Oh Nelly!

There are just some things I cannot pass writing about; but after telling my story about my weekend, 18-19 Feb, to a few friends I thought to myself I should just share it with everyone. So here it goes!

As most of you know, I really enjoy travelling or just having a good adventure with a friend regardless of the location. So one PT morning, my friend Yvie asked if I wanted to go on a trip. I thought to myself, “this is great!” I couldn’t wait for the weekend and I was convinced more and more after she told me what we were in for. But I was going to say yes, regardless.

The original itinerary (very flexible) was to drive down toward Miyako and then head back north and stay at Yagen Valley.  We had a mission to see the tsunami affected areas, snow monkeys, wild horses, go snowshoeing and then relax at the Onsen. For the most part, we did see everything we set out for except the winter season prevented us from seeing the monkeys and horses. Boo.

Noda

We finally set out to our little journey. Miyako was a long drive considering the road conditions and well, the lack of driving skills from the Japanese (no offense). We stopped here and there to take pictures and about 3 hours into our trip, both of us got really quiet when we drove through the town called Noda. Although the beauty of the freshly fallen snow was laid out perfectly, underneath this were foundations of homes that once stood just a year ago. Yvie and I found a place to stop to document how precious life can be and can change in an instant… Paying our respects, we left for Miyako before we made the “U” turn to travel back north.

Noda

Noda - house foundations

What I really liked about this trip was the journey and not necessarily getting to the final destination. When I mean journey, I don’t half arse. I (we) go all the way. So you put two California girls that never really drove in snow before that potentially do not have patience for slow drivers. What’s the solution? We pass them, of course! On the drive back north toward Mutsu, we were able to chat a lot and listen to music. While on one of our passes around 3 cars (yes, I know not really the safest) we had to drive over a little bank to get back on the left side. We’ve completed this many times but this one particular time created us to look back at the folks we just passed. Yep, we slide and lost a little control and hit a snow bank, which created us to face whom we just “zoomed” past. OH NELLY! Due to our embarrassment, we made sure we were both okay and left the scene as soon as possible. I actually had to pee but we didn’t want to stop in case we “ran” into those few cars that saw us hit the bank. This was the start of an adventurous evening!

Moving forward, we finally made it back up to Misawa which was kind of disheartening since we left from there 7 hours ago. Around 7pm or so we finally arrived at our hotel. We arrived very tired, hungry and ready to eat dinner not knowing dinnertime already passed. Sometimes I don’t really understand my own culture, but they are definitely strict about the rules meaning we weren’t going to get fed.  The hotel clerk did allow us to stay parked under the awning where you temporarily park to check in since it was snowing like crazy (yep, that’s a weather term…I’m a meteorologist!).

After getting into our room, we decided to explore to scout out vending machines for food. No dice. But walking down the hall from the check-in counter, we heard singing and loud cheering. As we approached the door, I felt like the animals in the movie “Madagascar” where they were heading toward the party with the lemurs – “I like to move it, move it!” We open the door and a big poof of smoke exited and we entered into a bar. Elderly drunk people singing karaoke in their robes welcomed us. We sat at the bar seeing if they had any food like homeless kids. After conversing with the bartender lady in Japanese, she felt bad for us and grabbed food from her purse for us to eat. Along side with this conversation with the bartender, an older-older man walked next to me with one tooth chatting up a storm. Giving me the creeps I just kind of ignored him after a while. Sorry dude. 

We ordered some drinks and ate our little fish shaped snack with sweet azuki beans inside. After a while we decided to leave and hit up the onsen (hot spring) to relax. Before we did this, we grabbed another beer out of the vending machine and talked a little bit more. If anyone knows me when I drink, I tend to get the Asian glow and this night was not any different. The beer got to me faster than usual since we didn’t eat a full meal since 1pm that day. It was around 1030pm by the time we soaked in. Now, I wouldn’t recommend going into an extremely HOT bath after drinking. I think my body felt poisoned because it definitely did not like me getting in that bath after 2 beers and no food. In about 20 mins, I had no food left in my body. Being the awesome friend Yvie is, she made sure I had water to drink when she could walk! Yep, me puking in the sink and Yvie not being able to walk was a great mix. We ran back into our room right before the porcelain god lured me in. Yvie fell asleep in her robe inverted in her bed. We managed to turn off the lights and sleep until the next morning.

 

During our hike

The day we left, we begged to pay for breakfast since we missed our dinner. After the disapproving looks they finally gave in and fed us with no extra charge! We were so happy and prior to this, we enjoyed the outdoors bath with the falling snow and beautiful scenery in front of us. Afterwards we got dressed and 

West side of the Hatchet and Hokkaido out in the distance

found a spot to go 

snowshoeing. Walking down a steep hill, we managed to shoe in knee-deep snow next to a river. It was a gorgeous day with blue skies and scattered clouds. An hour or so of hiking we set off to look for the snow monkeys. Let me keep this short and say we never found them. Oh, if any of you decide to drive on route 338 in the winter I wouldn’t suggest it. It’s not well plowed and you can’t drive all the way around the hatchet. Beautiful but frustrating!

I did leave out some details but you can imagine the time we had. We covered about 17 hours of driving in 2 days. Not one point did I feel tired, bored, or had any awkward silences with my travel buddy, Yvie. It’s a bummer she had to move but I’ll always have this memory with her and once we meet again, I’m sure we’ll reminisce again about this weekend.

OH NELLY!!