Japan Trip February 2025
Back in February, my friends and I spent two weeks in Japan. This was actually our second time traveling there together - my friend Nathan wrote a nice little post about our first trip back in October 2023 on his blog if you want to read more about it. It was really fun! We did it a little differently this time, starting our trip way up north in Hokkaido then having a very leisurely ten days in Tokyo. Another wonderful trip with friends and we were already talking about going back within 15 minutes of landing in Boston! Here’s some of the highlights:
Snowboarding in Hokkaido
Since we decided to go back to Japan in the winter we elected to start our trip in Hokkaido.
We did a day of snowboarding at Sapporo Tiene (where they held the Winter Olympics back in the 70s) and it was incredible. The conditions were absolutely perfect, all fresh powder and barely any ice. The mountain was great too, there was a really long green trail that started at the very top and ended at the bottom and beside from a very flat section it was a beautiful ride.
Sapporo + Otaru
Sapporo and Otaru are so gorgeous in the winter. The amount of snow up there was actually crazy. It was like Boston 2015 Snowmageddon levels everywhere. It made for really beautiful sights though, can never get enough of being able to see big snowy mountains even in the middle of the city. Going to different shrines and seeing them covered in snow was amazing too.
Obviously the highlight of visiting Sapporo in the winter is the Sapporo Snow Festival downtown. There are blocks and blocks of really impressive (and HUGE) snow sculptures. They even have people from other countries competing in a snow sculpting contest as well! A few streets away we even found just as impressive ice sculptures.
Otaru was also really fun to explore, it's such a gorgeous little town with a lot of quaint little craft shops. It was here where we had soup curry for the first time, probably my favorite meal we had on the trip.
Concerts
We saw three shows during the Tokyo leg of the trip. First was Porter Robinson - I had already seen a show from this tour in Boston last summer but since he just so happened to be in Tokyo the same time we were… we had to go. Amazing as always. My eighth time seeing him!
Next we saw ExWHYZ and Haru Nemuri. I’m a big fan of Haru Nemuri and her show didn’t disappoint - she was awesome and I even got to meet her and get a signed CD. ExWHYZ is an indie idol group I didn’t know, but was excited when I learned they had a cover of a Shinichi Osawa song I love. They were super fun to watch, and I totally get why people love idol groups now after experiencing a very active crowd.
Finally (on my birthday!) we saw Yuragi, a shoegaze band playing their new album in Shibuya. I hadn’t heard of these guys either but I loved them. The only bad part was being at a standing room only venue after walking around the city all day haha
Fighting Games
I’m not gonna lie, I spent more time than I probably should have in arcades playing Street Fighter. Street Fighter is huge in Japan and now that they have cabinets of Street Fighter 6 in arcades I wanted to see how good I did since arcade players over there are generally way better. And I held my own! They match you with people at your skill level and at one point I was on an 8 win streak which was dope. Although one game I played against a guy sitting next to me who was ranked in Diamond and he wiped the floor with me lol. I think he felt a little bad because he went easier on me the second round.
Then afterwards I went to the Gigo next door and beat another tourist 5 times in a row in Third Strike LMAO. Felt good.
Shopping
Most of our time in Tokyo was spent shopping to be honest. My goals were to buy a nice pair of jeans and a Japanese region PS2 to play my import games. And I did come home with both of those! I got a perfect pair of jeans from DryBones in Daikanyama, one of my favorite stores.
I picked up a bunch of retro games too - mainly for PS1 and PS2 but I did have to get a couple of the M2 Shottriggers games on the PS4 as well.
And of course I went ham record shopping in Shibuya: stopping at Tower Records, Face Records, Manhattan Records, Next Records… lots of places sell singles for vinyl DJs so those are fun to poke through. Not as fun bringing them all home on the plane though.
Comitia
On our last day, Nathan and I went to Comitia which is a big indie comics and craft festival. Not as big as Comiket, but still a huge venue with TONS of vendors. The last time we were in Japan we went to Yaroufes which is a much smaller and more specialized comics festival so being able to go to one of the bigger ones was super cool. Left with a couple art books!
Food and Friends
The most important part of the trip by far was spending good times with friends (and making new ones!) and eating tons of delicious food. Always my favorite part of going to Japan. Until next time - but for now enjoy some more photos.
