Lost in Hobetsu

Another weekend, another musical rehearsal.

This time in Hobetsu, another small (under 5000 people) town. I drove, but I still don't really know where it is. This may have explained the two hour detour we took by accident on the way home...

It was a common theme to the weekend. We got horribly lost when we arrived in town and drove around a town with one main road for a half-hour, looking for our accommodation. Even the resident ALT giving us directions over the phone couldn't help us! We almost got lost on the way to the onsen. We called to get directions again and all we had to say was "I'm in a car with anyram...", and the laughter began. It turned out we were just being over-cautious. Sadly, the loss theme continued to personal items. I left my toothbrush and beloved minty fresh Crest (with fluoride!) at the onsen. And I think I forgot a brand-new bottle of lens solution somewhere too, but I haven't unpacked yet. Normally, these would not be terrible losses, but Japanese toothpaste is awful, and I just had that lens stuff sent to me!

And yes, somehow we managed to take a wrong turn on the way home and not notice for an hour. We did stop at a really good drive-in restaurant (hand-made soba noodles! yum!), which made us feel better about the excessive and unnecessary detour. But it did mean we had to drive an hour back the way we came to take the right turn. So it ended up being eight hours in the car. Not so much fun.

The rest of the weekend was great: plenty of singing and dancing and eating at the konbini (convenience store). Apparently, the staff there felt like they were in a foreign country all weekend. I guess that's what happens when 30 foreigners descend on small-town Hokkaido and stop at the only convenience store in town twice a day.

We also got our very cool "Hokkaido Players: Guys and Dolls" official T-shirts and fedoras. And I borrowed a copy of the Marlon Brando version of "Guys and Dolls". My plan for this evening: go shovel the last four days of snow accumulation {shudder} and curl up with Brando and Sinatra.