in hirosaki before the plunge

Hirosaki is a small city below Aomori, the capital of Aomori prefecture on the northern tip of Honshu, that features a splendid castle and an interesting display of their famous O-bon festival (holiday where the dead come out), Naputa, which is focused on carrying colorful lit floats several stories high around the streets. Too bad i never saw any of it. The reason i am here is thus: i met a British girl randomly in the Shinkansen station at Shinhanamaki, a crossroads for Aomori and Morioka and other big cities in way-north Japan, i told her i was staying in Aomori and she kindly invited me to come to Hirosaki where she lived, she's a NOVA teacher like i used to be, we bitched about NOVA and had a grand old time, i got her number, called her from Aomori, and here i am. Much went on in between of course. Here goes:

1. Stayed in a hostel in outer Aomori in the mountains along a wide street buzzing with occasional fast-moving cars. Not much up there besides onsens and some restaurants. The owner was quite a character--obsessed with Ireland and Irish beer and liquor to such an extent that he served Guinness using a specialized electric frothing machine and sported an apron strip with the Irish flag colors, baked Irish soda bread and Guinness-flavored cake and served them with herb tea infused with plants from his garden at "tea-time" at 9pm, made salads dressed with edible flowers and homemade jams with muesli and banana juice for breakfast, offered nightly trips to different onsens for a mere 3 bucks a pop (which we all went to together like some kind of family--owner, the mysterious and unspoken female helper, and the guests, which was only me one night and then I and a strange man the next night). The restaurant owner across the street told me as i ate some seafood spaghetti the last night that the girl living there was "suspicious" because the owner was never married. Drama to the max! Did i mention that the owner scrubbed his body TWICE as long as me and the strange man at the onsen? This strange man by the way had terrible excema that made him scratch beneath his shirt like a monkey with lice, had brief and spastic conversations with himself in the onsen while staring down at his enormous paunch, and was a NOVA student for six years and counting. Coincidence? He also mentioned how he loved Canada, and had visited seven times. Coincidence? He started NOVA as a level 6 and now is a level 4 (level 7 is lowest, level 1 is highest). As an old hand to the NOVA scheme, it seems to me this poor chap had been given two sympathy level-ups, for his English was shaky at best. On the other hand, the compulsive owner of the hostel exhibited well-refined English, but only on the final morning. Before this, he only spoke Japanese, perhaps because i didn't speak English to him in efforts to improve my conversation abilities in the native tongue. If only people didn't talk about complicated historical things or strange place names, i might gain more out of these conversations, but i still hold my own.
2. Went to Sukayu Onsen, well-known and appreciated by onsen connoisseurs everywhere. It is famous for the sulfur content of its water (high enough to make you smell like rotten eggs all day, but with beautiful clear skin!), and equally famous is its unisex bathing chambers. The baths are divided into sides for each sex, but with no physical barrier. Therefore, the result is hordes of old sleazy men with shifty eyes soaking their naked bodies in the same water as the huddling group of old women in the corner. Onsen bathers are usually old. I am always the hairiest bather. Always. I am like a chinchilla in a bath with a pack of chihuahuas. And i must say that out of all the penises i have ever seen, Japanese penises make up a good ninety-nine percent. I could say more, but...
3. Before entering this sulfurous and lecherous onsen, i decided to see some more nature before school started, so i hiked up to what i thought was the entrance to an easy nature trail, frequented by old ladies aplenty. The sign was in complicated kanji, and after consulting the map and getting confused, brightly decided that it MUST be the right trail, because how many trails could there possibly be? It was a bit uphill and muddy, but i labored on. Steeper and muddier, and muddier still, until my sneakers were caked brown, and steeper still until i found myself hopping up large stones in an inclined stream up a mountainside. Something told me that this was the wrong trail, but something else somehow managed to ignore this and prodded me on instead, for better or worse. How atypical of my usual approach. I hopped and climbed until i was completely sure that i wasn't getting where i wanted, since the sign told me i still had 3 kilometers left to go. So i turned back in defeat, and was quickly shadowed by a young guy who was nimble as an elf, nearly skipping from stone to stone with his twinkletoes. I saw this as a contest, and went faster, and faster, leaping down with force and scrambling along sideways of mud and moss. Finally, we reached a slowing point and i turned to say a few words to him, and this is when he recognized me as the gaijin dude from the hostel in Sendai--i'd come in as he was leaving and we chatted a bit. What a coincidence! He had hiked the whole way up and reached the top of the mountain where he expected a nice view, but the clouds obscured it and he was disappointed. Bummer. So we hiked down more slowly together and had a fine talk about random things, like how to say "mud" in Japanese and where we were each going next, exchanging emails at the end of our journey downhill. He went back to his campsite as i finally found the entrance to the correct trail, which was incidently a cakewalk compared to that mountain. Many nice flowers in bloom, an underground boiling stream, and meticulously labeled flora with long Japanese names, underwritten in Latin. I also managed to snap some shots of "Hell Lake," a pit of steaming water that the onsen probably utilizes for their insidious bathing purposes. After all, a pipe extends out towards the side that spilled water down some concrete slabs, and a passing woman remarked how it was "thrown away by the onsen." Many clues all pointing to one culprit.

And here i am in this apartment in Hirosaki just bumming a night like the bum i am. The girls living here are much too kind, the non-American type, and have provided both tea and Simpsons, which are both more nourishing than food itself. Not to mention good conversation, including the always essential "bitch about NOVA" session. So refreshing to get to do that all over again. I went to visit their branch earlier, and hearing the electronic bell sound signalling the end of classes nearly made me want to vomit. I think i mentally vomited.
Tomorrow is my long day and night of ferrying and showing up to school on time and zombified from lack of sleep. I refuse to get a room somewhere, and instead plan on staying up all night and finding things to do with my heavy luggage and probable caffeine high. I've got books and a journal and Japanese conversation skills. What could prevent me from having the night of my life?