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Published: April 15th 2006
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First I must apologise for the lateness of my blog. However the computer at the place i'm stating kept shutting down and we dont have the password to log back in, so theres been days when weve been unable to go on the PC. Other times Louis has been on it, so it is impossible to get on the computer as he is on about 4 hours a day doing pointless tasks.
We reached hakuba on a day about a week ago, and it was snowing like crazy. A middle aged australian couple and their daughter and son in law were very friendly and we were soon all watching "the last samurai" around the TV. This finished around 11:30, so Louis and the australians went for a walk. I decided to catch them up, but as soon as i was going out they were coming in. Even so, I decided to take a walk. I was just wearing a tee shirt so i was just going to walk to the ski rental building and back.
On my walk, however, i got lost and ended up walking for about half an hour in the freezing cold. I saw a bar
that was still open, so i decided to go in to warm up. When i walked inside everything went quiet and everybody looked at me like i was mad. Nobody in the bar could speak much english, so i presume they were saying that i must be cold. I just nodded and said yes. I ordered a beer and the barmaid gave me some darts and pointed to the electronic dart board. I didn't want to play by myself so i got her and one of the locals to play against me.
For my first few throws my elbows were so cold i was rubbish but i soon got better. After the game i just wanted to go back to the hostel, so i asked for directions. They pointed which way to go, and they even showed me on the map, but as soon as i got out of the bar i went the wrong way (not on purpose). As i walked past the window i could see one of the bartenders laughing at me. So i realised i was going the wrong way. Even so the barmaid ran after me and walked me halfway to the hostel and
pointed me down a road and said turn right. So i did, however the road i turned down was a dead end. The next road i turned down and it went round the back of the hostel, so i would have walked straight past it if it weren't for the Koreans that were still on the internet from before i set off on my walk.
The next day we got up at a reasonable time because we were considering going skiing. The cost for Ski rental was around 2000 yen (10 pound) which is reasonable and we would have rented skis if it didnt cost 3500 yen to get a ski lift pass. We decided to check out the slopes anyway.
With the lack of a ski lift path we decided to walk up a slope that was closed. we got most of the way up this slope and we cut back onto the main slope. With the lack of skis there was not much Louis could do but walk back down the slope. However, I had a bin liner in my bag, so i walked into the middle of the slope and slid down on the bag
Eechi with the Sho-Chu
Sho-Chu is a potato based spirit and comes in a attractive 4 litre bottle. Me have drunk this mostly with milk! while all the skiers and snowboarders whizzed past me.
It took about five minutes to slide down the slope because it was so slow, but when i reached the bottom i picked up my plastic bag, put it on the rack with everybodies snowboards as if it were my board and sat down with all the skiers and snowboarders. all this time lots of Japanese people were laughing at me. Later that day we went to our next host, Eechi! This guy is an odd one, he gave us our first two days off, which was nice, but since then he has worked us like slaves.
On our first night he bought us a 4.7 litre bottle of this drink called shochu which is a liquor that is 20% ABV and it can be mixed with pretty much anything. We had a few of these with orange juice and a few with milk, but it takes a lot to get you pissed because it is only half the strength of vodka, but with a taste almost as strong.
On this night Louis and Dan said that all Japanese girls look the same, but I disagreed; I said
they look like one of four or five different people. The same can be said for japanese guys. I've probably confused you, but thats ok because i think it confused Louis, Dan, Johanna and myself too.
On the next day we went to Nagoya to go to a temple so we could touch a paradise key that apparantly makes the rest of your life paradise if you touch it, but looking at eechi I'm not sure how true it is.
The day after that we decided to hitch hike to Yudanaka because Dan and Johanna had done it on the way back the day before and the train fare was around 800 yen one way. we were only on the road for five minutes before we got a lift all the way to Yudanaka. In Yudanaka we decided to go to the monkey park, which was about a two hour walk away. Once we reached the monkey park we asked each other why we were going there because we'd already been to one in Kyoto. We decided to go in anyway. The monkeys didnt do much, just sat in their onsen, so we left.
We went a different way back as it took us to the highway, so we could hitch hike back. There was supposed to be a restaurant on the way back if we went on a slight detour, but instead of finding a restaurant we found a deserted ski slope. I got my bin liner out and did my sledging thing again, reaching much better speeds due to it being much steeper.
We eventualy got to the road and started hitchiking, it was raining and about the eighth car that came along picked us up. The english speaking couple who thought we were mad hitch hiking in the rain probably were waiting for ages for the bus.
Anyway in the car that picked us up was a 31 year old guy and his almost mute wife. This guy was weird, he made us guess his age (he said we looked 25 and we're only 19) and he asked us our blood type. At this point I thought he was gonna bleed us to death and sell our blood on the black market; but he didn't. One our way out of his car he gave us a gift of shampoo and conditioner (which was extremely generous) as he was a shampoo salesman.
We went shopping with Eechi again that night; he wouldn't buy the mushrooms I wanted (the ones that looked most like magic mushrooms), instead he bought some white ones that looked slightly less magiccy.
Also, he saw me waving a fish in Louis' face to scare him, so he filled a bag full of these fish, and now I've discovered they're pretty disgusting. He seemed adament that he didn't want us to get any ice cream, so me and Johanna tried to distract him with curry while louis went to get the ice cream. However eechi caught Louis and said "no" (one of his favourite words). Also when paying he pointed at the washing up liquid and said "drink no". So jokingly I said "no Drink with Shochu, so he got another 4.7 litre bottle of shochu, most of which we are gonna take to kyoto.
The other night we went to an onsen and like louis i almost passed out, so i took a ten minute cold shower to cool down.
Tomorow we will go to Kyoto and we will have our last night in Japan there before going back to England.
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