This past weekend, Sept. 13-15, was a holiday weekend and was also when the HAJET Eastern Hokkaido Meet was. It was held at a campsite near a town called Nakashibetsu near the east coast of Hokkaido and was a chance for all the new and old ALT's in the area to get together and hang out. It was a weekend of camping, hiking, partying, exploring, onsen and more onsen.

I decided to go up on Saturday morning and I was taking a JET and her sister from the Asahikawa area with me. They came up to my town the night before to spend the night and then we left bright and early the next morning, picking up another JET in Engaru on the way.There was a hike planned for 1:30pm so we left early enough to make the three hour drive (with a 15 minute detour to erm.. look at the countryside..) and arrived in the afternoon. We were going to climb Musa-dake (Mt. Musa) which is a four hour hike to the peak and back. There was a group of ten of us who came early for the hike but we didn't get to the base until 2:30pm. I was pretty stoked for it and bought new hiking shoes and a backpack to replace the one I had to leave at home *sniff*. We followed the 4km trail, fought our way to the peak and got there at 4:30pm to rest for a bit before double-timing it back down before it got dark. The sun sets early here so we just barely made it back to our cars by 6 o'clock when it got pitch dark.

Right after we headed to a local onsen to clean ourselves up and relax. It was pretty small with only three baths but it felt pretty damn good after climbing up a mountain. After a quick stop at Seico Mart (a convinience store) for the others to buy booze (you can get booze pretty much anywhere in Japan) we headed back to the campsite to eat and meet up with the rest of the ALT's. There was a pretty large turnout with almost 50 people from all over Hokkaido, some coming from nearby towns and others driving 8-9 hours from as far away as Sapporo. There were also a lot of non-JETs (private ALT's) in the area that were invited to the meet. One girl I met hadn't seen any other english-speaking foreigners in the three months she's been living here! After a huge supper of yakisoba we had a big bonfire at the campsite followed by impromptu fireworks (prizes my friend won that we set off) and then a short walk into town to party at a local bar called Safeway (with almost the same logo, weird). After chatting with the others for a bit (I found new snowboarding buddies!) and checking out the bar for about an hour I went back to the camp and crashed at 1:00am due to sheer exhaustion.

The next morning I woke up at 7:00am (like I always do... there's no such thing as sleeping in for me anymore) and ate a breakfast of conbini onigiri. Deeelicous! At 10:30am that morning there was a taiko session planned for us (real ones this time) so we went to a cabin really close to the campsite where they spread 20 of us out onto one floor and gave us each a taiko drum. We were given a super beginner course where they taught us how to stand and hit the drums and then taught us two little songs to bang away at. All those arcade taiko lessons had paid off :)

After sweating up a storm for an hour and a half (taiko is intense!) we went to a mall in Nakashibetsu for lunch where I had my first KFC in Japan. It's pretty much the same as back home so I wasn't missing anything.. After that we got together a group of people who wanted to go to a super onsen called Yoroushi and caravan'd our way there. Unfortunately, with me being the leader, we accidently got lost and ended up driving in a circle for an hour.. but I won't talk about that.. The onsen was only open to the public between 1-3 and 7-9pm and it was after 2 o'clock by the time we made it back into town so we decided to check out the coast and go to the onsen later that night.

We drove 20 minutes to Shibetsu, a town on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, to go to a place I dubbed the "Shrimp Peninsula" because I don't actually know what it's called and it looks like a shrimp. The 13 of us drove out onto this peninsula and spent a good two hours hanging out on the beach and the water breakers, taking tons of photos and stamping ourselves with cows. The island in the background of the pic on the right is Russian territory so technically I saw Russia from Japan. The one on the left is a pic with random Japanese guys who wanted a picture with our group. Tourists unite! We stopped every hundred meters or so to take pictures of something or other so it was slow going to get to the tip of the peninsula. It was nice to stop and smell the roses because we had all the time in the world.

We got back to the campsite at 6:00pm when it got dark and waited for our guide (the local JET who lives in Nakashibetsu) to finish an interview with the local newspaper before we could head out to the Yoroushi onsen. We were itching to go because we were all set on going earlier but.. yeah.. Surprisingly, the local newspaper wanted to interview me and Justin too because we were first year ALT's. They asked questions about taiko, our impression of Nakashibetsu and about the Eastern Meet. I told her about the arcade taiko sessions from Sapporo and she loved it, so I should be in the Nakashibetsu newspaper! We got to the onsen successfully this time and spent over an hour there. This place was amazing, it's an onsen hotel meaning you can rent rooms there and it's reputably the best onsen in Eastern Hokkaido. It had six baths, a mixed onsen and... a cold bath! It's exactly what it sounds like, a bath of cold water. It may not sound amazing but the first time I tried it I was hooked. What you do is you get steaming hot from the normal onsen and then jump into the cold bath to "shock" your body. It felt so good, I alternated between the baths at least 4-5 times. It's amazing! I felt great for at least three hours afterwards.

Once we were done, about eleven of us drove back to Nakashibetsu and found an izakaya restaurant to eat for supper. All of us hadn't eaten since the mall that afternoon so we were ravenous. We ended up staying there for an hour and a half and had a tab of 18,700 yen ($187) but it was well worth it. We were all about to fall asleep at the table so we got out of there by 11:00pm and headed back to the campsite. Some of us went to bed right away but the rest of us went to the campfire where someone had brought a guitar and spent the next few hours singing songs. Cliche, I know, but it was a really good way to end off the weekend.

The next morning was a round of goodbyes and farewells and then I left with my crew to drop off the sisters at the train station before heading home. Today it was back to work, like nothing happened but there are still the memories and pictures to look back on. This Friday I have another hike with my school to get me prepared for this weekend - Shakotan Peninsula. It's a four day weekend and it's where the Southwestern Hokkaido Meet is. It should be quite the epic of a weekend and I'm quite excited for it. Stay tuned!