Christeph: On the Lam

Last Friday I got out of school early, after a stressful and unsuccessful day of being observed and judged by teachers from a nearby town. It was raining and miserable. The only logical thing to do next was take our contraband car to the next town north of us for some ice cream. Ice cream definitely tastes better when you’re eating it in the rain and supposed to be at work. Hachimori has the strangest ice cream flavors around. So far we’ve tried wasabi, lavender, sweet potato, and rose. And I just keep going back for more.

Saturday morning my boss drove some papers over to our house so that sweet lord hallelujah, our car is now legit!!! We drove for an hour and a half through the miserable weather to the Oga Peninsula’s Aquarium to celebrate our newfound freedom. When Tohoku gives you rain, go visit the fishies, that’s what I say. I had low expectations for the “fish zoo” (as I like to call it with my limited Japanese vocabulary), but we found an excellent vertical wall of fish, complete w/ sea turtles and sharks. There were a few exhibits on strangenesses I’ve never laid my eyes on before, as well as some old favorites from the Japanese dinner table. There was also this great 3-D adventure… it’s not a Tohoku park w/o some crazy non-sequiteur game w/ flashing lights in the middle of everything… where you can sit down in a theater with these 3D glasses, where a polar bear is lecturing to fish. It all seemed to make sense at the time. Anyway… the sea mammals kept us entertained (polar bear, penguins, seals). And you can’t beat the aquarium location, nestled in a nook of jagged rocks right on the Sea of Japan. I mean, really.

Sunday was also stormy, which made it the perfect day for … a British Tea Party! We got together w/ some of the English folk in town and our favorite Japanese friends to have some “cultural exchange”. In other words, eat sweets until we were positively nauseous. Mission accomplished.

Monday we also got to go out and play, since it was a national holiday of sorts. We just drove up the coast to Aomori,and took in whatever weird wonderful sites presented themselves. This included a large defunct wooden waterwheel, and something called WeSpa, which involved a tram up a mountain, castle spires, carrot ice cream, windmills, a glass studio, a train engine, and hot springs. How all this fits together, I have no idea, but it was fabulously strange.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 8:42 am and is filed under Ambiance, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.