Odori park and Maruyama park

Sunday was another exciting day in Sapporo!

First, I managed to do laundry. Laundry isn't nearly so annoying when the machine is a) right across the hall from your front door, and b) free! I definitely pressed some wrong buttons because when I heard the machine beeping that it was finished, it turned out that I had soaked my clothes instead of actually washing them (i.e. they were in several feet of skunky water when I went to get them). I pressed a different series of buttons and eventually ended up with clean-smelling clothes, so something went right. 

After that I went for an adventure with my labmate and her family. The first thing I did was fall into a ditch. Luckily, things got better after that. The weather was also much nicer than yesterday; it was warmer and it only rained at the very beginning and end of the day. My friend and her family showed me the alternate road out of the forest (I was waaay off, as it turns out), and they also pointed out that the closest subway station has not only a big department store, which I knew about, but also a big 100 yen store AND a big grocery store!! Way to go Linda on noticing things.

The first place we went was the former Hokkaido government office. It was really beautiful, with tulips and lilacs and lots of huge trees! There were also ducks and pigeons and ENORMOUS carp. 

Also, ravens in Japan are huge. HUGE! Apparently they are also not afraid of people, because my labmate told me stories about seeing them stealing hot dogs from children and such. One almost flew off with my friend's daughter at one point.

Next, we walked through Odori park. Likely because the weather was better, today there was music and food stalls and tons of people. I never made it to the tulip festival but I think this was the next best thing.

After that, we took the subway and headed to Maruyama Park, a huge, beautiful park that houses a zoo, a mountain, and the biggest shrine in Hokkaido! We walked around the park for a little while, then made it up to the shrine. There was a wedding going on inside but I didn't really take photos (I'm not THAT much of a creepy weirdo).

By then it was getting late and it had started to rain, so we headed back. Along the way, two Mormon missionaries on bicycles came to a screeching halt when they saw us (because we are white) and started witnessing to us and handing us flyers. I had heard that there were a fair number of missionaries hanging around to prey on foreigners but I was pretty impressed to run into some on my first weekend! My labmate's husband was much nicer to them than I would have been. 

We made it home in the middle of a crazy rainstorm. I thought my labmate's daughter was going to fall asleep in the middle of the street, but we all made it home in one piece.