in the Hot Web Cafe, blasting away at the keyboard

The music is slammin' in the Hot Web Cafe just outside Hakodate Station. The toilet in the Hot Web Cafe, like those in most other modernized establishments, is decked out with the latest toilet gizmos. The one here, the Inax Toilet Shower, is equipped with a boudet (steady and strong stream of warm water aimed directly at the sitter's anus), an electrically-warmed toilet seat, and even a humility button that when pressed, produces an electronic toilet-flushing sound to cover the shameful sound of a huge ripping fart. I've seen more mysterious whiteys here in the past hour than i've seen in the past month around town. What is it with white people and their vicious addiction to the internet? Don't ask me, i'm Ashkanazi. Those "white people" are as much a mystery to me as they are to you, dear reader.

Climbed Hakodate mountain today with all the HIF kids and most of their families. Had a blast hiking through some semi-wilderness again, despite the sad fact that the whole mountain is nearly devoid of wildlife besides some urban birds. The reason--the whole mountain was a huge army base during the Russian-Japanese war of the late 1800s, and it was all dug out to build secret control rooms into the hillsides. There were even huge anti-vessel guns operated by hand-pulled gears that protruded from the mountain top. I know all this because a friend's host dad took me and another kid from my class up to the top to see the secret military base entrances, which have now been overgrown and now look like abandoned mine tunnels. When everyone got to the top we played some corny games like Red Rover (during which whenever someone's name was called they usually ran headfirst into the intertwined grips of a small Japanese child and a skinny girl, or a skinny Japanese girl and a small Japanese child, thereby insuring a safe capture; needless to say, both defenders would have fear written on their faces, the grips usually dropped before each collision) and the game in which one person races on their hands while their partner holds their feet. Fun for the whole family!

Otosan and Okaasan are taking me to an onsen (hot spring) tomorrow, and i am bubbling over with excitement. I've never been anywhere with them before, save orientation day when they brought me home. I can say this much--i appreciate everything they do with me that much more because it so rarely happens. What a splendid way to live one's life--instead of constant endulgeance, scattered and infrequent activites that are infused with much more meaning. After all, i was never one for large showy events and unchecked hedonism. Side note, a skinny Japanese girl was wearing a tee shirt today that said naught but "Hedonism" printed across the chest. I told a friend that i must have a shirt like that, and he said, "But the meaning would be lost if it wasn't worn by a Japanese person." True or untrue, i cannot say, but Japanese youth are definitely more comfortable with their hedonistic culture than us American hedonists are. They feel much more at ease celebrating it than we do.

Only three weeks to go and then I am done with school, and off to start my week or so of free time before my flight to the Big Apple. What to do? Leaving the country would be too expensive (it's O-bon season, the holiday where everyone's ancestors come out of the ground to do some kind of spiritual dance, and all the living dance too, and people eat street food and sing, weee!), but buying a hyper-cheap O-bon season rail pass for young people is tantalizing. We'll see how this all pans out.