Alright friends, so we left off on a huge cliffhanger, heading out towards E-san at 1:00 p.m, ready for anything. We were super excited to climb the mountain, then spend the evening relaxing in the wine-red water at the E-san onsen, before Jessica drove us to our hotel in Hakodate and she headed home to make it to church the next morning.
We were driving down the road, heading through Hakodate to make it to the mountain on time. The wind was in our hair, and our minds were untroubled. Then, all of a sudden, Jessica mentions cautiously, “Hey, guys, I don’t want to freak you out, but my battery light came on. I think I should get it checked out.”
Oh no.
We found a service station within the next kilometre, and pulled in. This was the second time we had stopped at a service station without buying gas, and as we pulled in, Jessica tried to tell them what was wrong in Japanese. In my eyes, she did a pretty great job! After a lot of pointing, nodding, and words I didn’t understand, Jessica told me that it was her alternator belt, and that they didn’t have one at that station, but they did at the Nissan dealership in the city.
So much for E-san!
We hopped back into the car and drove into the city, grudgingly obeying the speed limit. Although we still wanted to climb the mountain, we also didn’t want to get pulled over. Eventually, we found the dealership, and they took her precious car away from her for an hour. By this time it was 3:30, and we were pretty sure that we weren’t going to be climbing any mountains. Instead, we settled for a walk down the street, where we found a wonderful patisserie and stuffed our faces with macaroons and cake.
Not a bad second choice, but still not exactly what we were looking for. Eventually, we walked back to the dealership, and found Jessica’s car fixed. “Horray” we exclaimed in unison, causing stares from the Japanese passers-by. We hopped in the car and resigned ourselves to heading to our hotel in Hakodate, where Jessica would drop us off before she headed back to Kuriyama.
We got to the hotel, and I could tell as soon as she laid down on my bed for a tiny rest that Jessica wasn’t driving home that night.
“Guys, I think I wanna stay here tonight. I really don’t want to drive,” she said, and that was that. We booked another hotel room, and all of a sudden, E-san was back on the horizon!
With that settled, we went off to find a place to eat. The hotel recommended this tiny little locally owned place. We couldn’t find it no matter how hard we tried, so eventually we gave up. We came across this place covered in lights and Christmas decorations, with a large quote on the front that said “everything in the restaurant is in the full spirit of Christmas”. We HAD to give this place a try.
Apparently the place is quite famous with anyone who lives in the area. They serve burgers, omuraisu, and curry, from what I can tell. This seems mismatched enough, but the most startling thing was how many Christmas decorations there were. They seemed to stick out from every single wall and every corner. I counted no fewer than eight Christmas trees, all of them completely covered with decorations. They photos do not do it justice at all. You had to see it. If anyone is in town, the place is called Lucky Pierrot, and their logo has a clown. visit http://www.luckypierrot.jp/ for more info.
After our soak, we went to the hotel, and rested up for another exciting day ahead of us.
When we awoke, we packed up the car, checked out, and drove up Mt. Hakodate to see the beautiful view. We contented ourselves with the view and with playing twister on the giant compass on the ground. Mom thought we were crazy. We giggled a lot. It made us happy.
After this, we drove to Hakodate Tower and paid to go up to the very top to see a bird’s eye view of the Goryokaku fort. It was shaped like a star and looked absolutely stunning from the tower. I amused myself by snatching an English leaflet and reading facts out to Jessica and my mother, pretending that I knew a lot about the history. They were impressed until they noticed the concealed pamphlet. I took this as a hint that we should actually go look at the fort.
We took the elevator down and walked around a bit, not really caring that it was raining. The park is beautiful, and well worth a walk-through, although you might want to visit it on a sunny day. We turned our bodies into a star to pose for photos.
Finally, we made the journey to E-san. We drove and drove and drove down the endless road.
Finally, when we though we could no longer bear to be in the car, we came across the mountain in all its glory. We drove up as far as we could, parked the car, and then started the hike.
Being an active volcano, the smell of sulfur was strong and we saw plenty of air vents spewing steam.
I’m not going to lie, I was a little wary of the hike. My mother came with us for the first little bit, then bowed out when we started to climb the steps. And climb the steps we did! One after another, we went further and further up, stopping only occasionally to take pictures. Eventually, after much effort, we reached the top.
It was really cloudy. We couldn’t see Honshu.
As anticlimactic as it was, it was still a good hike, and on the way down we counted all the stairs we’d come up. We took turns counting to hundreds in different languages. I practised my Japanese. I was proud of myself. 918 stairs.
After this long hike, we decided to cap off the trip with a soak in the famous E-san onsen. We drove around, looking for it, and finally found it right next to the mountain. It was so tiny that we almost didn’t see it, but we were excited for a soak nonetheless.
We went in, and it was very disorganized. It looked like no one had been there in ages. We called out, and eventually someone came and answered our calls.
“Uhh... is the onsen open?” we asked hesitatingly.
“Sure is!” The man replied, asking us for 4 dollars.
We then walked down a hallway with carpet of at least 4 different colours, and into the changing room, roughly the size of my closet. We changed quickly, and entered the onsen. We were completely not expecting what we got.
The onsen was just as small as my bathtub, and the water seemed to be more rust-coloured than wine-coloured. The entire room was grimy and small, and we were the only people there. This fact, at least, was unsurprising. We showered and cleaned ourselves, although we hardly saw the point, and got into the bath. From my point of view, it seemed like the perfect setting for a horror film. I kept looking around for the villain. Once I got over that, however, it was quite relaxing.
Famous onsen? I’m not so sure.
Finally, relaxed and clean, we started the long drive back to the city. We got in eventually, and promptly fell asleep, ready to work the next day.
And to cap this one off, more Engrish!
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