After going to Japan in August once before, we learned two things:

• Japan is awesome.
• Japan in August is ungodly hot, and therefore less awesome.

So if we were ever to go back, it would definitely NOT be in…

…what’s that?  Work is sending me to Japan for a conference? In August?  Welp. After all, that’s how we ended up there last time, albeit for Leigh’s work rather than mine.

This time I would be attending the 20th World Targetry and Target Chemistry Conference, in the early capital of Nara, of bowing deer fame.  And this time it would be Leigh’s turn to faff about while I sat in a conference.

As before, we determined to make a vacation of the trip, and scheduled a week ahead of time to see some sights.  However, this time we got smart, and to avoid as much as possible of the aforementioned ungodly heat, we scheduled the vacation part of our trip in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, where it was predicted to be as much as five degrees Celsius cooler!

I had also kept a continuous DuoLingo Japanese streak for the entire time since our last visit, so I was completely prepared to ask directions to the zoo and then not understand the answer. (動物園はどこですか？) Would we actually be GOING to any zoos this trip?  Stay tuned…

We flew into Haneda airport in Tokyo.  There actually IS a direct flight from Vancouver to Sapporo in Hokkaido, but it only runs during ski season.  We should actually try that some January, now that I think about it.

But for our decidedly NON-skiing trip (see also, ungodly heat), we flew into Tokyo and transferred to a flight to Sapporo.  Sapporo airport turns out to be nearly an hour from the city by transit, but we made it in and stumbled to our hotel, located on one of the most famous corners in Hokkaido.

Oh, Japan.  This was gonna be great.