En route back from Niseko toward Toya I sent out an open invitation for everyone to join us at The Tag so that Mike and Ben could meet the people that make all the magic in Toya happen! Unfortunately I was greeted with enthusiastic responses informing the Tag was closed for New Year throwing a spanner in my plans a little bit there. Not to mention leaving us in a quandary about what to do for dinner. None of us really had the inclination to make a nutritious meal, and instant ramen didnt feel right having talked about the culinary delights of The Tag for the past few days. We were not to go hungry however, oh no, true to form hearing our plight Yuko offered to make us a nice curry, which is delivered promptly at 7pm later that evening. And after that due to a slight calendar misunderstanding it was Kathryn who came along with the promise of more foodover in Abuta. Over in Abuta after a quick stop to pick up booze it was onto Chizukos house, one of my English Class students. Ever together with Chizuko, Reiko wasnt far behind bearing more food. And within a short time a veritable feast has amassed before us good thing we had just eaten eh? We however resigned to our fate and through politeness and force of will we worked our way quite well through what was there only to be given the leftovers anyway, dinner for the next day I suppose. And so to use I phrase I use far too often on this blog it the night was far from over. Mike and I had for better or worse made the decision to get drunk this evening and continued to work our way through a bottle of Whisky, bringing it along to the Karaoke bar we ended up in. Which is good as it means we didnt have to drink publicly which would have angered the powers that be. Instead we drank publicly but secretly in a very childish fashion. Karaoke was a good as ever, I actually think the whole bar Karaoke system is better than the individual boxes, fellow drinkers always find foreigners singing amusing and I in turn find their amusement amusing. So it was a great night, even if I did kind of kill my already hurting voice by being a bit too enthusiastic in some Rage against the Machine. The singing/humming continued the whole car journey home in a great effort to stay conscious we were determined to continue the night. Although that didnt really happen, Mike passed out; I played with the wires on our sound system for a bit before forcing myself to stay awake for the duration of Clerks 2.
Next day! Feeling bright and alert after the previous night today was the day I was to fulfil my parents promise of watching videos with Onishi- san (guy with the greatest beard). The whole JPK came along for good measure. The first hour or so was quite interesting, watching videos he has covertly taken of our various activities over the past few months, as well as the 2000 eruption. The 3 or 4 hours after that were less enthralling however, watching videos of his various travels. Impressive as his holidays look, it jut wasnt all that interesting. Still, it clearly meant a lot to him that we came so Ill take that positive and leave it there. Night had already fallen so I unfortunately was unable to show the guys the highlights of Toya as I had originally intended. But time was running out! Tomorrow was devoted to Sapporo, which as I remember was the original intention of this post. Ill get there soon
The rest of our time in Toya, both before and after Sapporo was spent playing four player worms, which is very funny at times, and watching the movies we had talked about during naked banter sessions in the preceding days. (I mean during Onsen) As Ben and Mike pointed out, and as I already knew very well, when one is not doing a specific activity in Toya, there is actually very little in general which you can do. That draws it to end for this post, perhaps next time Ill get on to SapporoNot many interesting photos relating to this post, so I tacked a couple of snow ones on:)
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