Day 3: More Testing and Tasting

I went to bed even later last night (10:15pm), but woke up even earlier (4:45am). It's not really a problem until 5 or 6pm when it catches up to me.
Here's the view from our window at 5am:

And a boat:

And the longest spiral staircase I've ever seen:

A while after I got up I went and got a coffee from one of the vending machines before studying.

Vending machines:

Coffee:

The coffee was alright, but I'm not a big drinker of black coffee (especially chilled) so I don't think I appreciated it as much as a hardcore coffee-lover would have.

While I was at the vending machine, I noticed these drinks they told us to watch out for at orientation yesterday:

They are alcoholic drinks, but I guess a lot of the time people mistake them for juice.

Breakfast was buffet style and insanely good. Yesterday they told us that this hotel's restaurant is one of the top ranked in Japan. I didn't have room to try everything I wanted to, but we eat there one more time tomorrow.

From top to bottom in the bowls there is: Miso, rice, a chopped root vegetable (yam I think), chopped daikon radish, a piece of cheese, and a lychee fruit. I wasn't very fond of the chopped yam... It didn't have a strong flavor, but the texture reminded me of snail slime.

I thought the pink stuff in the top left corner was raw tuna until I bit into it. It was actually pollock roe which was quite the surprise.

Left to right, top to bottom: Pollock roe, salmon sashimi, a fried pumpkin croguette (Japanese pumpkins seem a lot like butternut squash) and delicious seaweed-roll-things called kombu firewood, corn, pork bacon, grilled salmon, and pickled salmon roe.

Hakodate is famous for it's dairy, so I got a glass of "Hakodate fresh milk"

I tried natto again. This one felt more "real" because the card yesterday said the natto I had was a more mild variety. The top picture is before adding the sauces and stirring more. It was pretty intense at first, and I thought the sauce would make it stronger, but it actually tasted a lot better after adding the sauce and was even kind of good at the end. I think I'm going to just keep eating natto until I like it. I really, really want to like natto.

Fresh grapes, veggies, and more cheese

I've heard that most Japanese people peel their grapes before eating them, but I didn't watch anyone who was Japanese eat their grapes, so I can't confirm that yet.

Finally, ice cream. It was tart, "Citra" flavored, and a lot like I'd imagine a kumquat-lemon sorbet would be.

After breakfast, we walked over to the HIF building to take more placement tests. It was raining and my shoes got wet and stayed wet all day, but tomorrow and the rest of the weekend is supposed to be sunny and warm. I'm looking forward to this because I hate wet socks.
The HIF building is near the top of this hill:

I like this map. I'm not used to seeing the world split up like that. I wonder if every country predominantly uses maps with themselves in the center, and I like how the western United States is represented by a cowboy:

I was in group 2, so when we got to the school we took our written exams (group 1 started with the oral interviews). I felt a lot better about the written exam than the SPOT test and essay yesterday, and I liked that each section started off easy and became progressively more difficult. There were a few things I knew I should know but didn't which was frustrating, but a majority of the things I either knew or had never seen before which was nice.
After that, we had lunches provided by HIF:

The thing in the upper right corner tasted sort of like meatloaf covered in BBQ sauce which surprised me, but it was all pretty good.
After lunch, we had to wait for our oral interview time slot, have our interview, then wait for everyone to be done. Here is the view from the room we were waiting in afterwards:

I'm not confident about how the interview at all. It was probably mostly fine, but it doesn't feel that way. I really hope I get into the class level that I want, but if I don't I think I will still get a lot out of the program.
Here are the sign up sheets for the first two weeks of activities:

I signed up for a traditional folk music workshop, a tour of shyomyoji temple, and a tea ceremony workshop.

Then we had two more orientations. We've had a lot of orientations.
Both orientations were almost entirely in Japanese which was kind of draining, especially after all of the placement exams. On the bright side, I turned in my final report this evening so I'm now officially done with spring quarter at the UW and won't have that on my mind anymore!

It was really foggy all day, and when we walked back to the hotel Mt. Hakodate looked really neat through the fog:

When we got back, Hayley and I split the melon bun we got yesterday:

It didn't taste like melon, so it's probably called that based off of the shape. It was kind of like a Hawaiian roll, but lighter and puffier.

I also had that cherry candy from yesterday. It tasted almost exactly like a Halls cherry cough drop. It even left that weird, cool, tingly, cough drop feeling in my mouth. I didn't enjoy that much.

I was planning to go to a sushi restaurant that I heard was good for dinner, but was too tired so I just went to 7-11 with Hayley.
On the way back I stopped at that shop with the wooden owls again:

There were lots of hand-carved wooden owls and bears inside, but there were also lots of other figurines, trinkets, and souvenirs.

I had forgotten that Hokkaido is one of the few places where marimo balls form:

Marimo balls (also called moss balls) are made of a type of algae that roll together and form a ball shape at the bottom of some very cold lakes. They recently became pretty popular to put with betta fish, and I have a few in my fish tanks.
There was even a little tank with a few tiny marimo balls in it.

There were also key chain things made of sperm whale bones which I thought was unique:

The man who ran the shop was very nice and talked with me for a little while. I asked him if owls were famous in Hakodate, and he told me that they are famous in Hokkaido and showed me some slips of paper with information on them in English:

We also talked for a bit about marimo balls.

I ended up getting this tiny wooden owl that sits on (but is not connected to) a tiny stump:

(It's a little over an inch tall if you include the stump)

For dinner I had a bento and an onigiri. I also got a cream pudding thing:

The thing that looks like a roll made of egg actually had some sort of seafood inside. I think it was more squid. This was surprising, but not as much as the pollock roe at breakfast. Also, this is the third time I've had spaghetti here (if you count the plane breakfast) without even seeking it out. I definitely wasn't expecting there to be so much spaghetti.

Onigiri 3#: Tuna and mayo filled

I think the pudding melted a little when it warmed up, but after a few minutes in the mini-fridge it seemed fine. It was a lot like the middle part of a crème brulee without the brulee and with a lot more crème. I liked it because it was really light and soft, tasted fresh and a little sweet, and was solid but melted as soon as you put it in your mouth. I really like the taste of cream though, so I'm probably very biased.

Finally, I noticed these bike racks outside the hotel today that are shaped like little bikes and that made me really happy:

Tomorrow we have the opening ceremony and meet/go home with our host families. I'm very excited.