On
Saturday (6/28), all the HIF students and professors took a trip to Onuma, a town about an hour away, for the weekend. We stayed overnight in a hotel lodged in a valley between two mountains. On my way to the bus in the morning, I was nerdily excited to see a 交番 (
kooban) a "police box," a tiny police station placed in the middle of metropolitan areas. We had learned about them at Yale but I hadn't run into one yet.
Once on the bus, it was nice to "get away" (even though this entire trip is a sort of getaway) and go even further into the natural scenery of the country. I had a short essay to finish and submit (...of course…), but once I got that done, I was able to relax.
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| View from the bus window |
The bus first dropped us off near a park, and we were free to find lunch from a selection of great local restaurants. Four of us decided to get a Genghis Khan – basically, a whole platter of meat that you simmer yourself right in front of you. It was
de-li-ci-ous. And, for dessert, lavender soft-serve from a ice cream stand.
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| Gearing up to eat, with bibs |
After lunch, with about half an hour to spare, I walked around inside the park, and pinched myself that I was in the middle of a tiny woods in Japan. After our bus ride to the hotel, we checked into our 和室 – Japanese-style tatami rooms (see picture below). In the evening, they roll out tatami mats for you to sleep on – kind of like mattress pads.
After playing a Taiko-drum-video game and some very relaxed volleyball with friends, I headed to dinner, which was a nice little feast (menu below). After dinner was the HIF talent show, where each of the classes had to get up an sing a Japanese song, karaoke-style. And where I volunteer to do a tap dance. I was nervous leading up to it because I haven't really tapped in years (the only real practice I get is when I spontaneously soft-shoe while standing around… which is often). I got up and improvised frenetically for about 45-seconds – wearing the yukata provided by the hotel, of course. It went fine, thankfully.
I spent the rest of the evening talking with newfound friends, pretty late into the night. In the morning, after breakfast at the hotel, we got back on the buses back into Hakodate. I brought my host mother a couple small gifts back, including some squid crackers (recommended by an HIF staff member). You can still see the squid in the cracker:
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| Tasty... |
Once we got back home, Nick and I headed to the library to study. It was a nice library, too, though the studying lasted several hours. Humph. In the evening, while I was washing the dishes after dinner, I hummed the first movement of Beethoven's 5th, and Okaasan pulled out the CD recording she had of the symphony and played it on the stereo. A nice end to a great break of a weekend.
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| Vacation time! |
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