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05-05-2008, 01:05 AM
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05-07-2008, 05:44 AM
Are you sure if you're ready for the long, severe winters in Sapporo or in Hokkaido in general? If that's no problem, Sapporo would be a good place to live in. It's not exactly cheap there as it's a city of a million residents. But rents can be 30-40 % lower there than in Tokyo. Other prices aren't very different, though.
One last note. You may want to know that the economy in Hokkaido and Okinawa is and will almost always be worse than in the rest of Japan. Those are the prefectures with the worst unemployment rate in the country. Both are excellent vacation destinations. No doubt about it. That's why I keep going back to Hokkaido. But to live there might not be the same. |
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05-13-2008, 01:03 AM
I'm planning on applying for JET, and one of the places I was going to request, was Hokkaido (or someplace close to Sapporo, not necessarily Sapporo [I'm interested in Ishikari]), and my main reasons for it, is for the climate and the recreation. Granted, I don't know too much about Hokkaido's history.
I had no idea that Hokkaido was bad economically. I guess working there through a program or something like that would work out better, but going there on your own for the sole purpose of working/living there without the help would probably be very difficult for a foreigner. |
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Q for Nagoyankee -
05-13-2008, 04:35 PM
Just out of interest Nagoyankee, would you say the feel of Sappparo is simlilar to other large cities in Japan or would you say that it's more provincial, owing to the fact that Hokkaido is a popular holiday destination, as you rightly mentioned.
Exactly how cold does it get there? -20C? |
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05-14-2008, 07:42 AM
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That is a good question. If you go directly from where you are to Sapporo, I don't think you will feel anything so special about the city. But if you go there after having spent some time in larger cities on Honshuu (the main island), I'm pretty sure you will feel that you've come a long way. Sapporo doesn't exactly feel 'provincial' because it is a large city and it does have some skyscrapers. But if you go just a little outside of Sapporo and start seeing the huge ranches and corn/potato fields, then you will start wondering if you aren't actually in Idaho or Iowa. Hokkaido is in a sense like the Wild West in North America. Many people there have been living there only for a few generations (that is a short time by the Japanese standard). They are the descendants of the pioneers who had moved from other parts of Japan. If you're interested in Japanese dialects or in linguistics in general, you will be fascinated to find that in Hokkaido, people speak very much like Tokyoites despite its location, which is nowhere near Tokyo. This is the result of those pioneers trying to communicate with one another better by dropping the most distinct features of their own dialects that they had once brought to Hokkaido. Sorry I went off-topic. I'm very language-oriented.... If you ever go to Sapporo as a tourist, make sure you go to the near-by Otaru. You will see very attractive old brick buildings, excellent souvenir stores, lots of big Russian sailors/fishermen, etc. Otaru once was the center of Hokkaido before airplanes replaced boats as the main shipping method in trade between Hokkaido and the rest of Japan. |
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