...Tiny Fork?

Let's see how much I can remember from this week's shenanigans...continuing from my post about the Onuma Park trip, post-talent show at the amazing Greenpia Hotel was karaoke! Seriously, the hotel had just about everything: karaoke, bowling, merry-go-round's, a jungle gym, a real gym, horseback riding, water slides, go-carts, etc. I may have mentioned all those things already, but I don't remember. Karaoke was a blast, and the HIF kids took up about 3-4 adjacent rooms with definitely more than the allowed 5 people per room, and Austin kind of wowed everybody (or at least me) with his singing abilities. Austin and I had both realized that neither of us actually knew the other person's name at dinner that night, and when I finally admitted it first and he was staring at me thinking furiously about what my name could be, Chris Brown held up a fork behind my head and pointed at the tynes to which Austin goes "...Tiny Fork?" It was kind of amazing. Anyway, post-karaoke was mostly hanging out w/ all of that gang and trying not to get locked out of the hotel and get eaten by bears.

Karaoke! Koh isn't blinking, he's actually pretty much asleep, haha.

Afterwards, Thanu, Heng, and I all stayed up and had what Thanu dubbed "girl talk" although I successfully deflected most of the questions directed at me until Nao arrived from her drunk people babysitting activities and we crashed for a few hours until we got up at a ridiculously early hour to go to the onsen (public bath) which was really really nice! My group had gone through multiple "Hey, you guys want to go to the onsen!?" conversations the previous night only to arrive at the conclusion that onsen-ing it up meant splitting up by sex, which was lame. Well, you know what I mean. We may have gone through that scenario a few times since drunk people tend to forget things though. Anyway, Brian was definitely a big fan of the onsen anyway:

Awwwww. Also, my host mom met him yesterday and said he was cute, haha.

Breakfast at the hotel followed and the 30 minute bus ride back to Hakodate. Chien-Wei, Andrew, Thanu, and I wanted to go squid-fishing but that fell through so we ended up grabbing lunch at Lucky Pierrot (it's this must-go-to hamburger chain that's famous here) before I headed home to tackle homework. Yuck. Everything since the weekend gets pretty hazy from here because my memory fails a lot, but a general update about the various going on's of the week:

Monday: Kimono & Etiquette Class! It was surprisingly really really interesting and they taught us how to bow, open sliding doors, etc, and then we all tried on kimonos with a LOT of help.

Obi tied in the butterfly shape (I think--my Japanese isn't great)!

Elliot towers over the other Americans and 外人 even, haha.

Wednesday: Asahi Elementary School Visit! OMD I WANT A SMALL (or big) ADORABLE JAPANESE CHILD. They had made us name tags and prepared a welcoming ceremony and grabbed our hands and led us into the middle of the gym to play various games, including rock-paper-scissors (Jan-Ken-Pon!). When the cutesy music stopped, you had to go up against the nearest person and whoever lost Jan-Ken-Pon grabbed the winner's shoulders and joined his/her party until a bajillion rounds later, only one giant train of people remained.

Ahhh, Japanese children, WANT.

Afterward, we learned the infamous Ika Odori squid dance that we'll be performing later this summer! Anyway, apparently I volunteered to help teach the kids new games because I wrote my name on that sign up sheet I was handed but couldn't read that one time. My group (Juan, Victor, Allison, and I) had 5th graders (I think?) and they all lined up and handed us little slips of paper with their names and drawings and in really shy, English said "My name is ______" and it was ADORABLE, especially for the shy ones that mumbled it really quickly before running away. We taught them how to play Oshiri, aka, Big Booty, in Japanese, as well as this similar animal game that they had a real kick out of. I really wanted to steal the little boy who chose to be a penguin for his animal, he was sooo cute. Post Asahi Elementary, I joined Brian et al. to go to a 100 Yen store before heading home. Lots of fun.

Intermediate 1B class ftw: Erika, Ashok, Malika, Amalya, Brian, me (blinking fail), Allison (Victor and Juan are further down the row)

Anyway, Thursday onward will have to follow later---Brian wants to go watch the sunset from Mt. Hakodate (since I couldn't make it Friday after Kyuudo class when he went w/ the others) so I'm going to take a short nap and then run to catch the bus to where we're meeting---over and out.