We went to Miharashi Park today. I'd been planning to go for some time, but this morning, as I was about to announce that I was going out, host dad asked me where I wanted to go today so I said Miharashi Park. As you may or may not remember, that is the place where our lame picnic was held earlier this month. I wandered about the park while it was going on and ran out of pictures in my camera. I resolved to go back because the place was too beautiful not to take good pictures.
Oddly enough, there were hardly any people in the park. Host dad had never even been there before. There was a small event going on in a corner of the open field and a baseball game in another, but other than that, the place was largely unpopulated. I seems strange to me that in a country where there is no nature, no space and all people and cars, that there weren't more people in the park. Let me explain 'no nature'. In a city or suburb, there is nothing but concrete, buildings and cars. Everything is so close together that there are no trees or grass except in specially prepared areas. Most houses have a few square inches of yard, and the only animals are pets and birds. It's rather sad to me, as I love nature and hate people.
We walked around the park and I took lots of pictures and then we left. We drove to the botanical garden where there were glass domes covering spewing and gurgling veins of hot spring. The area of the park and botanical garden is called Yunokawa, which means 'hot water river'. It is located over a natural hot spring and there are many onsen and hotels in the area, including the one we were taken to for our first night in Hokkaido. Monkeys like to sit in hot springs, too. In front of the botanical garden was a monkey 'cage' with lots and lots of mokeys and monkey toys and monkey poop and their very own little monkey onsen. There were also imported racoons, exotic birds, and a male and female peacock. The male one raised his tail at the other one and I took my last picture of it.
The botanical garden was swamped with loud obnoxious children, but I couldn't see any in the plant part. And I kept seeing people carrying pool toys. Finally, I saw that there was a wading pool behind the garden which was completely full of people. It wasn't a small pool, either. It was made out of concrete slopes and had no walls.
After we left there, they asked me where I wanted to eat so I said McDonald's. They didn't want to go there, so I said it was ok if we diddn't. Host mom said she likes Lucky Pierrot better. I think Lucky Pierrot sucks. We actually did go McDonalds and host dad used the drive thru for the very first time. It never occurred to me that there were people who didn't grow up instinctively knowing how to use a drive thru. Our entire culture revolves around the drive thru. Host dad wasn't very good at it at all.
From there we went to the hospital where host mom's mother is so I stayed in the car and ate my hamburger and fries. Then we drove to a soba restaurant and they made me eat soba. It was ok soba and I was still kinda hungry after my puny expensive Japanese portions of fast food. They had huge sets that cost 1000 yen each and had soup and tempura in them.
From there, we went to a grocery store near our house and host mom started colleting ingredients to make SUKIYAKI! I (finally) found POCARI SWEAT MIX in boxes of 5 so I bought 2. I now have enough powder to make 15 litres of Sweat and I ain't stopping there. Then we came home and I had some Sweat.
There is a weekend tv show called 'Big Family' which goes around looking for people with herds of kids and films them for a while and makes a tv show about it. The parents are always uneducated skanks with jobs like sewer maintenance and dish washer and they have 8 or 9 kids each time. This past weekend, the mother was so ugly that I thought it was the dad.
The sukiyaki wasn't all that good. We cooked it on the table in that gigantor portable frying pan and the meat and/or sauce tasted like that nasty refrigerator air. And it was full of little mushrooms, bean sprouts, soft tofu, and other nasty stuff. Bean (or was it bamboo) sprouts taste like wet, crunchy dirt. And those little mushroom things were impossible to chew. It was like having a mouthful of grizzly meat that you can't break down. And they were stringy. The pork wasn't good because it didn't stay in the sauce but for a few minutes. It nearly had no flavor. It wasn't like the only other time I've ever had sukiyaki, which was several years ago. That time, it was delicious.
After dindin, we went back to the mountain and went for a ride in the cable car. It costs 1130 yen per person and isn't worth but a fraction of it. The car is packed full of people, so only the ones by the windows can see out. When you get out, the observation building at the top is packed with people. You have to go up to the roof, which is the 3rd floor to see the view, and you had to push your way up to the railing to get any sort of decent view. Nearly all of the tourists reeked of alcohol, and everyone pushes past you without saying a word. It really kind of sucked. My host parents were steering me around by the shoulders and literally pushing me into people to get me where they wanted me. The view was spectacular, but I don't think it lives up to the hype they push it with here. From the mountaintop, you can see Aomori, which is on Honshuu [Hakodate is on the island of Hokkaido, on the northern side of the Tsugaru Strait. Across the strait lies Aomori, on the island of Honshuu], and other cities on Hokkaido which are *very* far away by car. I also saw lots of squid fishing boats on the water. I kind of liked it better when we just drove out to the country and looked from there. Everything wasn't so small then and I could make out objects better and there were no stupid tourists. And it was free.