Transfers and noodles`

With all the flying and transfers and time difference going on it took me from monday morning to tuesday afternoon local time to get to my first destination, Sapporo. Because Sapporo airport isn't serviced by European airliners i had to transfer at Nagoya airport which cost me about 5 additional hours.
Nevertheless it was a good trip and since the transfers were pretty short it wasn't really a problem. After all i'm on vacation right? :-)
After taking care of mobile internet and the Railpasses for the entire trip i figured i just as well get me a Kitaca card. This is a chipcard you can use for checking in and out of subway stations as well as paying for food and drinks at stations. This can save you a lot of work and headaches if you know the subway system and how payment works here. Especially if you have 273 subway stations like in Tokyo for example.
Getting the card however turned out to be a challenge. The guy behind the counter didn't speak English and since my Japanese consists roughly of being able to say "i speak a little Japanese" it took a lot of verbal and non verbal communication (including the help of Google translate) to get the card. Even a simple form with questions like name, birthday etc takes a lot of work. But in the end we even managed to get my name written in Japanese on the card, Peturiku. A train trip and 10 minute walk finally got me to the hotel where i checked in and took a long shower and short rest before heading of to a noodle bar that was recommended by the Khaosan hostel's receptionist. For only 760 yen you get a huge bowl of miso noodle soup (or whatever other flavor you wish) and it's insanely good! I will probably visit this place a couple more times. Now i'm in the hostels common room typing this short report before i'm off to bed. I think the jetlags kicking in right now...
P.S. Did i mention already that the toilets are awesome here?Read more