

Tomorrow I'm going to head up to Harajuku to look for cheap snowboarding gear, and to Shinjuku to go ahead and get my bus ticket and figure out where the night bus departs from.  Looking forward to snowboarding and going to hot springs in Yamagata when my vacation finally starts!  I have to go into work on Tuesday, but there are no classes that day.  We'll just be cleaning, I think.  I have to get all packed and ready tomorrow though, because I'm going to be leaving directly from work to go to Shinjuku and catch the night bus up to Yamagata.

Mostly foods

Cappucino at the coffee shop near my work

Sundubu jjige at a Korean restaurant in Shimokita

Here I am at work!  I'm getting ready to leave so I don't have my jacket on and I'm wearing my hat

My new haircut!  It doesn't look as good as when it was first done though

Milk tea at a cute cafe in Shimokita

They drew a smiley face on my green curry at the place we went for dinner, haha.  (It doesn't look green because I picked the wrong filter!)

Photos

Here are some photos to tide you over!

The girls of the training group, at a Kyoto style izakaya in Omiya

At the entrance to a big shrine in Omiya

Purikura taken in Shibuya with two of my fellow trainees

The whole group at the end of training