And now, the news.

Another day off has rolled around, well two to be precise. Yesterday Marika and I made another trip into Shirakawa for supplies and avoidance of aforementioned cabin fever. Tonight the hotel is closed so we are having a bit of a staff outing, off to another nearby city named Kōriyama. Tonight we will be dining at an Izakaya which is kind of like a Japanese pub where you can enjoy all you can eat / drink. (N.B. when you say pub [or pub-u] in Japan it often refers to a hostess bar instead.) An Izakaya is supposed to be the perfect lead-up to a night of karaoke. Yes, karaoke. If you were going to do it anywhere in the world? Exactly.
Things are moving fairly swiftly up here, it doesn't seem like it but we've been here for one month already tomorrow. It's not such a bad thing some days as you can go for up to a week without spending a cent (yen), then there are days where you can spend almost all yr days earnings at the pub in one shot (for the record, gross exageration). The snow is all but gone in our area, the ski-hill is still open but is starting to look a little brown around the edges. Marika and I are planning a trip to Hokkaido in a few weeks, March is supposed to yield the most snow up there so I don't think we will be disappointed. In a way i'm really looking forward to the seasons changing and a little more colour coming into the countryside. As much as I love winter and snow it often looks the same wherever you are, cherry blossom season is just around the corner and it sounds pretty spectacular.
Sadly my little brother Gabe has left the country and returned home to Australia, hopefully he will be back again before we leave for the next leg of our journey.
We haven't been out taking too many pictures this past fortnight so we will update when we have, for now i'll throw in a few that I neglected to post a few weeks ago, entitled; Obligatory Shinkansen pic, getting radical, massive sake and tiny beer. Hope everyone is well.
Smell you later.