Along with our camping trip to Toya Lake last month, we also visited Hakodate.
We enjoyed the freshest (wiggling on our plate) squid that was perfectly clear in color and tasted like heaven. We also had uni (sea urchin) for breakfast. Such a luxury!
It was a gourmet trip. We ate and ate and ate.
During our 3 day stay in Hakodate we managed to visit all the places we wanted to. We also had a little romantic afternoon boat rowing around the Goryokakukoen moat.
We fully enjoyed Hakodate. Being Vancouverites, and living land-locked for the past 8 months, it was really great to be back at the ocean.
This Sunday was the annual Healthy Marathon (ヘルシ マラソン) in the nearby town of Biei. Biei is about 120km away from Takikawa, and is known for its annual marathon as well as its beautiful flower gardens spread over vast rolling hillsides. The Biei marathon attracts thousands of competitors and spectators every year during the June 8th weekend.
Kevin registered online for the 10k quarter-marathon back in early May along with our good friend, Matthew Caesar. Kevin spent a solid month doing a rigorous training routine of 3 day-a-week 6:00am runs down the Sorachi River to prepare for the event. (No, Cathy didn’t go running with.)
On the wednesday before the marathon, we both fell sick with sore throats, and major chest congestion. We ended the week by cancelling a few classes, in hopes that we could rest up and feel better for the weekend, but come marathon day, we were both still very under the weather.
We left Takikawa at 7:00am on Sunday, June 8th with 2 runners - Kevin & Matt and 3 cheerleaders - Cathy, Kaori & David. We headed towards Biei to make the 9:00am registration time. Kevin popped a decongestant, an advil, a tylenol and a general cold pill and started stretching for the race.
Cathy, Kaori and David relaxed in the grass and enjoyed yummy yaki-tori and beer (yes, at 10:00 in the morning) and cheered on Kevin and Matt as the firing gun sounded and the race started.
An hour and twenty minutes later (1hr18min for Matt) Kevin came bouncing down the finish line and had successfully completed his first marathon EVER!
Celebration was in order, so we all headed up the road to Fukiage Onsen to enjoy a traditional Japanese public bath, naked. Gender separated.
It was a huge success.
Here’s a video of Kevin finishing the marathon. A glorious (although painful) moment.
After waking up in a strange McDonalds in Ueno and finding it much busier than when we had decided to nap quietly in the corner, we headed to Asakusa to drop our bags off at the hotel. Cathy had found us a series of great hotels over the next 5 nights in all the best spots in the City. It was a decision, in part, due to the fact that most hotels were almost fully booked, and we could only find one availability here and there, but it also meant we got to see many different parts of the city and stay in a handful of funky 2-foot by 3-foot hotel rooms. Waking up and dropping off our bags at the next hotel before check-in was a common occurance across our stay in Tokyo.
Over the course of our 5 days in Tokyo, we stayed for one night in Asakusa, two nights in Nishi-Azabu, one night in Shinjuku and one night in Nihonbashi. We pushed & shoved through Harajuku and Shibuya, rode Japan’s biggest ferris wheel in Odaiba, ate and drank in Roppongi and strolled through Ueno & Yoyogi parks. All without a flake of snow!
By great coincidence ( & by relentless encouragement) many of our friends from around Takikawa ended up in Tokyo over new years as well. We each had our various places to go and friends to see, but on a few occaisions we all got together at an Izakaya for food, drinks and and some “Hey, we’re in Tokyo!”
On new years eve, after a big dinner gathering in Shinjuku, we found ourselves at Zojoji temple, at the foot of the Tokyo Tower. We were accompanied by our new photographer-friend Michael, who we had met for the first time earlier that day. We were introduced to Michael, a former Takikawa resident turned tokyoite, over flickr and the three of us had a great time in Tokyo walking around and taking pictures (even though he’s a Nikon guy…)
We were joined by thousands of people in the temple’s immense courtyard- and at the stroke of midnight, 3,000 “eco-friendly” balloons were launched into the air & the temple’s joya-no kane (new years bell) rang out as the Tokyo Tower lit up with its spectacular new blue colour for 2008. Attached to each balloon was a special new years wish, or prayer. It was a spectacular sight to behold, and in one single event justified our epic 48 hour, 16 transfer train ride down to Tokyo. Following that, we took the subway back to Shinjuku and drank in the new year until the wee hours of the morning.
The first of January, accompanied again by Michael, we visited Kanda Myojin, a modest shrine near Akihabara. Far from the tourists and foreigners, we got a very fascinating, real glimpse into the very old Shinto tradition of visiting the shrine on the first day of the new year, called Saitansai. We ate new years aman, and drank sweet sake, before heading into the heart of Akihabara, the electronics center of Tokyo to play with camera equipment like little kids on Christmas.
That night, we had a farewell Tokyo dinner with our foreigner-friends and woke up the next morning to catch our 9:00am Shinkansen back home. We laughed at our 2 day trip down to Tokyo, as we sped at 284km/h back towards Hokkaido. Within 11 hours, we were back at home to confirm that yes- our fish were still alive and yes… it’s still snowing in Takikawa, just as we remembered.
Tokyo was our first big trip within Japan, and a huge success by any account. It was nice to escape the snow for a week, though Tokyo wasn’t exactly t-shirt weather. We made good friends, took over 3,000 pictures beetween the two of us and ate some delicious monja. Our next trip will be to Taiwan, for Chinese New Year, and then to Kyoto for cherry blossoms in March.
In the mean time, we’ll enjoy the Hokkaido winter from our humble home in Takikawa.
Samantha & Rafael were the teachers here before us. We spent 2 short weeks together learning our way around Takikawa and the ins & outs of the job.
Sam & Raf left for Vancouver on November 25th:
Hey peeps!
How are things? Is everything OK, are you guys still confident about everything now that Sam and I are gone?
Just taking the initiative here and writing to let you know that our flight went OK, and that even though it was long we had a good time because the service was so good! Customs was a breeze, they simply asked us a few questions and let us through without checking our bags… I was glad of that because I’d bought so many things in Japan I was worried I’d have to pay tax.
I checked your Blog but unlike Kevin promised I did NOT see our good-bye video yet! Hope you don’t get lazy like me and stop updating it…
Well… wish you guys luck on your first week! Remember: breathing is good! It calms you down ;-)
Kev: if you forgot anything or need an extra hand planning a lesson email me and I’ll get back to you asap.
Thanks again so much for helping us at the station guys! I can’t believe how fast kevin chucked those bags inside the train -.-; oh, btw, we managed to check-in our bags in Chitose and NOT check them out in Narita! yeay!
One of our classes every week is at the Takikawa Kindergarden. We play with the kids in the morning and “try” to teach them English in the afternoon. They are the most adorable things ever but it can be quite exhausting at times. The kindergarden is right beside a temple run by the Izumi family. The Izumi family are our students as well as our guarantor.
We teach at the kindergarden (It’s called “youchien” in Japanese) every Friday. Here’s a video clip from our first day, the whole school gathered together in the gym for a special ceremony for Sam & Raf’s departure and our arrival.
Yes I know, they are adorable!!!
(There’s also a part one of the video where Izumi-san — the priest of the temple and the owner of the youchien — introduced the ceremony)
Later on, all the students formed a tunnel with their little hands together and we crawled through the crazy kid tunnel to complete the ceremony. (We have photos of this from the youchien and we’ll try to scan them at 7-11)
p.s. by the way, apparently kindergarden is supposed to be spelled kindergarten?! What?!
Latest Comments