Sunday, November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving and the Train to Hakodate

Since the charter planes go to Sapporo every Saturday and Wednesday, we decided to extend our trip and go down to Hakodate and catch the charter plane back from there on Friday. There isn't much to do in Hakodate but shop, so we decided to go on Thursday.  When we got to the train station, there was a bunch of commotion and we saw that no trains were running to Hakodate or to the airport.  We were able to find out that our train was delayed, not canceled. As you can imagine, the crowd of people kept getting bigger and bigger.  The local news station even showed up!  That's when we started getting concerned and hoping that it wasn't anything major, like the events that were going on at the time in Bangkok and Mumbai.  We heard there was an accident, but that was all we could find out from anyone, as most people in Sapporo do not speak English.   Our train ended up being delayed about 3 hours, and we arrived in Hakodate with no problems.

We had our "Thanksgiving" lunch here...we all had Sapporo Ramen and gyoza - Yum!

Hanging out with our many bags while waiting for news on our train

The local news station showed up to report on the accident

Finally on the train!

Passing the time with Sylvester and Tweety

Having some Cheetos - we found some at the import store!

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