Right-o,
this is gonna be a long one, I expect. Fortunately I have a long time
to work on it. Today I’m going to tell you all about Pete and
Steph’s magical fantasy trip to the distant, snowy land of
Hokkaido. Obviously it wasn’t all that snowy in the mid-summer, and
‘fantasy’ isn’t a word that describes it all that well either.
But a great trip it most certainly was, and I shan’t be forgetting
it all too soon.
TUESDAY
Monday
was a day off, we decided, to prepare for the journey ahead. We
packed, sorted everything out, printed off Steph’s itinerary
(regardless of whether we would be following it all that closely) and
took an early night. I think. Honestly I can’t remember if we
managed that or not. Something tells me I was up until 3am playing
Borderlands.
Oh
well. We set off Tuesday mid-day, arriving in Sannomiya at about
10.30 and Kansai International around 11.15. This gave us a good hour
and a bit to check in to our domestic flight and run ourselves
through the dreaded gauntlet of airport security.
Except,
it turns out that there’s only one domestic flight company that
runs outta KIX, and that was ours. Peach, it’s called, and is every
bit as saccharinely pink as you are probably imagining. And it has
its own building, some sorta repurposed shopping centre thing. And
you know what this means? It means check in and security are dead,
dead easy. We arrived at Kansai International with an hour and a
quarter before the flight. We arrived in the lobby with just over an
hour left.
I
love domestic flying in Japan. It is ace. Compared to the UK, where
you get the full security just for going from East Midlands to
Manchester. Or, as was my most unpleasant experience, changing in
Manchester from Heathrow before going on to Edinburgh. When the only
contraband they’re gonna find would have been given to us BY THEM.
Not so in Japan. For a country so rigid in their international entry
rituals, they are exceedingly relaxed about letting people fly around
in their own airspace. Like, you’ve already passed the
trustworthiness test, so you’re all good. Your bags go through the
x-ray, you walk through the metal gate, and you’re good to go. It
really is as easy as it sounds. And the staff! I have never met such
polite folk in all my life, and that’s polite like they actually
mean it rather than polite like they have a really thick, probably
quite stuffy mask on. Even in x-ray, when the one guy working the
machine stopped my bag to look closer at the jumbled mess of wiring
within, he then took it off the conveyor on the other side and handed
it to me with a smile and a ‘Sorry for making you wait.’ I get
the feeling that even if I WAS carrying something illegal, they would
have apologised for the hassle of arresting me.
So,
in the air for about two and a half hours. Electronic devices off,
folks, during take off and landing. I spent the time I had on the
Kindle, which can deactivate its wireless. That’s okay, right? I’m
pretty sure it is. Nearly finished Song of Susannah, will be on to
The Dark Tower in no time. Need to buy it first, though,
electronically.
We
arrived in New Chitose airport at about 3, maybe 4. From there we
took the train to Sapporo for an early dinner. I remember the train
well, with its weird, yellow, 80s wallpaper and British voice. I
remember a certain embarrassing photo being taken of me while a slept
on a train just like that. Forgive and forget, that’s what I say.
Anyway, Sapporo was cool and crisp, not like a certain humid in the
extreme city I could mention, which starts with a K and doesn’t
rhyme with ‘strobe’ even though it looks like it should. The air
was clear, the wind was strong, it was good to be alive. And to make
matters even better, the Sapporo Beer Festival was in town. Not that
I had any beer while I was there. Instead, we went to old favourite
Fuu-getsu, an okonomiyaki place which makes the stuff at your table.
We both had potato-mochi-cheese, because that’s totally not what we
have every other time we have okonomiyaki. After that it was back on
the train (same line, same direction) to Otaru.
I
remember Otaru. I remember the ice sculptures down the canal, and the
candles. I remember snow deep enough to lose yourself in. I remember
the bridge…
It
was nice to be back, but out of winter the little seaside town didn’t
have quite the same magic as I remembered. It was quaint, yeah, and
chock full of memories, but it didn’t really have anything to do.
Cheap karaoke, but we didn’t have time for that. So Steph and I
retired early to our hotel room which, yes, totally used to be a bank
vault.
WEDNESDAY
It
would have been a late start on Wednesday, as we weren’t expected
at out next hotel until the evening, but I ended up awake at 7am for
the hotel’s free breakfast of bread and coffee. I’m always of two
minds about coffee these days. On the one hand, if drunk correctly,
it can be a wonderful pick-me-up on days when I feel like sleeping.
On the other, if drunk incorrectly, it leaves me feeling sleepy but
also buzzing, which is unpleasant. I think on Wednesday morning I may
have tiptoed eerily on the line, but still left the hotel ready to
go.
We
spent the morning up Mt. Tengu, named after the long-nosed demons
that are said to haunt it. We didn’t see any tengus, but we did
walk around the peak, feed some chipmunks (or whatever they were, we
couldn’t decide) and look at some shrines. It was a nice mountain,
a little resort-y to properly praise it as a really good place to
visit. And it ate the day away enough to get us hungry.
We
arrived back in Sapporo around 12, ready for lunch at Subway. We had
originally planned in some time for shopping around, but I have
navigational skills of a blind man with no short term memory and so
most of that time was spent walking in one direction, realising we
weren’t going the right way, and walking back again. I did get a
look at Sapporo’s Anime and Manga Academy, which sounds awesome but
probably isn’t. It’s like when your teacher announced that you’re
going to be studying Studio Ghibli movies that term, but by the end
of that term you’re so sick of Spirited Away and Boring no Totoro
the class has actually managed to take the fun out of your passion.
It’d be like that, I reckon.
On
the coach this time to Toyako-onsen, down in the south of Hokkaido. I
didn’t realise until I was there that it being south would make it
hotter than Sapporo, but I realised as soon as we got there. Boy did
I realise. The coach trip was about the same as the flight, about two
and a half hours, and although wireless transmissions and phones were
a-okay that time on the bus was somehow less bearable than the plane
had been. I reckon that this was because you only have two stops on a
plane. You don’t have to push a little button when you get close to
where you want to get off, which is made problematic when the place
you want to get off is a sparsely populated bit of road that you’ve
never been to before. The last half an hour or so was a bit tense, I
can tell you, as we crossed our fingers and hoped that soon the bus’
electronic voice would inform us that the promised Sun Palace-mae
stop would be upon us soon.
Okay,
just had a quick break there, so if this next bit seems a little
disjointed I apologise. What, read it through and pick up my train of
thought, you suggest? Bah! This stuff comes as it does, I won’t
sully it with redrafts!
So,
Toyako-onsen, then. Lake Toya is a pretty awesome natural spectacle.
The lake was formed however many thousands of years ago when an
extinct volcano crater (a huge one, about a half mile across I think)
got flooded with freshwater which then receded. A few thousand years
later the volcano decides it’s not quite as sleepy as it thought
and has one last go at puffing out some magma. The result is a new,
much smaller volcano peak in the middle of the crater which, when it
finally does settle down, becomes covered in wildlife (somehow, we
never figured out how the deer swam across to the island) and foliage
and becomes Nakanoshima, the island in the middle. Tokako-onsen is a
natural hot spring town on the shores of Lake Toya, and was where we
were staying. We arrived about 7pm.
Our
lodgings went by the name of Kawanami, a traditional-style ryoukan
with its own hot spring bath. Naturally heated, it assured us. I have
to admit to my cynicism about the place when Steph first told me
about it. Traditional? Middle of nowhere? What manner of place was
this that she was taking me! It sounded a little too much like some
place where the owners meant well but didn’t quite have the money
to renovate some place from the 60s leaving it a bit dank. I was
wrong. Kawanami is a really excellent little place, with big, airy
rooms that look directly out onto the lake (daily fireworks in the
summer, another fortunate coincidence), and friendly staff to boot.
The baths were free to use almost all day every day, and there was
even a hireable private bath if you were nervous about getting naked
with the other visitors. Steph and I used the much sneakier, less
expensive method of going at about midnight, when no-one in their
right minds would want a bath. The only problem was the food, which
was served at the usual mealtimes for an added cost, and which was
VERY traditional. Nothing vegetarian, you see.
That
first night was pretty bad for food. We ended up walking about town
searching for somewhere, anywhere which did vegetarian food and
wasn’t shut, and ended up in this posh little shop about a 15
minute walk from our lodgings. The waitress, bless her heart, was
obviously not used to vegetarians, and gave us a scathing look when
we asked to see the menu before deciding on the place. We paid her
back for that by accidentally eating well past the closing hours. The
food wasn’t half bad, though, and although it was pretty darned
expensive you got a lot for your money. Steph praised the de-bacon’d
gratin and I had to admit to quite enjoying the Megasalmon vs. Giant
Shrimp meal set, despite not really being one for seafood. Home late,
bath later, then sleep.
THURSDAY
We
awoke kinda early. Not that early. Kinda. Early enough for breakfast
to still be breakfast and not lunch.
Speaking
of which, breakfast was served by the convenience store across the
road from our ryoukan. We also bought ourselves a lunch, which we
eventually ate by the shores of Lake Toya. I don’t remember being
in a good mood that morning. Actually, I don’t remember either of
us being in a good mood that morning. Don’t ask me why, though, I
don’t remember that either. Anyway, about midday we took a gaudy
boat across the water to Nakanoshima, which doesn’t have a whole
lot on it except for deer and a small museum. Oh, and a couple of
swans, which the island warns visitors about approaching but offers
food to let them feed the things. More than once I watched on,
horrified, as a Japanese family attempted to feed the birds from
their hand and got chased away for their charity. One boy even got
bit for real, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much. The deer
were a bit frantic as well. The store offered food to feed them, too,
and they went mental for it. There was this one deer, went by the
number of 54 I think, who would beat the others with her head just to
get at the biscuits. Naturally, we did our best to not reward this
barbaric behaviour, throwing them to the small fellow who kept to the
back of the ruckus. We stayed for a couple of hours, wading in the
shores and watching the waves, before heading on back to the
mainland.
From
there we had a number of possibilities. There are all manner of
touristy things to do on the shores of Lake Toya, but we decided
that, with dinnertime approaching, we wanted to do something shorter.
In the end, we rented out a small rowboat (which I discovered too
late was too small for Steph’s nerves) and rowed about on the lake
for just over an hour. It was nice, being out on the water like that,
and I didn’t feel as ridiculous as I would have done had we rented
one of those swan-shaped pedal boats instead.
The
sun was setting when we returned to shore, and the shops closing down
for the evening. Dinner that night was at a little pub-like place in
town that did some ace Korean food, which we have learned is quite
easy to de-meat-ify. I had something that was called a chige, a spicy
soupy thing, as well as a beer. It was well-earned, I think.
Before
bed we went out to the shoreline to watch the fireworks which, though
no Kobe summer extravaganza, were well worth it. It really does show
that Japan is so far ahead of the UK in its fireworking, that even a
small-scale event like Toya’s just-another-summer-day could out-do
anything I’ve ever seen in the UK, Bonfire Night or otherwise. We
had planned to see the fireworks from a boat on the lake the next
night, but decided against it when it was it was the gaudy boat
again, lit up by what was sure to be a ruinous amount of electric
lighting.
FRIDAY
We
did a lot of walking on Friday. It was our last full day in
Toyako-onsen, and we spent it at the Volcanic Research Centre a
little south of the town. Turns out (I hadn’t known this) that
there used to be another town in the area, but it was buried under
lava and mud when a volcano suddenly sprung up out of the ground back
in the early 2000s. Much of the town that wasn’t utterly destroyed
was preserved as a memorial, and an epitaph, a marble pillar, was
raised in dedication to the lives lost. ‘The town may be gone,’
it read, ‘but the heart remains’.
Steph
and I took the 2 hour trail that led from the bus terminal up into
the hills, over the cold, dead lava and past the two craters that, we
were told, were still partially active. It was an interesting walk,
every now and then you’d catch your foot on some half-buried
concrete mud-wall or part of someone’s house. It was a long one,
though, and when we got to the end of the path we found ourselves out
in the middle of nowhere, with only a couple of dilapidated old
businesses and a tourist shop that sold ice-cream and Gintama swords.
A truly bizarre combination. We took the bus back to the terminal
building, and then a second bus out to the north towards a fabled
pizza parlour.
I
didn’t mention that bit, huh. Our original dinner plan for
Thursday. See, on our way down towards Toyako-onsen Steph had spotted
a big blue sign that had happily declared that ‘Pizza’ was
nearby. And thus the idea had been planted in her head, and we know
how successful a parasite an idea is. Thursday night had begun with a
trek up the highway towards the pizza sign, along the bug-splattered
pavement for maybe four miles, until the pavement just stopped and
left us nowhere to go. We turned back, and ate Korean food.
Well,
on Friday we tried again. Steph does love her pizza, after all. After
some mind-burningly complicated research we found a bus line which
ran the reverse route to the one we had come to town on, and
fortunately found a bus taking that route shortly after. We even
asked the driver if he would be stopping by that area, and he said
yes. Because, when you get down to it ‘by that area’ is pretty
vague. We got off the bus at a campsite at the bottom of a hill at
the other end of the highway, paid our fare and began to walk up the
hill. I can’t tell you how it was that we eventually made it to the
pizza restaurant with the name that was so very long, because part of
our route may have been a little but illegal. Semi-legal, shall we
say. Let’s just say we walked a path only the very desperate would
be willing to take. And it was hard. Boy, was it hard. I could barely
feel my legs by the end of it, had lost all feeling in my dignity.
And was the pizza worth two days of walking and a bus ride (plus the
taxi we took home)? No, it wasn’t. But then again, nothing would
be. The pizza was tasty, and came in many hundreds of different
varieties. The décor was tasteful, and the place was airy. The poor
waiter insisted that he attempt English, even when we replied in
Japanese, and even suggested that a pizza each was too much for our
tiny bellies and instead offered a half-and-half split. Nice of him.
It wasn’t enough, though. He also seemed keen to rush us out of
there, despite there being nobody else around. My theory is that the
restaurant is a free bus ride from the New Windsor Hotel, which is
posh with a capital P, and perhaps they didn’t want two sweaty
foreigners ruining the fake-foreign atmosphere. We didn’t complain,
though. After all, it was genuinely good food.
Dessert
at the convenience store, bath and sleep.
SATURDAY
This
is gonna be a short one, I’m afraid. We got up early on Saturday to
check out, and then spent a good long while out in the sun waiting
for our bus back to Sapporo. Another 2.5 hours in transit, leaving my
legs feeling like they were made of lead. I’ll tell you this,
though, Steph and I totally got right back into Dragon Quest 9. We
helped each other finish the story in multiplayer, but still found
plenty to do after the last boss bit the dust. Now we’re kinda
racing each other to finish all the extra quests, and I get the
feeling Steph’s pulling into the lead these days, as I have a
computer to attend to now that we’re home. That game, though. That
game is something else. It’s so awesome, I haven’t seen anything
like it. Oh, wait, I have. That’ll be Shin Totomono which I talked
about last time, and it’s a bit rubbish. It’s so easy, so very,
very easy. I don’t feel a part of it, y’know? I feel like a
spectator, having to press X to continue the story every few minutes.
I’m keeping at it, but it’s a bit of a let-down.
Yes,
yes, that’s all the gaming news for now. Back to the story.
Sapporo,
then, at about 10.30. Lunch at Caprichosa, or however you write it in
Roman letters, which has always been a winner with us, and then a
quick look around the city before our bus at 4 to Furano. We ended up
(quite by accident, I swear) passing through the Pokemon Center and
taking a look inside, which I had been trying to save for our day of
Sapporo right at the end. I do love that shop. It’s so brimming
with enthusiasm for itself, and not in a way that makes it
unlikeable. I didn’t buy anything, saving that for the last day,
but it did my heart good to be in the presence of Pikachu soft toys
and lunch boxes with that ugly purple frog Pokemon on them. We looked
at games, we got some truly hideous puri-kura done, we got on the
bus.
Another
2.5 hours and we were in suburban Furano, a town known for its
lavender, apparently. And, quite by coincidence, a belly-button
festival. We arrived in town as the festival was reaching its peak,
but no way were we sticking around to watch it when we were as tired
as we were that night. An oversight on the itinerary meant we only
had 30 minutes to find the guest house, so we bit the bullet and
taxi’d it there.
Our
lodgings for our stay in Furano went by the name of Pinocchio, and
again managed to surpass my very low expectations. We were a little
later than check-in time, but the owner was very understanding and
showed us right to our little apartment, pausing only to comment on
how big I was. It was a spacious place, bigger than our own places
back in Kobe, and more functional. Oh, and the ceilings were higher,
much to my delight. It was a great little place, and we slept well.
Dinner, though, was at McDonalds, being one of the few places left
open at the frankly appalling early hour of 9.
SUNDAY
Urgh,
busy day. Busy, busy day. We awoke early to begin our trek down the
road (no tree cover, and the sun was agonisingly hot that day)
towards the Furano Cheese Factory. Our booked attempt at
cheese-making was at 11, and we got there with plenty of time to
spare. Though how I made it without crisping at the edges is beyond
me. Seriously, agonisingly hot. In the end, though, the Cheese
Factory was totally worth the walk. Making the cheese, an easy
mascarpone, took very little time, and the women overseeing our
attempts were strict on any divergence from the recipe. I guess they
didn’t want us fluffing up our cheese and blaming them when it
turned out to taste bad. I didn’t really know anything about
mascarpone cheese before, and certainly didn’t realise it would be
a sweet cheese. Steph suggested we get scones at Mister Donuts that
evening, which sounded like a good idea. Lunch for us was at the
Cheese Factory’s pizzeria, however, which WAS good. It didn’t
offer a whole lot, but both pizzas were veggie-friendly and very
cheap, much like that little Pizza Hut in Fosse Park. We caught
dessert one building over in their ice-cream unit, which stuck
stubbornly to local produce and left us a choice of milk, grape,
pumpkin, corn and cheese flavours. Corn wasn’t bad, but the cheese
stuff… Not again. Never again.
We
wasted a bit of time riding the tractor they had out front, awwing at
babies and catching dragonflies before moving on. Our second stop for
the day was a 2 o’clock appointment at Yuma, a horse-riding centre
half way between cheese and Pinocchio. It was a nice enough place,
the horses seemed well-looked after (you can never be sure in Japan…)
and the staff were friendly. But I’d forgotten how difficult horse
riding is. We were taught well, but it was a bit like driving again
only with your first lesson out on the roads and with minimal
explanation. I think I must have thoroughly ticked off my poor horse
with all my swerving and half-hearted instruction. His minder didn’t
seem too taken with me, either. I was glad to be off once it was
over. I think if I ever ride a horse again, I want to be sure I’m
doing it right before I start, y’know. It was like the horse could
sense my inexperience (scratch that, it totally could) and ignored
me. I’d have done the same. But if I knew what I was doing, maybe
it’d be different. Still, I don’t regret going.
We
both agreed that a rest at the lodgings would be the best thing for
us, so made our exhausted way home for a lie down. Our original plan
had been making clay ocarinas, but that was out of the question in
our state. We reawoke closer to 6, which was dinnertime. So, it was
back into town, and the belly-button festival.
Japanese
festivals are funny. I’ll just get that out of the way first. They
are funny, funny things. This festival, for example. You know the
reason they do it? It’s not because belly-buttons are magical,
majestic things that are to be revered, any 5 year-old could tell you
that. It’s because geographically, Furano is the ‘belly-button of
Hokkaido’, so the festival is a celebration of the town rather than
the human anatomy. And what better way to celebrate your beloved home
town that to stick a massive hat on your shoulders and walk around
with your shirt off and googly eyes on your nipples. The main event
was the parade, where companies, clubs and even school teams would
dress up and dance their way down the street, usually with plenty of
paraphernalia to advertise their place of origin. We even saw the
women of the Cheese Factory dressed in cow-print kimonos dancing
around. It was entertaining, but the town had picked a bad time to
advertise itself to you master Peter, who was starving, and needed
food urgently. I may have passed out against a vending machine at one
point, while Steph was away taking photos. It made the whole thing
very difficult to like.
Anyway,
we ended up in this teppanyaki place which either had staff with
short-term memory disorders or had learnt that vegetarians like extra
meat on their food. Regardless, we had to pick pork out of our food,
but it was still really good food. Really good. And I had a beer
which I totally deserved. You know, Sapporo beer mugs (or ‘jockies’
as they call them, and not in reference to the head-riding vampires
of Left 4 Dead 2) advertise that Sapporo beer is available nowhere
else in the world except Hokkaido. Just goes to show how
head-in-the-sand Japan can be, I’ve had a Sapporo beer in a pub in
Edinburgh before. Also, it annoyed my how this big queue grew up
outside the shop, and the customers in line decided to blame the SHOP
for being popular. Really ticked me off. If you want to eat right
away, go somewhere else! It’s your own fault that you picked the
place with the queue, you can’t shift THAT one onto the management!
So don’t complain about how you’ve gotta wait. Get here sooner,
or get lost!
Absurd…So
after dinner, we walked on home via Mister D’s for dessert, and
stopped into the Geo on the way. Geo in Furano is absolutely awesome,
let me tell you. Tonnes of books, tonnes of games, and used clothes!
I’ve never seen a Geo that sells clothes, before! And good ones,
with funny captions on them! Or people’s names… Steph bought a
hat and a top, and I bought a Best of Hatsune Miku CD which is
stellar. Hah, every time I type her name the computer assures me that
I’m being dense and meant to type ‘Hatsune Mike’. Idiot. We
crawled home close to ten, ate cheese and scones (far, far too much
sweetness) and went to bed.
MONDAY
Monday
was a day of shopping. We got checked out around 9, and lugged our
way back to the town centre ready for the bus at 10. Yet another 2.5
hours on the coach (thankfully the last time) and we were once again
back in Sapporo. We actually arrived earlier than we expected,
earlier than check-in would allow, so we headed off for lunch at a
nice Korean place in one of the station’s gargantuan shopping
centres. It wasn’t as nice as that one place in Toya, but it was
good.
Our
final resting place… Maybe I should rephrase that. Out last place
where we would be sleeping was the Sapporo Cross Hotel, a swank
establishment with free breakfast and a humidifier in the room. It
also had a bath with a view of the city, not that you could see it
because baths, by nature, are steamy. We dumped our stuff and set out
into town. Let’s see… we swung by the Pokemon Center first of
all, it being the most important part of our trip. I bought a small
shoulder bag like what is fashionable among guys at the moment (Steph
assured me it was very metrosexual, which I had difficulty accepting
as a compliment and almost caused me to change my mind about buying
it) and a Bulbasaur keychain that I tied onto the strap. Steph
received a couple of badges of her favourite Pokemon, a metal
keychain of the female protagonist and a memo pad with the Sapporo
Pikachu on it. A good haul. Next was Vintage Village, a kind of
retro, misc. goods store that I likened to a more tasteful Don
Quixote. Apparently there’s one in Motomachi here in Kobe, which I
may have to look at. I bought a funk-tastic new hat there, which
keeps the sun off awesomely. I also treated myself to a new set of
headphones to replace the ones carelessly snapped not so long ago.
Together, my new purchases look aMAZing! In my head, at least, I look
like a guy from Jet Set Radio. I probably look like a right muffin in
real life.
Dinner
was a complicated one. Steph fancied Thai, and I didn’t mind, so we
began hunting for Thai restaurants in the area. There’s a big food
district to the south of the main Sapporo centre, and there were
apparently 4 Thai restaurants in a five minute walk of each other.
Tch… The first one we checked had closed down and looked like it
was going to be demolished. The second was nowhere to be found. The
third, which we eventually settled on, was underground. That threw us
for a bit. We couldn’t check the menu from outside, and the
waitress was clearly very distressed by our coming. We didn’t need
to hear her to hear the ‘Foreigners! What do we do?’ she was
frantically signalling at the chef. She needn’t have worried about
out Japanese skills, but… When I mentioned that Steph didn’t eat
fish and neither of us ate meat her face went white as a sheet. Much
conferring later the team eventually decided on a three-part
specially constructed meal that was totally safe, and very tasty, but
did little to fill us up. We left feeling very embarrassed.
Ice-cream
from Lawson’s on the way back to the hotel, baths and finally
sleep.
TUESDAY
the SECOND
Our
flight back to Kansai wasn’t until 12 again, leaving us plenty of
time to eat our fill of the epic breakfast the hotel served. Bread
and cereal was a given, but the potato salad, soups, curries and a
hundred other things that have no right to be served at breakfast
were not. It was really excellent. Good coffee, too. We checked out
not long after and made our way to the station, where we finally
bought some souvenirs for our teachers. (Did I mention that souvenirs
are an expected tradition here in Japan? And that I’m bitter about
it?) Another train ride to New Chitose, about 45 minutes, and back
through security. Easy peasy, just like before. And then we were
home.
Back
in Kobe we spent some time at the arcade, playing the drums and
flipping some tables. That table flipping is just awesome, I feel it
more every time I try. I finally had a go at the ghost at his own
funeral mission, and took great joy in flipping a coffin so far it
made a cat airborne, and then watching the body fall out of the
coffin, stand up and go “Yay!”. It did my heard glad, so it did.
I also tried once again to demonstrate how awesome Hatsune Mike is to
Steph, by way of the awesome Project Diva Arcade, but once again I
think I failed. She seems to think you have to be a thirty year-old
computer programmer or a ten year-old school girl to appreciate the
electronic idol, and for the most part I reckon she’s right. I
won’t go into why I think Vocaloid is a musical revolution worthy
of deep study today, but I could. Then we had a curry for dinner,
which was superb as usual.
There
we go, all done. In conclusion (vivid memories of old history essays
as I wrote that), Hokkaido is awesome. It was great to see it in the
snow, but snow really is only one side of it. It also has lakes,
volcanoes, and all kinds of other things to spare. It’s a big
place, after all. Some day maybe we’ll go back, and when we do we
won’t be at a loss for things to do.
Just
a few closing words about Wednesday the second, while I have the
chance. We didn’t do a whole lot, resting up before today’s first
day back at school. Yeah, one short summer holiday, eh. I woke up
about 12, which means I was awake for a total of 7 hours. In that
time, I think 4 of those hours was spent playing Left 4 Dead 2, and
the rest was spent watching E.T. Twenty years on and its still one of
the most magnificent films I have ever seen.
I
downloaded L4D2 again because of rumours that Valve had done a bit of
work on the old beast, but in truth it was the first time I had
played it. I was a little disheartened to find that, though I had
bought the original at around the same time on the basis that the
original campaigns would be worth playing as well, 2 contains all of
the content from 1 plus a whole ton of extras. Oops. Oh well, L4D2 is
amazing, and I only wish for a chance to play it with people I
actually know some time, not just weird guys who call themselves
Protection and say “i swanner ur gay”. I guess that’s what I
deserve for playing an English-language game in East Asia.
Now
comes a week and a bit of nothing to do at school. I’ll be spending
my time poster making ready for next month, I reckon, as well as
maybe studying some JLPT. I saw my notes magnetised to the filing
cabinet by my desk today and was disheartened to realise that I don’t
quite remember what they mean. I’ll make do. Anyway, that’s it.
That’s all.
Thanks
for reading. Really, this one must have taken it outta you.
