jay’s girl. photo property of Clare Easton.

せんしゅまつにぼくとあもだちははこだてにいてだからたもだちのたんじょび。おめだとう　くらる！

全文日本語

I would be remiss were I to start a weekend recap by not acknowledging its inspiration – the birthday of the dangerously beautiful, charming beyond belief and better half of the cutest [non-married] couple I know – Ms. Clare.

I am the lucky man to her right on the above photo.

I drank Thursday night, but not to excess, and I was at work on time Friday, relatively rested and ready. Yet, Friday was one of the worst days of teaching I’ve had.  I was going through my morning routine, when my supervisor came over to check the dates I’ll be leaving Hamatonbetsu and then subsequently Japan.

Despite having finalized the dates a couple of weeks prior I came to realize I never really invested too much time in thinking over exactly why I wanted to leave Hamaton on July 28th and Japan on August 4th. Making a list of all the things I wanted to do in that period I realized I did not have enough time to do them all.

I panicked and spent at least an hour agonizing over if I should change the dates or not, using time that should have been spent preparing for my classes. As such, when it finally got to the point where I had to leave the Board of Education to teach, I gathered my teaching materials in a rush.

I had previously made that day’s lesson plans, but I had not checked in detail to make sure that all my flashcards, songs and such were perfect. As a result, the number cards I thought were 1 to 20 were only 1 to 12, I forgot the fruit flashcards I wanted to use for 1st grade, and I did not practice singing the songs we were to use to learn “what’s your name?” and “how old are you?” Between those details and the guilt I felt for selfishly stealing my morning from my pupil’s education, I was a wreck all day, and I sincerely doubt any English I hoped to slide into my memory banks held for past the bell announcing class was done.

On top of that, I have precious little time left with these children, and time that could of been spent helping them clean I instead had to use to prepare number flashcards.

Following those debacles I decided it would be unfair of me to skip out on the post class meetings, something I never do, but had gotten time of to do Friday as I was driving with Chris and Alex South to Sapporo after work. If classes had gone well I would have been OK with talking to the teachers, explaining my situation and postponing our meetings, yet things went very opposite from well.

That combined with a final edit of my monthly article in the town magazine and I wasn’t ready to leave until around 4, after telling Chris and Alex I was getting of work at 3. As a hard green melon flavored crust on top, I still hadn’t gotten gas, nor money for the journey.

Apologized for my tardiness to my companions, Alex did not seem to care [he's a fellow usual late-doer-of-things, although he was on time Friday] while Chris who was clearly not pleased said nothing.

Drive down went well after that. Managed to mitigate my usual digestive system decimating consumption of junk food while driving by sharing my sweets and eating a banana. Conversation bounced all around as usual, with the best debate on whether or not “compulsatory” was a word.

Alex used it in a sentence and given I did not think anything of it, I felt it was obviously a part of the English lexicon. Chris disagreed; however, and declared it a made up word. While Alex acknowledged he could have been combining “compulsory” and “mandatory” he held firm.

Dropped Chris off at his friend Tim’s in Ebetsu and then it was time for Alex and my final navigational exam. On all our previous drives to Sapporo we have never been able to find our lodging in under an hour and a half and sometimes not for three hours. Justifiably embarrassed by this fact, we were hoping this our last journey South together to have better results.

One thing which would have helped in the past and Friday was a map. I have several at home, but none where they’d actually be helpful such as in the car.

Yet I did acquire step by step directions from the cool big sister I wish I’d always had – Katie – from Sapporo Junction to her home. After paying the toll Alex and I were caught up in whatever inane conversation we were having at the time and mindlessly exited the highway.

A minute or so later Alex asked if I’d been paying looking for our first landmark.

“No.”

“That’s not a good start.”

Indeed it was not. After roughly 30 minutes of driving straight to no avail we spoke with Katie over the phone, and asked her about how far from the highway were we supposed to turn?

“5 minutes.”

With that all our dreams of being prompt were immediately dashed. I was ready to give up and simply leave the car at a train station parking lot. We pulled into a Lawson to ask directions to such a place, when I got an email from Katie  informing me to look for “route 453.” After already spending ten minutes giving directions to Alex, he spent an additional 5 for our new destination. As a symbol of his gratitude, Alex had me pay for a matcha flavored soft cream which he ate.

According to our information we were at least 20 minutes away. Yet, not 8 minutes into our journey I started to recognize landmarks near Katie’s home. It was dark and contrary to the kind clerk’s info however, so we were not sure. We continued following the subway line. At the next station, Alex asked a woman the location of Katie’s nearest subway station … it was the one we’d just passed.

Thus in spite of ourselves we managed to make it to Katie’s house in just under an hour. It was only supposed to take 30 minutes, but considering our history we felt like conquering heroes for our absolute best time from highway to lodging ever.

After powdering our noses at Katie’s, we headed out into the Sapporo night. My outfit was quite dashing I must say – orange accented boat shoes, Big Mac Overalls, a guitar slung over my shoulder and a STRONG chu-hi in my free hand.

Official reason for the guitar was to give it to a friend, but looking back I should of just kept it as an accessory for the duration.

Subsequent night and day were covered in a vlog filmed by Alex from the road Satuday.

One excluded detail concerned our lunch Saturday. We mentioned how Alex ate everyone’s food and “bought something,” but declined to say while he was out riding the streets on his skateboard because he “wasn’t hungry” Telford said

“Alex is going to show up in an hour sit there, and eat everyone’s food.”

Telford’s new nickname could be Nostradamus, as his prediction came true to the letter.

We made the vlog as we were driving South from Sapporo to the home of our friend “with the small head” – Jay. It was the first time I’d been South of Hokkaido’s biggest city, and the drive absolutely blew me away. The mountains of pure green we traversed seemed a foreign country. Out of nowhere came Hokkaido’s very own Mt. Fuji – eido fuji san – like a blind side in ice hockey blowing away my sense of Hokkaido’s landscape.

Then there was the majestical Lake Toya, water like that in between Monet’s water lillies surrounding a magical island in the lake’s center.

Started our Saturday in the city Matthew Perry came to visit, but what was the answer to that day’s vlog question? … did we make it in time to see the view?

Turns out it was Japan’s 3rd best night view, not the world’s, but with tour guides you get what you pay for.

Footnotes

1. Actually Lucky Pierrot’s, a Hakodate only burger chain. For more, please visit their Japanese homepage, or read Eric Johnson’s take on the chain in his 2005 Guardian article.
2. Nomihodai – or all you can drink special.

We did a group recap the following morning.

Unfortunately, Alex stopped filming halfway through for whatever reason,

After a dream-esque Saturday it was time to slowly get back to reality and the drive North. First stop was Sapporo to drop off Telford for his bus rid to his town. As Alex dozed off I had a wonderful chat with the young New Zealander about blogging [he also writes one, please read it “Bombay & Elaine”], reading [while we have different views on Ian McEwan's work, I was shocked to discover he'd served the man tea] and writing.

About an hour outside Sapporo I stopped for what Alex claimed were “amazing” fried potato balls. They were average at best, and to make matters worse they cost us valuable time. When I stopped I assumed I had abour 90 minutes to work with. As Alex chatted to a hot girl on a motorbike from the passenger seat, Telford informed me we had about 50. Eventually the worst traffic I’ve encountered outside Sapporo ebbed and I dashed through Sapporo’s streets at twice the speed limit, hoping to make good on my promise to T “we’d take care of him.”

Arrived at Sapporo station and saw Telford off. Alex went with to check everything was good. When I saw them running back, my heart sank a little. Yet, it was a false alarm, Telford had 5 mintues before his bus left and had merely forgotten his wallet in the car.

It was then Alex made the apt obsevation I have chosen for this post’s title.

Starting the weekend as it had begun, we picked up Chris late – two hours this time – in Ebetsu and then drove home. Roughly 10 hours and 600 km after Alex and I started Sunday, we arrived back in Hamatonbetsu.

At some point in the drive Chris informed us that despite the fact Alex and I are paid to teach English, “compulsatory” is not a word in the dictionary, and no one he spoke with that weekend had ever hear of it.

fresh uni and the birthday girl