Where'd I go?

The blog's been unusually quiet for the last week. There's a reason for that-- I've been out of town and without internet connection. Today, right now would be the first time I connected to the net since last Wedensday night. To be honest, it's not so bad living without an internet connection for a week, especially when you have fun things to do.

So gone for a week, how did I manage that for the first week of May? Did I skip classes and lab? Nope I didn't. There's something called "golden week" in Japan which is a string of 3 holidays during the week. The other 2 weekdays are unfortunately normal days but students have a tendency to take them off anyways (well, I didn't).

Last year, my adventures during golden week took me to Nagoya to visit my current roomie's home town in Nagoya. This year, I took the ferry in the opposite direction to Hokkaido, Japan's Northen most island. My roomie's friend was heading back there for the next few weeks and kindly passed me the invite to stay over at his place should I head there. I took him up on that offer.

Hap-hazardly, I booked my ferry ride to and from Sendai 2 days before I left. This being the busy travelling season, would be an impossibility, but this year, as with last year, luck was on my side. Hokkaido is a very big and Japan's least developed island out of the 4 main islands. I read on the internet that public transport was somewhat sparse and travelling long distances would be quite expensive. I made a snap decision that I'd bring my scooter to the island to aid me in my travels. It'd cost me about 60 bucks extra on the round trip but I thought it was worth it.... it was *so* worth it. I got a booking on the ferry and was off to Hokkaido on Wedensday evening. See the map below for my ferry route.


By Thursday morning I arrived at Tomakomai ferry terminal, my vacation began. 4 days and 200 pictures later I returned to Sendai on a Monday morning and went straight to lab. Stories on my adventures in Hokkaido later on.