Sapporo

Sapporo is a large city that is maybe 30 miles away from Chitose.  We used to ride the train to get there but I do remember taking the bus a couple of time.  You can not say 2 words about Sapporo with out saying something about the Ice festival and Sapporo beer.  I went to the Ice Festival two times while I was there.  I will have to admit it was pretty neat.   But I dont think it really lived up to the hype.  But what do I know about Ice Sculpture, I live in Florida.   Sapporo was a big town and you could get lost pretty easy.  Not many people spoke English and there were very few Tourist or Americans in the area.  All this was about to change in 1972.  In 1972 Sapporo hosted the winter Olympics.  The airport was at Chitose so they expanded the Chitose airport and vastly improved the road and rail systems going to Sapporo  Chitose is now a very large  international airport.  I would suspect the change would be very hard to comprehend.   Maybe like trying to explain what Orlando Florida was like before Disney.  Anyways we used to go Sapporo every now and then to just look around and drink a little beer.  Not a real good idea to get wasted when you cant speak or read any of the signs and such.  Back then  there was very little English on signs.  I knew a few basic words and could ask a few questions get around ok but it was hard to do.  I had the symbols for Chitose written in Katakana   so I could find the right bus or train if I really got lost.  There are 3 different type of writting in japan.  There is Kanj(hard complex Chinese style) then there is Hiragana(not as complex) and Katakana.  Katakana is the simplest of the 3 and you can actually learn to read some of it.  I always thought that the symbol for Chi looked like a double telephone pole sitting on a hill.  Some people picked up on it very fast and could write Katakana pretty good.  I never advanced that far.  People used to leave notes to each  written in Katakana quite a bit.  Guys got to doing  it in Ops but the lifers could not read it so they made everyone quit using it. Sometimes people would stop you and try out their English on you.  It never bothered me and it was neat that they were trying to learn.  They was a demand for people to teach English. 
Sometimes not formal stuff but conversational English.   My friend and his wife used to teach a class for a Swedish Steel company that had a office in Sapporo.   The Swedes did nor want to learn Japanese and the Japanese did not want to learn  the Swedish language so they used English.  I taught a couple of times when my friends could not make it.  It was weird see every thing in English and very few people could speak it.  They could read and write fairly well but speaking English was difficult for them.  They were very nice to me and it was always a very enjoyable time.  There was a very large market that sold everything.  There was a guy that sold snakes that were used a medicine  some dried, some pickled, some alive.  No I never tried any of them.    We used to go skiing when they had the Olympics.   I almost really hurt my self a couple of times but I survived.  I think I will make a separate chapter on skiing. In the winter tt was neat ridding the train  and seeing all the houses down in the valleys all covered in snow.  I meant they really got covered up with many of them only the chimney  and part of the roof would be showing.   Snow, snow and more snow always a lot of snow in the area.  I never went to the Sapporo brewery.  Like I said I did not hang out much in Sapporo, too big.