Wow!!!!

So, what a weekend...
This weekend there were school festivals, a shinto festival, a concert (with my dentist), a couch surfer and a trip to Akan. It's amazing how much we managed to fit in. I have decided, without a doubt, that Kushiro was an absolutely fantastic place to have chosen.
First I'll just briefly mention the festival. It was a shame, not a lot of people came, but it was still a fantastic experience. There was a team of about 10 or 15 kids drumming right next to my school on Saturday on the way to work. They were awesome too! I didn't have the camera with me but over the course of my classes, and it was a pretty long day, we had heaps of floats and the really heavy shrine all coming past the school. It was really cool to see.

After I finished work I met up with Diana and our couchsurfer from Israel to go and see my dentist sing in Spanish. He lived for 18 years in Brazil, loves to sing, and taught himself 'La Malagueña' which is a cool song written and composed by two Mexicans about a a woman from Malaga. It wasn't too bad and some of the other acts were pretty impressive. It was a really formal, slightly weird event but all in all it was great.

We ate out afterward and went to a restaurant we went to in the first week of our arrival. I should mention here that this weekend was not a good example of an economic weekend...but it was worth it. It's a little place that does fusion food. Spanish, Italian and Japanese. The setting is really traditional but the food is just plain cool. The photo below is of Mozzarella sushi!

The next day (That's Sunday) we headed to 'the festival'. As it turned out Saturday was pretty much the festival and Sunday was just like a few small little events and as it was raining basically no one turned up...which was kinda sad. Nevertheless we got to learn some flower arranging which was awesome, we got invited to a tea ceremony and we watched three awesome traditional dances! Though we were pretty much the only spectators it was still an amazing day and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

And then there was the Akan tour!! Ok, so it was a paid tour where you just get on a bus and stop and all the specified places and take the same photos but it was still AWESOME!! You should see the scenery here. Even before we got into the marsh land or arrived at the first lake my mind was blown by just how amazingly beautiful the countryside is around here. wild flowers and gorgeous trees. Steep rocky outcroppings and rolling lush green meadows. One of the first places we stopped at was called Tsurui Mura, which in Anui means the place where the cranes stay. There were tancho cranes there. These birds are amazing. I mean I know they are the town emblem and all but I had never imagined how huge and glorious they are. They stand at about 1 and a half meters tall and a wing span of over 2meters!! Very cool bird. We couldn't stay long but that was cool. The next stop was lake Kushiro. Its in a bowl of a valley, wouldn't be surprised if we are talking volcano here, the mountain to the right of the image definitely was at some point (I guess it could be some form of sinkhole type feature but I have most of my money on volcano). That was very cool and there were cool squirrels there too, about three or four inches tall. So cool!
From there it was off to something rather mountain. It translates to sulfur mountain and basically looks like modor hahaha. Seriously. Steam billowing up from the arid rocky ground and vivid stains of acrid yellow with the constant smell of sulfur. There were patches of bubbling water coming up out of the ground too. I tried to not think too hard about how far down the molten rock had to be....
Finally we got to Lake Akan. There was soooo much to see and do there but we only had two hours so we hired a boat and headed out to the infamous morimo's. They are balls of Algae that live on the bottom of the lake, kinda cool. But the whole place is just a marvel. Up in the mountains, completely un touched...stupidly beautiful. I could have posted like four hundred thousand photos but I have restrained myself. Diana and I are VERY excited about exploring more of Hokkaido and look forward to really pushing our Japanese in the near future to make it all possible. We are in the process of organizing a home stay at a farm to practice our Japanese and get our hands back into the soil....oh and our beans have just come up. It has been a great weekend!!

There is still more to say about the weekend. We went and checked a place for our big independence day event (Mexican), we have the radio interview tomorrow and we started up an online social international group...it's been awesome and crazy but mostly awesome. Look forward to updating more soon.
ciao world