Cabin fever

Today was the first time since we arrived that Marika and I were able to leave the mountain where we are living / working to go and see a tiny part of Japan and pick up some much needed supplies. We took a shuttle bus to the town of Shirakawa which is about 40 minutes away. We had heard rumours about this magical place called the 'hundred yen store', which was full of amazing and handy things to buy. Well, you can imagine how happy we were, everything from coat-hangers to sesame snacks. Even a little note-pad for my Japanese phrases! We also swung past the foreign food store for some staples so we can make some of our own food every now and again, recently there has been a little unrest amongst the 5 vegetarians which ended in a letter to management. Suffice to say there has been greater choice for us which is great, however it's still not a huge range and fresh vegetables don't appear too often so a little cache of our own doesn't hurt.
Of course I also bought some Japanese beer.
We've not had too much snow over the last few days so we're trying to make our own fun during our free time, Marika and I went with our mate Tom to build a few jumps to practise on, as well as scoping out a little 'back country' within walking distance of our staff-accom.
On the work front i'm getting more confident with being a waiter, the other night I had to serve a table who had a bottle of Dom Pérignon which made me pretty nervous, the bottle cost more than I would earn in a week.
We're both trying to work on our Japanese but it's not so easy being surrounded by gaijin and being strictly prohibited from talking in anything other than english to guests. C'est la vie eh?