Dark Night

Free skate

We didn't have to make an early start the next day, which I appreciated, and were driven out to a farm in the countryside midmorning for instruction in making buckwheat Soba noodles. Our instructor was a really nice lady, very knowledgeable and fluent in English. We soaked two kinds of buckwheat in water briefly, and our instructor explained that soba, which is usually made from buckwheat flour, refers to any thin noodle, in contrast to udon, which is a specific type of thick white noodle. Soba can be served either chilled with a dipping sauce or in a hot broth as a soup and is one of the more popular dishes in the country.

After the buckwheat was sufficiently soaked, we kneaded the dough and learned the proper thickness to roll it out to and how to correctly cut it into thin strips. The dough smelled good as we worked with it, and we cooked it, eating it as an early lunch with some provided dipping sauce, which was delicious. The remaining soba--and there was a lot of it--was packed up for us to take with us. We stopped at a store on the way back and bought some dipping sauce, precut vegetables, and cold cooked crab so that we could have the soba for dinner with my parents. There was plenty for four people. We dropped off the noodles, glad for the little refrigerators in the rooms, and headed out for the next adventure.

We were driven to Shiroi Koibito Park, where there's a cookie factory. I brightened up. Inside, we were taken on a tour; the cookies, called Shiroi Koibito, were described as Japan's answer to the Oreo. They were thin vanilla cookies called langue de chat, "cats's tongue" in French, which is where the original cookies were made. Unlike the original cookies, which are oblong, the cookies for Shiroi Koibito are square, round, or heart-shaped, and they sandwich a special white chocolate between them. The cookies are light and crisp, browned on the edges, and made by mixing equal amounts of sugar and butter with flour, egg whites, and vanilla. After the tour, we got to make our own heart-shaped cookies, bake and fill them with the white chocolate, and add decorations to the top. They were delicious. We stopped by the gift shop on the way out to get some for my parents and Stan;  the blue and white packaging had a classic picture of Mt Rishiri, considered one of the most beautiful mountains in the island of Hokkaido on it, making them pretty to look at too. I reconsidered and bought a small package for myself as treats for later. Grandpa did the same; we didn't discuss it.

From there, we went to a studio to learn how to wrap with furoshiki, a traditional Japanese cloth that can be used in a lot of different ways, from wrapping gifts to carrying food and other items.  The cloths are cotton in general, but you can also find silk ones for an extra-special wrapping, and they are colorful, beautiful, and quite handy as a chic alternative to plastic shopping bags.  We learned several different wrapping techniques for different purposes; we learned how to wrap a bento box and a water bottle, how to make handles or just tie them so that the fabric corners became part of the presentation. I loved it, and bought a few cloths at the studio for my own use. The designs were pretty and distinctly Japanese, a great souvenir that I could really use. We took our cookies and my furoshiki and went back to the hotel, just in time to meet Mom and Dad.

They'd gone to a bobsled competition, which I wouldn't have thought would be that interesting because you could just see a small portion of the run, but they said that it was shocking to see how fast the sleds zipped past and they'd learned a lot from aficionados standing nearby about how the drivers chose what line to take around a curve. They were interested in our classes and dove into the soba noodles. They were still really good, and Grandpa and I were proud of our success. We gave them their cookies and we all got ready for the night's competition, the men's long program. This time we were in the front row of the second tier, right above the judges. I considered that auspicious; if the judges were unfair, perhaps a beer might just teeter off the edge... I had the feeling I'd get kicked out if I tried. We settled in, resigned for a long wait for Stan's performance. Still, better than having him skate too early, since that would mean he didn't have a chance at a medal.