Day 1 - Sapporo, Japan - June 12

We arrived in Chitose around 9 pm on the 11th of June and took a cab to our hotel. It was a nice hotel. We didn’t sleep well though because the time is completely opposite here. We were REALLY ready to leave and get our rental car to pick up Mike! We picked up our car around 8:30 am. Dave had been stressing this moment for months! But he did really well. The only mistake he made was using the windshield wiper instead of the turn signal. We arrived at the mission office around 9:30 am. As soon as I got out of the car I saw Mike through the glass doors. It was incredible! I opened the door and got to hold him and see him. I missed him so much! We got to meet his mission president and wife and everyone from the office. It was super cool. It seemed very surreal, being in Sapporo with Mike. We had him change out of his suit and then we walked to a nearby store to buy some breakfast and snack items. We then drove to a park in the city and ate some food and walked to a shrine in the park. The park was beautiful, and it was so neat to hear Mike explaining everything about the shrine area to us. He was telling us all about Japan and its custom and words and everything. It’s so cool to see him read the Kanji and be able to translate everything for us. After we left the park we went to Mt. Moiwa. We took the pretty winding road most of the way up and got out and hiked about 10 minutes to the top. There is a beautiful view of the city below us. We also ran into another missionary that was leaving. He was there at the top of the mount with his family as well. We ended up running into him later in the city as well. After we left the mount, we decided to see the Sapporo temple that is being built right now. We parked at a family m art nearby and walked all the way around the construction site. It will be a big temple, and very beautiful when it is finished. It is a very powerful place. The temple was nearby Mike’s area of Shiroishi so he told us a few Shiroishi stories and we drove past the apartment he lived in. We then drove to Odori Park. It’s a mile long park in the center of Sapporo. We walked for about ½ mile to the clock tower, bought a cool key chain for Josh, and then we watched some dances performing for the festival this upcoming week. For dinner we went into the train station, which is also a huge mall. Mike took us to a ramen section of the mall and we had ramen for dinner. Oh my goodness it was delicious! I failed big time with my chopsticks, but I managed to eat most of it and got really full. We had planned on going back to Mt. Moiwa to see the city lights at night, but at this point dad and I were really tired, so we drove to our hotel. It was about a 45 minute drive out of town to some really pretty green, hilly areas. Our hotel is on a hot spring so there were onsen in the hotel, and our hotel was amazing! It’s like a mini Japanese house. And the coolest part of all is we had our own little onsen in our room. It’s like a sauna room off of our bathroom and there is a hot spring bath in there. It was heaven!