2/25-26/06: Furano

About 3.5 hours away from Taiki is Furano. Stephen, two of his friends, and I went to go skiing there, and it turned out to be much more fun than I thought. We figured out how to ski under another person by leaning backwards. And how to take someone out if your foot to knee height is higher than the other person's crotch. Also went karaoke-ing and played the Taiko drum game. That game is so much harder than it looks, but apparently all of the kids who play it are amazingly good at it and put me to shame. The next day we went skiing again, but it was so much colder we didn't stay for long. But we did find this amazing cheesecake place. The ONLY good dessert place in all of Japan as far as I've tried. Every single dessert I've had so far looked terrific but tasted like spongy nothing.

And now for a fun onsen story from Erin, one of Stephen's JET friends who is fluent in Japanese:

So lately I have been taking a daily trip to the sauna at my gym to A. Pretend I don't have bronchitis, and B. Pretend I don't live in Hokkaido. So usually, I relax for about 5 minutes or so, and then get attacked by the sauna gang of old women, who come on in and start babbling on LOUDLY about vegetables and which vegetable is in season and so on. Usually this is mildly annoying, but whatever, glad to see happy old ladies in the sauna rather bitter old ladies in the office, right. Well, last night, I was enjoying the heat and peaceful sauna music when the old lady gang comes in and starts blabbing again. I ignore them for a while, unil one of them says really loudly, "Yeah, my huspand pooped in the onsen the other day" That woke me up! And the conversation was as follows:

Lady 1: "Yeah, that happens. You think you are going to fart, and then out comes a turd"
Lady 2: "everyone farts in the onsen"
Lady 3: "yep, even women."
Lady 2: "yep, and sometimes it feels like a fart, but out comes something else"
Lady 1: "and then someone finds poo in the onsen!"
Lady 3: "you think you are going just toot... and oops!"
Lady 2: "yep, happens all the time"
Lady 1: "and you can't do anything, you just pooped in the onsen... you know, you thought it was a fart, but nope."

(lady 2 then farts... everyone laughs, then they return to saying "yep, you think you're going to fart but then you poo in the onsen" in several different ways.)
suddenly it gets quiet... until Lady 3 says:
"I hear some people eat poop."

at which point I got upand left the sauna... extremely freaked out and slightly afraid of onsen.

Note that some of these pictures are from the Furano karaoke song book where you can apparently put on a song by Steven Seagal and the song I don't know how to love him by Jesus Christ Superstar. Awesome.