bubblooning

During one of our daily visits to the Hyaku-en shops (Think $2 shop, but with EVERYTHING i.e cutlery, household cleaners, stationery, food, tupperware and toys) I found a product which started my newfound hobby: bublooning!

Kinda like a bubble, kinda like a balloon, and thus the name - I don't know if it's the fumes of the stuff which make it so fun, but I'm telling you now - it's addictive. And it's catching on fast!

Over the weekend, we made our way to Neo village - it's techically in my city, but it's still like a 45 minute by train, through 3 or 4 mountains. And by train, I mean a train that comes around every hour and a half, that's only 1 carriage long. We ending up going there since Julie, another English teacher who's from Canada, had to head back to her apartment in Neo, and so me & Kiri decided to tag along for the ride.

Neo feels kinda of like a traditional Japanese town - there's only a population of 2000, and maybe only 3 or 4 shops in the whole village - the grocery store is about the size of a small 7-Eleven, but opens when they feel like it.

Anyway, we heard that there's a river in the village that people swim in and have barbecues and stuff, so decided to spend the day by the river and have a picnic.

Sounds like a plan, right? Well, in theory, it would have been picturesque eating our homemade sandwiches by the river. But we forgot that Gifu is apparently one of the hottest places in Japan and freakishly humid. So after a 15 minute trek to the apartment, we camped by the air-conditioner and had an indoor picnic. I guess to most people, that's just called "lunch", but I'm sticking by "picnic" so it seems like we did something special and fancy.




An hour or so later, we convinced ourselves to leave the comfort of our apartment and search for the river. We eventually found an area with a bunch of other people and set up a place by the water with our newly purchased 100 yen "picnic rug" (a table cloth), snacks, and our bubblooning materials!



Our awesome new hobby also got the attention of another family there as well - so we ended up making friends with this kid and also the Chinese exchange student as well.




hours of fun for only ¥100! Best new hobby ever!