Well it wasn’t what you’d call a “camp.” It was a two day excursion of southern Hokkaido. It was like the bus tour where they tried to cram too much in too little time. It could of been planned better in my opinion. For starters, the school had us show up late on Saturday (12:30 am) and then the first place we went was to the Ainu Museum where we were whisked around, by the school staff, to different exhibits (in Japanese), but we really didn’t get enough time to really “explore” much less try to understand what the Ainu people were telling us. I really wished that we would have left earlier to check out the museum more. There was a lot of places we didn’t go too and the building we did go to didn’t show a whole lot. They tried to get us to make headbands at the Ainu place, like hand stitching, but again we only had about 45 min or less to do it…. lame.

The school whisked us, via bus, to this hotel which was pretty nice with an onsen and everything; I got at least an hour or so to enjoy the onsen. I think that was the most memorable only because you could relax (for a bit). Dinner that night was served buffet style, because there was about 30+ of us and another group “EASCON” who participated. For 2 hours, in the dark of night, a small group of us went and checked out the town. We saw the “hell valley” and it did look like hell… Creepy. The rest of the night was a blur so… don’t ask ; – ) cool volcano though!

The next day they tried to wake us up at 7am for breakfast, but that didn’t happen… heh heh. At 9am they shoveled us into the bus and took us to this Edo Wonderland. Now, this “Edo Wonderland” was kinda like enchanted forest and an old western town like Calico put into one. However, the shows were so-so and while the buildings and stuff were cool.. it felt dead. I can’t even describe the little buildings they had. For example, I walked into this “ninja house” which ended up being one of those really dumb house of mirrors and slanted floors to trip you out, but I had a (ahem) headache from the other night so some of that dizziness came back… ya know? Not fun.. not much fun at all.

You see they were trying to replicate a (kids) version of Japan before 1868’s “samurai age.” But they were trying too hard and some of it didn’t make since. They had this building that they called the Yoshiwara (read: sex district) that had a “geisha show”, but it was no show. They had a ninja program, but it was totally staged and it had the ninja/samurai exhibits had little to no educational value.

I’d say if you wanted a cheap thrills, then find a happening bar and save your money then to go to “Edo Wonderland.” Sorry.. it just didn’t turn me on. But I did manage to remember to buy my host family a box of bean cakes which they liked.

That was it for that day.. 9:30-1:00pm and then we went home to Sapporo (yeh!). When we got back, I had a coffee with my buddy Nick and then went home… Slightly disappointed. I was only disappointed because they rushed us through the cool educational places like the Ainu museum and Norboribetsu town which had A FREAKING LIVE VOLCANO! and then dumped us in a very boring and un-educational theme park that just wasn’t suited for college age students.

Well… I’d still like to go back to Norboribetsu sometime and really explore that town. They have a bear zoo! Why on earth didn’t the school take us there? Oh well… Back to home work…

~J out

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