Feb 8-17, 2016

Got a little backlogged and didn't post any lunch pictures last week or so. Sorry bout that. I've put it all in one here, but I'll start off with a bit of blogging:

This weekend was the Monbetsu Drift Ice Festival ( 流氷祭り - ryuhyou matsuri). It was pretty cool, my friend who works for the tourist company has been working 8-11 every day for a month, carving ice into intricate statues and carvings etc. They had a bunch of food stalls with typical festival food, they had a main stage with a gigantic carved ice mansion as the backdrop, they had these inflatable "banana boats" that they towed over a mogul course with snowmobiles.

live entertainment, japan style

My favourite part of the festival was the giant snow maze - they had a huge pile of snow, about 6 meters tall. into this pile they have cut a maze - all the way to the ground. So you walk into this thing, and it goes from being sunny and warm (the weather was very unseasonable for exactly one day), to being dimly lit and cold. There were some parts where the paths went up and over other paths. There were two exits, one was quite easy to find, the other was quite difficult.

giant snow maze.

The other part of the festival, and part of why so many ALTs came to town, was for a competition called human horse race (ningen bamba). In teams of five, you had to drag a big chunk of ice (~480kg for men) down a track about 60m. Had to stop there, each person had to throw a bean bag into a net on top of a pole (called 玉入れ tamaire, ball enter). Then had to pick of the halter and drag the ice down around a cone and back to the start. Each team did it twice, and the team that got the best time (for their fastest attempt) won. I only managed to do it one time - I got super nauseous after that (something about too much beer and not enough sleep the night before, and not enough food the morning of). The other four on my team went fast enough the second time (47 seconds) that they won second place, and a prize of 50,000 yen. I've got some pictures on my instagram/twitter/facebook, can't post em all here.

The women's foreigner team at the drift ice pulling competition

random oni costumed person

Anyway, here are some pics of the missed lunches:

2016-02-09 (Tuesday): 200ml Hokkaido milk; wakame rice with salmon flakes; cooked spinach/cabbage with sesame oil; japanese-style sweet omelette; soup with daikon, pork, carrot, and "shirataki" - some kinda starchy, chewy texture.

2016-02-10 (Wednesday): Some kinda meat curry with potato; peanutsu kurimu to go on the hotdog bun; mikan jelly; cabbage/corn/cucumber in a tangy sauce; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

2016-02-12 (Friday): Two white rolls; two fried spring rolls, cooked ramen noddles in a sealed plastic bag (ew); ramen broth with bamboo shoots etc; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

2016-02-15 (Monday): White rice; cooked spinach/cabbage with sesame oil; "hamburg" in some kinda sweet teriyaki-like sauce; soup with potato, onion, carrot, daikon, sliced weiners; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

2016-02-16 (Tuesday): White rice; two giant pork gyoza; cooked pork/carrot/daikon; "spicy" soup with onion and tofu; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

2016-02-17 (wednesday): White rice with nori paste; cooked pork/onion/spinach/carrot with sesame flavour of some kind; fried whitefish filet; egg drop soup with onion and mushroom; 200ml Hokkaido milk.