Hantama

So I went skiing the other day. Most people went snowboarding, but I went skiing because there were skis that I could borrow. I hadn't been skiing in a while, having opted for snowboarding as of late, but it turns out I can still ski okay. It seems that skiing is not so popular though, compared to snowboarding, and there were a lot more snowboarders out there for me to avoid, which was a bit of a challenge because they meander all over the place. We went to a place called Hunter Mountain which isn't too far from here, maybe three hours. The weird thing about this place is that their mascot is an anthropomorphized half of a hard boiled egg called ハンタマ, or "hantama". As in Hunter Mountain, in the Japanese pronunciation. What makes this weird is that in Japanese, "han" means half and "tama" is short for "tamago" which means egg. The Japanese seem to love this sort of punnery. But the skiing egg is pretty cute. It was a good ski place though, and close to Tokyo, although I found it to be not so challenging. The other weird thing about this place was that it was based on a New York ski resort by the same name. All the trails' names were famous streets in New York City. So I tried to imagine that I was skiing down Broadway or 5th Avenue or whatever. Which wasn't too hard because I couldn't see a damned thing and had to fill it all in in my head. Because the weather wasn't so good. It was terribly cold, and the snow was being blown around by a very strong wind which really cut into my face. And I didn't have any goggles. Overall this probably wasn't wise because I am still suffering from a mysterious and stubborn illness of some sort. Persistent cough and lots of snot. I've had it basically since I went to Kyoto and it seems to have gotten stronger over the last week. I think that it may be several diseases mixing though. This week the flu has really hit my school hard, especially the second grade. There were an average of ten students absent from the classes I taught this week. Which is too bad for them, because I eventually managed to draw this bass map that they don't get to see because they're at home complaining about nothing more than a little nausea, dizzyness, fever, headache, congestion, respiratory difficulties, inability to eat, and hallucinations. While I am working through the same symptoms like a good, hard-working Japanese person, proving my willingness to endure suffering while at the same time inflicting it on everyone by infecting them. But after skiing, we all went to an onsen, which definitely should have some positive effects on my health. I got to use a rotenburo too, which is an outdoor hot spring bath. It was basically out in the woods, and you had to dash barefoot (and naked) through a little bit of snow to get in, but it was so nice to be sitting out in the snow in this incredibly hot bath.