Onuma Park: Part I

I think I'm going to have to update in installments about the overnight trip to Onuma Park we took, because I have a ton of homework to do, plus it hurts to type. Or move. Or do anything other than sit in a steaming hot bath and relax, but that actually hurts initially too.

This weekend, the HIF students piled into two buses and went on an overnight trip to Onuma "quasi-national" Park! It may have been neither nice nor relaxing, but it was definitely tons of fun and highly enjoyable. My okaasan and Mina kindly drove me to my bus pick up point in front of the Hakodate JR Station, even stopping to pick up additional breakfast fare for me along the way (yummy hot cakes filled with cream and sweet bean paste、although my friends ended up eating most of it because I was already stuffed from breakfast back at the house). My okaasan had originally pulled up next to another car which turned out to be full of HIF teachers, including Asaoka-sensee (my sensee who teaches Intermediate 1B), which was somewhat terrifying. Thankfully, she pulled up ahead to the curb a little later.

Unfortunately (well, I suppose it was amusing in a terrifying sort of way) as I was walking from the car to the front of the hotel where we were gathering, I got stopped by one of the rickshaw drivers who somehow knew who I was and stopped me to chat. I'm about 95% sure it wasn't the same guy I had interviewed for my independent study project last Thursday (I swear, I can tell Asians apart!) but he knew who I was, so he either had been present when I had interviewed my guy or I just fail a whole lot. I swear, it wasn't him though, especially because for this guy I could barely understand a word he said, although that may have been an effect of my brain tending to shut down when I'm too overwhelmed by something and just refusing to function altogether. My okaasan saw the driver chatting with me and laughed about it today and told me how she and Mina had watched from the car and had wondered whether or not I needed rescuing, haha.

Anyway, after that fun chat where I mostly said "Sorry, I don't understand!" a bajillion times, I proceeded to talk Andrew's ear off on the bus for about an hour, which was enjoyable for me at least, although I can't say the same for him :-P. We arrived at the park around 11:30 am and the group of friends I was with decided to do the bike rental and cycle around the park/lake. It only cost 700 yen, so it was a pretty sweet deal, plus they had about a bajillion different kinds of bikes you could choose from. Heng and I both opted for cute metallic silver bikes (hers was metallic pink, mine was metallic blue) with bear baskets, although most of the others decided on more practical mountain bikes with different gears. I personally think our baskets turned out to be more useful than their gears were though:

フレンドリーベア (Furendorii Bea aka Friendly Bear!)

We decided we wanted to spend more time at the park before going to the hotel, so all eleven of us or so decided to sign up for the late bus at the last minute, which turned out to be a great idea and gave us an extra two hours to explore the park. Biking around was a lot of fun, although it took us quite a while to make our way around the lake, given the the number of stops we made to take photos, get ice cream, skip stones, etc. Victor caused a mini traffic jam too as we all got stuck behind him at one point, as he pedaled on slowly but surely.

Note the look of terror and excitement on Victor's face.

Andrew (aka Tae-san) & me on one of our bajillion stops for photos by the lakeside

We got back from our biking adventures around 2:30 pm with an hour or so to spare before the bus came to get us. Sadly, I didn't see much of Brian nor did we get to ride together on a boat like I'd hoped =(. Anyway, It was a really fun if exhausting afternoon, and a lot of us were sunburned, myself included. However, whereas I just got really tan (and can continue to insist that my daddy is from Equatorial Guinea like I usually do), poor Kent turned completely red. I had offered him my Yale 2011 cap to wear and he'd initially agreed with the condition that no pictures were to be taken of him, but after Chien Wei tried to sneak a few photos, he gave up and Thanu wore my cap instead. I guess I can't really blame Kent, because if it were me and I were offered a Harvard cap, I probably would be very hesitant about wearing it too, not so much from personal issues but just from all the unneccessary crap I might get from other people for it.

Post lunch (miso ramen!), a short bus ride to the Greenpia Hotel followed where I mostly tried to not get any of my melting ikazumi (squid ink!!!) ice cream all over myself while chatting with Burton-Rose-san, the really nice (and really old) grad student, who had very kindly kept an eye on me at judo the other day and kept giving me useful tips when I was failing so fantastically at somersaulting, etc. Anyway, we were assigned four people to a room, and luckily I really like the three that were in my room: Thanu, Heng, and Nao, yay! Asaoka-sensee called about 3 minutes after we'd settled in to ask if Heng wanted to play badminton with him, and boy am I glad I wasn't the one to answer the phone. I ended up going over to the hotel gym with them and while they played badminton, a group of us (Victor, Andrew, James, Jason, Koh, Steffen, Cuong, Chien-Wei, and me) played soccer! I miss playing soccer a lot, although I'm not very good considering I played (translation: benchwarmed) all of high school. It was a lot of fun, although maybe not the best of ideas to play without shinguards (and thus, ankle bracing), considering the last time I played indoor soccer w/o them at practice senior year, one of the Hernandez twins took out my ankle and it's never been quite the same since. Fail. Anyway, keeping in mind that my team was one man up, we ended up accumulating a rather large number of goals before we all dispersed to go shower before dinner, where I saw Ashok for the first-ish time all weekend.

Sometimes Ashok and I like to pretend that we're friends and actually get along.

Dinner at the hotel was pretty sweet, with an assortment of dishes of every type individually set up for each person at the table, with our own personal hot pots with which to cook things. It was a really nice spread, with sashimi, lobster, tempura, tofu, soup, fruit, etc etc. I sat with Victor, Kent, Heng, Vicky, Jason, and Andrew, and it was a lot of fun. Afterwards was the dreaded talent show in which my class (Intermediate 1B) along w/ the Advanced Level class opened with an amazing rendition of the song Banzai.Yeah, fail. The other classes were also paired up and had to sing various songs too , so at least we all embarrassed ourselves together, although Ashok and Brian thoroughly enjoyed the experience I think. Koh played "Sakura" on his guitar, Jamar played "Gypsy Dance" on his violin, Andrew played an original peace on his guitar, Thanu and Yiwen sang, and Juan Miguel did a martial arts performance of some sort. Good times =)

Anyway, I'm afraid the rest of the weekend will have to wait though, because I'm way too tired and haven't finished my homework yet. Zyaa, mata!