ROUND 2 OF MANY

February of 2024 brought new experiences and trials for me to face, in addition to old.

While I had comfort in knowing I was returning to comfortable territory, it was very anxiety inducing, for many reasons. The biggest cause, this trip had the addition of three other people- it was no longer a solo effort. I still held the title of Resident Trip Planner, but it was scary to have to take so much input into account! Another big portion of my anxiety came from the shortened length of the trip, being two weeks, as opposed to 5. I had to fit the same amount of activities, if not more, into half the time. It was tough, but I somehow managed to make it work!

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The Rundown

I had this trip in the works for a hot minute before anything at all was finalized. I knew for years that I wanted to take a trip to Japan with a group of friends, so I started with my roommates! I knew I wanted to attend the next Snow Miku event after hitting the one in 2023, so I aimed for it. Dates for Snow Miku 2024 were announced in September, but we started looking at hotels and flights in August, just to have a general idea of pricing and where we'd be staying.

We spent two weeks in Japan, spanning from Sapporo and Otaru down to Osaka, following a very similar city-path to the trip I took a year prior. While I could've done a better job at allocating how much time we spent in each city, and hope to do better next time, it still sounds like everyone was satisfied with what we did see, and I couldn't be happier.

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Arrival

Our flight was set for New Chitose Airport on February 7, with two layovers in Chicago and Tokyo. Honestly, it's tied for the most stressful string of airport experiences, next to our return string.

We left MSP at about 7am and landed in Chicago at 8, an hour earlier than scheduled, though most of it was spent stuck on the tarmac- things started off great! We grabbed snacks and very overpriced tylenol in Chicago, and left for Tokyo a little after 1pm. Flight went alright, I can't recall getting much sleep on it unfortunately, but I was able to start a couple of animes I was looking into watching. Arrived in Tokyo, passed through customs without a breeze, and then hell broke loose.

Transport to the domestic terminal went fine, but actually checking our bags for the flight to New Chitose was something of a nightmare. In addition to having the language barrier to deal with, we had to figure out where to re-check our luggage after customs. The signs weren't clear at all, and we spent maybe an extra 10-20 minutes trying to figure out the self-check system, which wasn't what we were supposed to be doing in the first place. Turns out we needed to wait in a super long line for it, and it was even more stressful time aside because there were a bunch of staff telling people to, I guess, hurry up because a flight was leaving at the same time ours was?

Needless to say, we barely made it to the security checkpoint in time and absolutely booked it to the gate. Flight was made on time and went fine. We grabbed our luggage, waited for our trains, hit the hotel, and pretty much proceeded to pass out. I stayed up a little later to grab food from the nearby convenience stores, but I fell asleep with zero issue that night.

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Snow Miku and Otaru

We decided to make our move to Otaru the morning after our arrival. Arrival at the Wing Bay Otaru mall and Grand Park Otaru hotel went very smooth, we had the hotel hold our luggage while we explored the mall and grabbed some very yummy food from the Mos Burger within. I had the Snow Miku collaboration burger, can't remember what was on the burger in terms of sauces but it was way better than I imagined it'd be. Later that evening I also got a collaboration crepe from MOMO, which was mint and chocolate based, it was heavy but still tasty! We very lightly explored around the outside of the mall, mainly the path leading towards the BookOff nearby. We ended up walking on a sidewalk that was maybe 2-3 feet higher than the street because of the snow!

The morning of the Snow Miku event, I woke up super early and got into line at about 7am, beating a very large majority of the crowd that got into line. The line ended up being so long that it spanned the entire length of the mall twice, and went all the way to the train station situated right outside the mall. I got into line just as it started wrapping around, so I was maybe in the first third of people. Three hours of standing in the same spot later, we were let in, and I booked it to the main merch line as soon as I was able. I was able to get a majority of the items on my list, and plan on finding everything I missed on Yahoo Japan Auctions later on. I then got into line for a chance at getting the event's Nendoroid, and proceeded to fail the lottery for it. One of my partners (at my request) got into line to try again and ended up having Magic Hands, thanks to him I was able to get it! We looked around, took pictures, and saw some soon-to-release figures and items. I grabbed some more goods before we left for Sapporo.

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Sapporo & The Snow Festival

We checked into our next hotel in Sapporo the same day of the Miku event, and split our paths somewhat. One of my partners stayed back to get some rest, while the other stuck with me, and the other member of our party headed on his own to the Snow Festival. My partner and I spent our time wandering through quite a few stores, hitting as many as we really could before nightfall hit. I got to see the Snow Miku 2024 Dollfie Dream that was on display at the VOLKS Showroom, and I nearly caved on one of the other Snow Miku Dollfie outfits I saw for sale elsewhere.

At the end of the evening, we headed towards the Snow Festival to meet up with our fourth trip member, and to scale to Sapporo TV Tower. We got to see Odori Park and the Snow Festival from above, and got to walk down some of the scariest steps I've ever been down. All steel, only a chain-link fence keeping the edge of the stairs from a several-hundered foot drop into the open air. It was definitely a cool view, but SCARY! From there, we split paths again, and the Festival lights turned off, leaving me and my partner available to see all the snow sculptures in the dark with a huge lack of crowd. I saw my girl Snow Miku, and we left back to the hotel, walking in the fresh falling snow and calm city silence,

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Sapporo Depature and Tokyo Arrival

The day of our depature from Sapporo was... a struggle... We ran into the results of a rather large snowfall, leaving many of the sidewalks unplowed, and us to drag our huge and heavy suitcases through it. It took us maybe 10-15 minutes to walk what should've been 5, but we made it through! Our experience at New Chitose Airport was smooth, and the seating area for our flight was rather comfy, in my opinion! Because of the way the airport is laid out, we ended up riding a bus out to our plane further out on the tarmac, which was a first! The flight was nice, and we arrived in Tokyo without any issue! The rail ride between Haneda and the main Tokyo area was neat, they had seats in the center facing the windows rather than the regular opposite, which was really cool!

Because our flight arrived before we could actually check into our hotel in Kanda, we had them hold our luggage and headed towards the Namco Tokyo building in Shinjuku. They had a Miku collaboration ending that same day, so I made it a point to check it out and grab some exclusive merch, in addition to trying out one of the (non-alcoholic) drinks on their bar menu. We spent quite a bit of time there checking out the arcade games and hanging out in the bar area, listening to the virtual DJ.

From there, we went back to check into the hotel and check out the Pokemon Center in Tokyo. Even later than that, 9pm to be exact, we went to the Final Fantasy 14 Eorzea Cafe for our reservation. The food there was very good! I unfortunately was very tired that night so I didn't get "the full experience," but I still had a good time with everyone! We got an absolute crap-ton of exclusive coasters from the amount of orders we made lol.