honestly though, watch out for chinese while your there, they are assholes, especially as tourists. apparently hokkaido is popular among "rich" chinamen and i had a few run ins with them.
i dont know if i blogged this, but while i was studying abroad there was 2 chink girls and 2 arabs also studying at the same college. We did a few things together, such as calligraphy and things like that, with the japanese class. And all of the japanese would crowd around the 2 white 'merican exchange students, and nearly completely ignored the others.