Drag queens, ramen and beer

Yes, the header indicates that it was a quintessentially Sapporo weekend (last weekend, that is).

I went to the Rainbow March, Sapporo's gay pride parade, which is also the longest running in Japan and is notable for being one in which the city mayor addresses the rally - something that is quite rare for government officials to do at these sort of events due to the taboo view and hush-hush attitude generally held toward homosexuality in Japan.

However, it seems the island of Hokkaido (where Sapporo is) is a little more open about those kind of things, being a place that Japanese people didn't come to until quite later in Japan's history. So Hokkaido's a newer place (thus more oldschool western style brick buildings and Sapporo's unique grid layout) with people who wanted to get away from the main island, and thus the folks here a little more open-minded - which totally reminds me of Portland!!

Speaking of (as seen in second photo), the lovely host read a message from Sam Adams, the mayor of Portland (who is gay).

I ran into some friends there, one who is also from Portland (REPRAZENT) and we hit up the famous Ramen Yokocho, and area in Sapporo which has tons of ramen shops. After a bit of looking around, we picked a place and I got their specialty ramen, butter corn miso.






And then the next day I went to go meet a friend from my time on study abroad in Akita Prefecture, who came to visit with a bunch of the new study abroad students. We met at the Sapporo beer factory museum and enjoyed deliciouuuussssss Ebisu!!!