The North: Day 5 - The thing about Sapporo is that it eventually ends.

 Our last day in Sapporo, a flight to Sendai, and laundry. That about catches you up. 

Baby's first Zunda Shake

Okay, fine. Details. 

After some well ordered packing and re-assembling of our luggage (plus about 20 minutes of Tetris to make sure the souvenirs fit in our checked bag)(Angie: yes, we already have that many souvenirs and it is 90% my fault, sorrynotsorry), we ambled our way to Sapporo station to take the train to the airport. Overall, the transit to the station went fine, apart from foggy glasses. It takes me a lot of mental energy to focus on walking slowly and not taking paths that could cause difficult rolling for the luggage, but we made it to the train with limited issues. Security at Sapporo went quickly after checking two of our bags in, then The Waiting Game commenced. (Angie: but wait! You didn't even tell them about the cool checked luggage machine ANA has! So they have a line of large, luggage-sized capsules with cage doors. You scan your boarding pass and it prints out your luggage tag (in economy you get one free checked bag on ANA BTW). The luggage tag isn't a sticker but both sides have a not sticky but slightly gummy glue on it that will only stick to the other side of the luggage tag when you make a loop. I love it. Then you have to place your luggage a certain way that took me two tries to understand, because once you tag your bag with the tag at the top and the bag upright facing the back wall, it closes a roll-cage door, flips the luggage down and scans the tag as well as weighs your luggage and, if all is good, sends it on its way down the conveyor belt per usual. No staff needed. I really enjoyed that!) 

Like all good Americans traveling, we arrived at the airport a bit over two hours early. When we arrived at our gate, we found ourselves alone (apart from one other guy, who we assumed had already been there for hours and who mysteriously disappeared before the plane boarded) at the gate. It was probably another hour before anyone showed up and the majority of the passengers didn't arrive until about 20 minutes before boarding. (Angie: They also weirdly blocked off all entrances and exits to the waiting area to our gate, which was down some stairs and it was only two other gates there. So when I went upstairs to get food, I came back and the stairs and the elevator were roped off? So I just sat nearby and ate my salad and onigiri hoping that everything was okay but they eventually reopened the area. No idea why they did this when there was clearly 2 people down there.)

Our departure gate *wind whistles hollowly*

Our flight was via a Japanese regional carrier called IBEX and the plane we were on had livery from the Rakuten Golden Eagles baseball team. Both the exterior and interior of the plane were decorated, and two of the staff members were wearing jerseys for the team. If their colors weren't so... Kansas City, I might be tempted to pick something up. But I won't, because KC knows what it did. 

The flight was quick, descending less than 15 minutes after the drink service, and soon we found ourselves at the Sendai Airport. Another (relatively) quick train later and we found ourselves in the city proper. Our hotel is an APA owned property, which is always weird because there's so much Japanese Nationalist Propaganda. It'd be like an American hotel chain that was *obsessed* with the 1950s post-war era (not, like, the *look* of the 1950s, but the *feeling* of the 1950s) and American Ethnic Purity. An odd decision for a hotel chain that caters to foreign tourists and business-people, but that's the owner's choice. (Angie: Jeff seemed to have forgotten completely to include the fact we did our laundry. Which, to be fair, isn't very exciting, but it is in the blog title. I don't want anyone to be disappointed. Also, doing laundry at 3pm on a Friday here at the hotel seems to be a great time as no one was yet using any of the 3 coin laundry facilities. We took two of them, they are the kind that lets you wash and dry in the same unit for 500yen. You also put in a PIN so that only you can unlock the machine and take your laundry when it's done! Nice!)

We popped over to 7/11 to pick up our concert and event tickets, grab some cash from the ATM, and then head back to the hotel to decompress. I had attempted to withdraw what I thought was about $100, but somehow screwed up the math on the conversion rate and accidentally withdrew what I thought was about $1000. Thankfully, it was only about $650, but still. A lotta cash that will (probably) get used anyway. Just a very odd sensation. 

After a few hours of chilling out to recover, we went back to the train station to pick up our reserved tickets. Angie wanted to try a local sweet treat, Zunda Shake. It's made with milk and vanilla ice cream, like any other shake, but the flavor comes from Edamame soy beans. She seemed to enjoy it, which was great because I did not. 

Zunda shake pictured above so have these sprinkle sandwiches from Lawsons.

We headed back again to the room, (picked up our laundry about 2 minutes after it was finished (it took 2 hours) and there was already an impatient man waiting outside the facility, clanking his yen coins in an idle animation of impatience. Dude, there's a whole-ass laundry unit available. Shut up!) showered, and settled in for some YouTube and Japanese TV to close out the night. 

Tomorrow (well, today for us), we'll be on our way to Morioka for further adventures. (Here's hoping the sakura trees are blossoming!)