Oishii = Delicious/Yummy

Today's blog title is courtesy of Andrew Murphy, and the lovely lady we met at the traditional tapas style Japanese restaurant.

Short entry today: too much saké and early start tomorrow morning to maximise the last day of boarding in Furano.

The day started with an extremely early bus ride to Asahiyama (1.5 hrs) to catch the "Penguin March" at Asahiyama Zoo. Below is the main road leading to the mountain, aka Furano Prince Snow resort. There is enough snow on the footpaths for us to sit on our boards and toboggan all the way back to our Pension - very convenient mode of transport after an entire day's worth of boarding.



Asahiyama was ridiculously COLD. Nice for penguins, polar bears etc ... not so nice for yellow-skinned Asian with bad circulation. Asahiyama Zoo is infamous for the marching penguins. This essentially involves a bunch of locked up Penguins that have been trained to walk between 2 pink tram lines. It was very kawaii (cute)... and the Japanese do seem to have a heightened appreciation for anything cute - lots of clapping and squealing. There were other extinct/rare animals locked up in various enclosures. Pacing was the common behaviour, including those of us that had to wait forever to use the SQUAT toilets *shudder* What are we?? Animals?? ;p
We did see some pretty funny things e.g. the male lion deciding to fart/pee at bystanders - there was some force in his expulsion; and the snow monkeys going at it with hammer and tongs. Both instances were greeted with clapping and squeals.






We bummed around Asahiyama city after the zoo. Despite the extremely cold weather and the heavy snowfall, people still insist on the minimalist look with the added effect of stiletto heels. How they don't catch pneumonia or slip on the very slippery, icy walkways is beyond me.



The day concluded with a fantastic dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant in Furano. Our host was, as with most Japanese hospitality, gracious, sweet and entertaining. We taught her elegant words such as: yummy, opera house and Melbourne Cup. She in turn gave us oishii (delicious/yummy) food, sake and origami as gifts. She was very cute, despite using the sake ember to stub her cigarette. But hey, for 320 yen per pack (less than $4 AUS) ... who can blame her.




The search for the elusive Anpanman toy in vending machine continues. I think I have all but for the crème de la crème