Day 20: Returning from Oonuma

View from the third floor hallway in the morning:

It was kind of foggy. Note the flowers that are kind of hard to see on that corner there to the right of the center of the picture.

Breakfast was really great. Not quite as incredible as at the Kokusai Hotel, but that would be pretty difficult to beat. Here are a few translation-related highlights:

Next to the raw eggs was a stone to crack them on and a bowl for the shells. I thought this was pretty neat. I'm also had no idea why the English translation says "The stone for egg rates" so I deciphered the blurry radicals of the kanji that I didn't know from this picture, searched the radicals to find the kanji, looked up the word, and found that "卵割りの用の石"（たまごわりのようのいし）（kaiwari no you no ishi） means either "Stone used for radish sprout," or "Stone used for egg breaking." I'm betting on the latter, but I still have no clue how that became "egg rates."

In between the pickled plum and the small pickled eggplant (aka. small eggplant pickles) there was a third pickled vegetable called "The hot mountain jellyfish." I looked this one up to and found that "山海月ピリ辛漬"(やまくらげピリ+ spicy + pickled （I'm unsure of the last two kanji here)）(yama kurage piri "spicy" "pickled") does in fact mean something like "mountain jellyfish, hot and spicy, pickled." However, I couldn't find anything about this online. If anyone knows what's going on here, please let me know.

 Kiwi flavored "Yogurt (sweetening-lessness)":

 I ended up with toast, rice dumplings, watery rice porridge (Because I didn't see the normal rice. It wasn't bad though.), mango juice, salmon, other fish, more delicious tiny pumpkin croguettes, pickled vegetables, red beans, and yoghurt with kiwi sauce.

When I went and got a spoon for my yoghurt, I had the option between a normal spoon and a kids spoon. I opted for this one:

This jelly was the highlight of my morning:

It comes like this:

Then when you fold it, little holes break open in the middle:

And you can squeeze the insides out like this:

Why do we not have this amazing-ness in the U.S. (and if we do, why have I never experienced it before)?

Also, more natto! I've successfully stockholmed myself into liking this stuff:

I thought this bear in the gift shop was clever:

This Hokkaido doll on the other hand was super creepy:

Outside, there were some animals statues:

Pretty much all of the stuff to go do in the hotel was closed, and would be closed until around the time we had to leave, so I was mostly just wandering around the hotel. I decided to go check out those flowers from earlier. Downstairs was mostly closed, so I had to go out the front door and walk around the whole right side of the hotel to get there.

On the way I found a four-leaf clover:

And there were some cool mushrooms:

Closer up mushrooms:

And another clover:

The flowers were actually really pretty close up:

And there was another clover between them:

Pretty flower pictures:

Here is a map of the resort area that was in the lobby:

And another random, pretty dress:

And a small model of the shinkansen (bullet train):

And deer turd cake from the gift shop. I like the expression of the receiving deer:

I figured that Hokkaido was probably famous for gold considering all of the gold-related phone charms:

And after looking it up found out that there was a gold rush in Bankenai, Hokkaido after gold was found in 1898.

On the bus ride back to Hakodate, we noticed these weird water-filled tubes near the front of the bus on both sides and have no idea what they were. We think they are either vases or something used to level the bus. They were open on the top and they had something floating in each of them.

In Onuma I ended up getting these squid ink cakes and butter caramels:

And dango for my host family:

 I also got a little Hakodate themed Hello Kitty. I can't get over how nicely everything here is wrapped up:

When I picked out the charm, I didn't realize how detailed it was. The bowl not only says "ラーメン"（ramen） on it, but also has corn and butter inside which I've heard is mainly a Hakodate thing. It also has "Hakodate" written on the back in kanji:

 I got some marimo in a little jar:

 And a cup-marker thing from a ガシャポン(gashapon)=capsule toy machine:

 It's a little person:

I ended up washing out the shell from dinner and keeping it. I feel like you're supposed to just throw it away, but I thought it was kind of cool, and after I cleaned it out it looked really pretty:

Here's that marimo puff. It is super soft:

And now Hakodate Kitty hangs out above my desk like this:

There was a bazar today at たっくん's school and I had planned to go, but was really tired when I got back so stayed home instead and took a nap. My host mom brought me back food from the bazar and sweetly made me this lunch tray:

We went to my host dad's parents again for dinner, and I noticed that they had some of the same style cup markers. This made me feel a little less creepy about having a tiny person cup marker.

Dinner was delicious. We had squid sashimi and shrimp tempura: