Hokkaido: Early Days
Monday 18th December
It was a cold and unforgiving Tokyo morning that saw Mike and Matt trapsing onto the packed Tokyo subway with large bags. It was the start of a long and pretty boring journey, so I won't bore you with the details. Here's a couple of interesting tidbits I picked up along the way;
- Japanese planes were not designed for people who are around 6" tall.
- The further north you go, the more snow there is. Thus, the further north we went the more excited we got. Snow!
- It goes dark at about 5-6pm in Hokkaido, a full hour before Tokyo.
I told you it was dull. When we arrived we were pretty tired, so we had a quick simple meal then it was time for bed. A nice, long sleep…right?
Tuesday 19th December
The first thought that crossed my fragile mind was Why the hell am I awake at 7.30am? Toya (more info here) is probably one of the quietest places in Japan, or at least it's a hell of a lot quieter than a suburb of Tokyo. Or it would be if there weren't building works going on right outside our razor-thin walls. Add to that the fact that I'm sleeping at the road-end of the house and you've got a not-happy Mike. Plus, we have a window that fills the room with unwanted light when the sun rises at some horrible hour, without any curtains or blinds. Urgh.
Matt and I did very little today, other than having a brief walk around the lake. The two Hokkaido volunteers (Nate and Rolf) were working today but we were in no position to move. At all.
In the evening we played drinking games with vodka then cooking sake, which should not be drunk. I proved this by throwing up everywhere. There, I wrote it in my blog. Never again.
Wednesday 20th December
Woken up by the builders again. I spent today cleaning up the house after I "decorated" it yesterday evening. Whoops.
Thursday 21st December
Builders again. Today was Nate's birthday! But not all was well because Nate and Rolf both came down with what we think was the same thing Matt had a week ago.
We accompanied Nate to the Toya kindergarten where we played with the kids and played a few games, too. At this point I had lost my camera's battery (which I have now found) so I didn't get any photos. But what I did compile was a list of desires that all 3-5 year old Japanese children have;
- I want to hit a foreigner with a large football.
- I want to hit a foreigner with a large football again.
- I want to run over a foreigner's foot with a small plastic cart.
- I want to climb a large foreigner and claim the summit for Japan.
- I wonder what I could do with this large football? Wait, I know…
All in all they were great fun, even if Nate was a little ill to be able to appreciate it.
In the evening we went to the Toya Christmas Party. Everyone here was so excited to meet the Tokyo volunteers as we ate a delicious selection of buffet food. Buffet Food, by the way, is not the same rushed affair that it is in England. The food was all freshly made and provided by various members of the community.
We played a large game of pass-parcels-around-a-circle except we were never told to bring a present so we ended up "giving" big selection packs of snacks. Whoops. I won various Japanese sweets and cakes. Matt won some "Learn English" toilet paper. I'm secretly jeleous.
Finally, we went to the only pub in Toya with a few of the partygoers, and had a great time chatting about inane things you only talk about when you're sleep-deprived and hungry.
I miss the community that this place has that Tokyo and my hometown of Sheffield just don't have. I grew up in the country, in a village with a similar community spirit to the one in Toya. There's none of that in Tokyo.