Every year in the summer, there are tons of festivals (known in Japanese as matsuris) in Japan. Right when we got back from Hokkaido, there was a festival in Misawa! We got ready in our festival gear and headed out the door!
One thing we learned at the festival is that Forrest loves to dance! We couldn’t get him away from the music!! He also invented a new dance that appears to be a cross between a rain dance and the chicken dance. Video posted below!
Hokkaido is the island in the northern-most part of Japan. We’ve been to big city Sapporo before the “Yuki Matsuri”, or Snow Festival, that happens in the middle of winter, but we’ve never seen the rest of the beautiful island. With 5 days off, we decided to make the most of our time and see as much of it as we could!
When we landed in Sapporo, we were greeted with the ongoing Summer Festival! Seriously, do they just party there all the time? The current festival was a beer festival, broken up into 5 parts. The first part was all the Suntory beers, second was Kirin, third was Asahi, fourth was Sapporo, and the fifth part was beers from around the world.
We stayed the night in Sapporo at a hotel with onsen, free nightly ice cream and ramen bowls, and free morning Yakult yogurt drinks. The next day we took off for Noboribetsu, a city known for its volcanic activity and fantastic onsets. The hotel we stayed at had 5 different types of onsens! These included a ferrous sulfate onsen, salt onsen, sodium onsen, and a sulfur onsen. Each has different minerals that provide different healing properties.
In Noboribetsu, we went to “Hell Valley”, which has tons of active volcanic activity. No wonder the onsets here were so great!
Next up, Otaru, a city known for its European like architecture and canal. Here we went to a Brew House to try the local craft Otaru beer, the canal of course, a music box museum, hand-crafted glass stores (glass blowing is a specialty in Otaru), and shopping on the side streets.
Next up, Furano, a city known for its flowers. When we went, lavender was in full bloom. One of the places we went to in Furano was Ningle Terrace. This is a cute woodsy area with tons of little handicraft shops, all of which are log cabins. The atmosphere was so beautiful, and here we found Forrest’s favorite dessert: baked milk.
Seeing Hokkaido in the summer was such a great experience! Hopefully we will get to continue to explore even more of Japan while we are here!
On the way to Morioka, we went to Koiwai Farm, one of Japan’s oldest and most famous dairy farms. It’s a huge farm filled with tons of activities and fresh ice cream and milk.
One of the things we did in Morioka was to see castle ruins. Unfortunately there really wasn’t much left to see.
We took Forrest to the zoo!
At our amazing onset hotel, they had nightly performances. This one was about the famous festival that takes place in Morioka every year. They loved playing with Forrest.
Mom came to Japan for Forrest’s first birthday and was able to stay for a while. During her time, she spent a lot of time working with Forrest to help him learn to walk. After a short time with his dadimaa, he picked it up! This video was the third take, and to be honest, I didn’t expect to actually capture his first step!
For Forrest’s first birthday, Leanne planned an amazing “forest” themed birthday! She home-made a cake shaped like a log with wood bark and everything, topped with woodland animals. We invited all the neighborhood kids, made a lot of food, and set up a huge bounce house!
After the party (and a nap), Forrest opened all his gifts.
