THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME
In February and March of 2023, I spent 35 days, travelled a minimum of 8.4k miles, and took 428,000 steps in Japan.
That's frankly an insane amount of travelling for a first-time solo trip overseas, let's talk about it!
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JANUARY 31ST / FEBRUARY 1ST
Departure & Arrival
Despite my first flight being scheduled to leave at around 5am, I arrived at MSP at 1:30 in the morning. It was so early that TSA wasn't operating and I wasn't able to properly check in for the flight, stuck essentially twiddling my thumbs for two hours as to not drain the battery on my Switch and phone. Starving, I survived the flight to Chicago and made a beeline to McDonalds, just in time to watch the sun rise over O'Hare Airport's apron. A truly beautiful sight. I got a breakfast burrito, hashbrown, and an orange soda.
At approximately 9:00 I was able to watch the Japan Airlines airbus pull into the boarding area, and it's insanely hard to comprehend the absolute size of the thing, even when it's right in front of you. Not only was it massive on the outside, it was incredibly roomy on the inside as well, I was lucky enough to have an empty row the entire flight, though I didn't utilize it much. Probably one of the comfier flights I've been on, truthfully.
I arrived at Haneda between 2:30 and 3pm local time, got rushed through customs because I didn't know there was customs information I could take care of on the flight, and got to see a very welcoming poster of my wife Hatsune Miku, a sign of fun times to come. Not so much for the next few hours following the arrival though, as I couldn't find my next gate to Sapporo- it was missing on my boarding pass.
Thankfully the airport staff saved my ass, apparently my original flight had been cancelled due to the snow storm in Sapporo, but they were able to squeeze me onto one of, if not the last flight there for the night. Crisis semi-averted.
The plane ended up circling the runway for at least 30 minutes, trying to land in maybe the heaviest snowstorm I've been in. I wish I would've taken a proper video of it from the hotel window.
At 9:00, I retired for the night, relieved to sleep in a bed, and to have made it through one of the most stressful parts of the trip.
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FEBRUARY 2ND
Snow Miku Skytown & New Chitose Airport, With a Side of Stiff Beds
I had a suprisingly early morning after travelling 20+ hours with not much shut-eye, woke up somewhat before 8am, and was out to wreak havok across the New Chitose Airport by 9. I had a not-so-great breakfast, but I was looking forwards to staring down the Snow Miku Skytown doors until they opened at 11. I discovered tax-free shopping while splurging on Snow Miku x Kuromi collab goods, and then got to be surrounded by fellow Miku fans for maybe the first time in my life. So many people brought their merch to take photos with right in front of a cutout of Isakytm's winning Snow Miku 2023 design. I also got to see the elusive Snow Miku Dollfie Dream in-person for the first time, and seeing the absolute size of her made me more motivated than ever to hunt her down and bring her home.
The rest of my time at CTS was spent browsing the Sanrio shop and one of the arcades, trying my hand at (and winning!) a chocolate-themed Miku acrylic standee. From there, I hopped on the train and headed towards Sapporo. According to my maps and photo timeline, I was very quick to retire for the night- by 3:30 I was checked into the hotel and had my photo of "dinner" taken, being instant ramen, Meiji Apollo chocolates, a Crunky bar, and a bottle of Royal Milk Tea.
It was at this hotel where I unfortunately had the worst headache of the trip, and also the worst beds + pillows of the trip.
No painkillers to be had.
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FEBRUARY 3RD
Hotel Transfer and Scoping out Wing Bay Otaru
I had a later awakening this day, likely due to the headache and poor sleep quality the night before. I spent a couple hours in the afternoon browsing second-hand shops in Sapporo after checking out of the hotel. I apparently didn't do much after arriving in Otaru later, while I definitely scoped out the Wing Bay mall and Grand Park hotel, I can't recall spending much time on anything in particular. I got to see the entrance to the Snow Miku event area, and there were a ton of different standees and pieces of signage to look at. The beds were comfy and the view was fantastic.
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FEBRUARY 4TH
Snow Miku 2023 Galore
I woke up early and stared in awe at the longest line I had ever seen for an event forming underneath my 14th floor window. It was barely 8am and the line was at least 50 people deep just from what I could see. I found my way around the building and into the line at 9:20, and by 9:30, the event was open!
Snow Miku 2023, as an event, was almost everything I could've asked for as a Miku fanatic, obvious lack of concert aside lol. I got to see the Magical Mirai 2022 tour trailer outside the mall, prototypes of the Snow'23 figures, tons of exclusive art and a short exclusive mist-projection demo. They had the life-sized statues of the main 6 Vocaloids on display, and there was even a display panel for the Miku Japan Tour- THUNDERBOLT! I spent a solid few hours at the event making sure to get my merch fill in, scoring the Snow Miku 2023 Nendoroid early and adding two new shirts to my suitcase, along with tons of gacha tin badges, some of which I ended up sending to a couple of my lovely Instagram mutuals. I tried a collab danish from the mall's Danish King location, and made my way back to Sapporo around 1:30.
I spent the rest of the evening browsing shops, scouring for more Miku merch! I saw another Thunderbolt display, along with the Miku x FILA collaboration shoes in the JR Sapporo shopping area, then went to the VOLKS Showroom to check out the Dollfies they had on display. If I wasn't into the idea of Miku-related Dollfie collecting before, I definitely was now- they had all of the previous Snow Miku outfits on display, in addition to the 2023 outfit and the Rin and Len Reboot dolls! The craftsmanship on those things are insane. I left the showroom with two Snow'23 GIFT plushies in tow, one as a proxy purchase for a mutual.
From there, it was off to the Sapporo Snow Festival! At that point, it was nearing 7, so I made it a point just to visit the Miku sculpture for the night, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a projection-mapped light-show for her! I remember spending nearly two hours watching it and the surrounding interactive ice marimba instrument the lot had, slowly inching closer to the sculpture for a better view and photos. It was cold, but being surrounded by fellow Miku fans made it so worth it, plus it further solidified SnowMix as a song I could definitely cry to in the future, because of how much it was starting to mean to me.
By 9, I was back at the hotel and ready for bed. I made the unfortunate discovery that my one pair of shoes for the trip had worn down considerably- there was now a complete lack of protection foam where one's achilles tendon hits. It had gotten to the point where the plastic bits underneath would rub against my sock, essentially eating it and my tendon alive as I walked, and there was nothing I could really do to fix it. So it stayed, and I came back home in March with several fewer wearable socks than I left with.
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