Day 12: Hakodate Park

Because it is the weekend, I got to sleep in an extra half hour before breakfast. It's become a lot harder to get up at 6:00 every morning now that I am less jetlagged, more busy, and have blinds that block the sunrise at 4am.

Breakfast:

For dessert we had Annin tofu:

It is a Chinese dessert that tastes a little like almond extract and is made from apricot kernel, agar, and sugar.

Then we went to the library for a bit and I finished my homework while we were there.

I was able to read the library stickers and was pretty happy about that:

It says "Municipal Hakodate Library."

After that, we went to a restaurant and had cold soba, then went to 函館公園(Hakodate Kouen = Hakodate Park).

Soba:

The park has a tiny zoo, and a tiny amusement park. The amusement park was small enough that there were only a few people working there who would just walk over to whatever attraction someone wanted to do and run it for them.

Park map:

Zoo:

There were two peacocks, and I think this one was albino, but I'm not sure.

There was also an enclosure with just a bunch of bonsai trees in it that I thought was kind of cool:

I rode with the boys on a spaceship ride that went around in a circle. It was run by an older man dressed as Mario, and たっくん asked him "本当にマリオだ？” = "Are you really Mario?" which was pretty adorable.

There was also an area with a grassy lawn, a fountain, an impressively large rose bush, and a bunch of pigeons:

There was a bee in one of the flowers:

Then we walked around the park for a little while:

I little while after we got back to the house, I went with my host mom and the boys to the supermarket and to Daiso. She was mostly looking for キャラ弁(kyaraben) shaped-hole-punch things that you can use to punch shapes out of seaweed, but we didn't find any.

I'm not sure why, but carrots here are super fat:

Actually, most of the fruit and vegetables here are pretty swollen looking.

Daiso is basically a Japanese dollar store, but also way better because the item quality is at least decent. Other than a handful of clearly labeled exceptions, everything costs 108円 (it would be 100 even without tax).
For about $6.50 I got:

Another pack of those rose-candy things,
Some cute hair bows:

An air plant and a dish to set it in:

And some moisturizing face-stuff which is supposed to be pretty good. I've seen sold for around $13 in the U.S.
It looks a lot smaller in the picture, but it's probably about 7" tall.

I've been using it every few days and like it so far. If I still like it in a month I might have to get a few more while I can still get it for so cheap.

Later, I helped put cute faces on onigiri that we had during dinner.

Because the weather was so nice, we ate dinner outside:

The thing in the middle is heated and cooks the food (it is cone-shaped in the middle, so the meat is being cooked even though it looks like it's on top of a pile of veggies).

You crack an egg in the little bowl, stir it up, and dip your food in the egg before eating it. According to one of my friends, the eggs here are super fresh and untreated, so there is almost no risk in eating them raw.

Note: Onigiri #9