Shosanbetsu Soubetsukai

On Friday the BoE held a soubetsukai (farewell party) for me. I managed to give a short speech in Japanese. Here's me and the boys. From left to right, Yuuki Norita, Keisuke Miyoshi, Tatsuki Hashimoto, and Reiji Muroya.

 The food was a little fancier than usual.

On Saturday I went through Haboro to get to Shosanbetsu beach. Haboro is famous for sweet shrimp, which is what this anime girl is. It also has a lot of penguins in its advertising, but I'm pretty sure penguins aren't actually native to here. That's kind of cheating.

 At Shosanbetsu beach was the official JET soubetsukai camping weekend.

 According to Mark, the sand quickly turned this slip-and-slide into a sandpaper nightmare.

 It was warm, but slightly cloudy on Saturday, which was perfect. 

Nice weather without a high risk of sunburn. The water wasn't even too cold. That's right, I actually got in the water.

 Panorama shot. More people showed up later into the day.

 A cute little sandcastle, made by Nicole and Keith.

 Setting up tents.

 A truly staggering amount of alcohol. I was a fan of the apricot liqueur and lychee shochu.

 When I came across this sand burial it looked fairly normal. But once I started sticking driftwood in there everyone followed suit.

 It may have gotten stupid.

 Sunset, everyone's ready for the traditional wine water gun fight.

 They wear white shirts to show the carnage.

 I was fine with just watching for this. Besides, it had gotten colder by now so I didn't want to get back in the water to wash off the wine.

 One last group shot before the clothes come off.

 All the wine soaked shirts get burned in a big bonfire.

 It's not real camping without a big fire.

 Sleeping in an actual tent for the first time wasn't super great. I was even briefly used as a pillow. But the rest of the night made it worth it.

 On Sunday we went to a different nearby beach.

 Sunset Beach was a lot hotter. The soles of my feet were screaming in pain just from walking across the sand.

I put on sunscreen but I should have put more on after being in the water. I wound up with burns all over the place.

 Here we are. I'll be saying goodbye to these beautiful people in a couple of weeks.