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btsxmalereaders · 4 years ago

Note

Hey! Can I request Yoongi x Male Reader where they have been dating for four years and Yoongi finally proposes one night. Romantic and maybe a little bit NSFW. reader is BOTTOM.

Ok, first of all I am sooo soRRY it took me so long to write this hshsj. And sorry too for not making it nsfw, I just wasn't in the mood for writing it. However I hope you still enjoy it!

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Male Reader

Fluff

Word count: 1,6 k

"This has to be ready by 5 p.m, okay? I entrust this to you, Sunny."

The girl smiles at you and nods, taking the documents you've left on her desk, and is encouraged to speak. "You don't have to worry, Y/ N. If we have problems with this, leave it to me for today."

You let out a sigh that you didn't know you were holding. "Thank you very much."

Sunny nods before flipping through the papers and going to her computer to start working on her part of the new project. Now you head to your own cubicle to finish all to-do tasks as possible.

You were a little more stressed than before because your boss asked you to carry out a new project for the company where you work, and of course you could not refuse, despite the fact that it was heavy and took a lot of your time in recent weeks. You had to put aside many activities that you had planned, appointments, visits to the recording set that your friends had previously invited you to, and you even missed your 4th anniversary with Yoongi.

Of course he understood, in addition to that he also took advantage of that time to finish composing a couple of songs that had to be ready in that same week, but you hadn't had the opportunity to celebrate, until now.

You really want to finish all the pending tasks to go out on your date with Yoongi and have a nice time together, in addition to the fact that this weekend he is free of activities, which does not happen often, so you wanted to make sure that you won't have to return to work for the next two days, at least. Maybe that's why you feel a little distressed today, but remembering that in a few hours you will have a date makes the spirit come back and impel you to continue with your work today. Fortunately, the work team assigned to you is very fast and efficient in projects, so things are looking a little easier for now.

The rest of the day goes pretty fast; and even though there were some difficulties with some assignments, you were capable of solving all the unforseen problems, something that your boss took note of and encouraged you to keep it up like that.

As the clock striked 6 p.m. you saved your progress and sent it to your boss as a report for today's activities and prepared to go back home. Everyone knew that was the end of your shift, so no one could distract you or ask for more stuff related to work. You made sure everything was in order and as you went back to Sunny's cubicle, she gave you a thumbs up to indicate that you were free to go and enjoy your weekend.

With a smile on your face and a relief making you feel less tense, you say goodbye to your work teammates and rushed out of the building to go to your car. That's when you could finally open your messages and see a few more from Yoongi, where he asked if you could go to his studio once you finished working.

With a frown you reply that there's no problem at all, thinking that maybe he has something to show you or maybe he is late from working on his songs and wanted to take you to the restaurant so you wouldn't wait too much for him.

The way to the Big Hit building is not so far from your workplace, and sometimes Yoongi took advantage of that when he finished his work early than expected. He went to visit you and grab lunch together, or sometimes when you were extremely busy and couldn't take so much free time, he left you food with cheesy and cheering messages on sticky notes.

Once you get to the building, the receptionist greets you with a smile since everyone from the staff already knows you. Yoongi's studio is on the fifth floor, so you head to the elevator, and see Hoseok and Jimin, who are also going up, to their dance practice.

“Hyung! How have you been? We haven't seen you in awhile.” Jimin greets with a smile and Hoseok goes for a high-five.

You three have a short conversation about your work and how are they gave you news about the comeback they've been preparing the last few weeks until they arrive at their floor and go to the practice room.

“I'll see you around, guys” You say goodbye as they wave their hands and the elevator doors are closed. Just two floors more and you can finally walk down the hall until you see Yoongi's studio door. You decide to knock a few times but get no response from him, so you guess he must be using his earphones. He has told you the password, so you put it on the small keyboard and the door opens; Yoongi is right there when you enter.

“I was about to open the door for you,” He chuckles and closes the door once you totally step inside. A kiss on your lips as a greeting is what you get, making you feel on cloud nine. “How was work?”

You frown a bit noticing that he doesn't move from his spot. “Great. Kind of stressful but I could finish on time, so I'm free all weekend. How does that sound, hmm?”

Yoongi smiles and hugs you tight.

“Is everything alright?”

“Everything is perfect” He answers as he places his hands on your hips and separates to look at you in the eyes. “I want to show you something here.”

You don't ask what is he talking about because he immediately takes your hand and guides you inside. The black walls of the small hall doesn't allow you to see anything rather than some lights, but as soon as you both step into the room you frown, seeing that the recording studio's windows are covered, so you can't see through.

Yoongi sits down in front of his computer and saves the progress of what he was working on today, so that makes you feel more confused.

“Why is the window covered? Did you guys filmed something inside?”

“No, I put it there for something I want to do, but wait a minute, I'll show you and you have to give me your honest opinion.”

“Uh, mysterious, I like how that sounds.”

Yoongi laughs, “You don't even know what is it. How do you know you won't hate it?”

“I know for sure I won't, now show me! You know I am impatient.”

“I have the stubbornest boyfriend on earth.” Yoongi pinches your cheek as he stands up and walks to the door. “You have to close your eyes first.”

“Fine, fine,” You do as indicated and walk behind him, your hands over his shoulders so he can guide you again. You wait for a few seconds until he closes the door.

“Don't open them yet!” He walks past you and you can hear him moving around and grabbing things. The sweet smell of jazmine and lavender get to your nostrils.

“What are you doing? Can I open my eyes now?”

He remains silent for a few seconds more, fixing his hair and clothes and taking a look at what he did one last time. “Okay, you can open them now.”

You swear you could faint right there and right now as you see that Yoongi set what it seemed like a dinner for you two. On the floor there were some petals, pillows and sheets around a basket, and next to it there was a black piano with some candles above it, setting the perfect tone for a romantic dinner.

“Oh my god, Yoongi, wh-”

“I really wanted to celebrate our anniversary on a special place, I thought that restaurants are not fun anymore.” He smiles and offers you your hand, so you walk to him and hug.

“Yoonie, this is so beautiful, you did this on your own?”

“Yeah, well, the boys helped too.”

You can't help but chuckle, “I love it so much. Thank you for this.”

“Anything for my baby.” Yoongi kisses the tip of your nose and separates from you, signaling you to take a seat.

The night goes so good; you both eat the food Yoongi made (and that Seokjin helped preparing, as well). Drank a couple of glasses of wine, shared some memories of when you started dating; also the things you wanted to do in the future, the things you both wanted to achieve together, so that made Yoongi fondly smile.

Yoongi had a whole speech ready when you finished eating, right when you started talking about the future, but when he sees the smile on your face, he simply says: “Marry me.”

You nearly let the glass of wine fall to the floor. “W-what?”

He blushes and takes his time to stand up and take the small black velvet box he had the entire time hidden above the piano and walks to be closer to you, taking a sit right in front of where you are. He opens the box and repeats himself: “Marry me.”

You can't really process what is happening now, but the sincere smile on Yoongi's face, his reddened cheeks and his eyes shining for the love for you makes things clear.

“Of course I'll marry you, Yoon” You say with a smile and your heart beating so fast. Yoongi takes your glass and places it on the floor so he can finally put that ring on your finger. Your hands are slightly shaking so that makes him laugh, but when the ring is finally on its place, the smile on his face seems to never disappear. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The rest of the night is full of kisses, hugs and a slow dance. Later there will be time for Yoongi to show you the song he composed for you.

------------

Rules.

#bts x male reader #yoongi #min yoongi #min yoongi x male reader #yoongi x male reader #kpop x male reader #kpop x reader #bts x you #suga #suga x reader

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mirkwoodshewolf · 5 years ago

Text

You’re still the smartest girl I know; John Deacon x daughter teen reader

*Author’s note*

Hey guys wow my final crunch time at college has kept me REALLY busy with all these final projects that I need to do, so my thanksgiving break is gonna be INSANE with doing all this work that I need to do BUT the good news is is that I had this request done in my downtime that I had, so to the anon who requested this awhile back, I’m SOOO SORRY for getting it to you so late but I hope you love it either way.

I also have updates on a few of my series so I may end up making a post about my writing updates and what all I plan to work on to try and get more organized with all that I have to do. So I’ve got two updates for you guys so I hope you all like this fic.

Warnings: school, mild angst, failing school, FLUFF, Dad!Deacy (cause let’s face it its a warning because he’s FREAKIN ADORABLE!!!) and my unknown knowledge of how Catholic schools work, so if I’m wrong about something, PLEASE send me a comment or an inbox to correct it.

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@waddles03

@queendeakyy

@platawnic

@kairosfreddie

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I just don’t get it. My dad graduated with 8 GCE O level and 3 A level in electronics, he’s designed his own amp, and helps with not only the family finances but the band finances too. He’s the smartest guy I know and I share half of his genius, or at least I should.

I needed to sustain at least a 3.50 average to stay in my current Catholic secondary school but with my failing classes I’m barely at a 2.50. It’s not that I don’t try to do the work I do the homework and attend the lectures, it’s just that some of my classes like Geometry and Ancient religions, the teachers make the assignments so confusing.

Even when I would write the papers, they always found something to pick at and I end up with either C’s or even D’s on my papers, even when I would stay up all night skimming through book after book to get the required aspects they ask for. Also their quizzes and exams are so unfair, they would tell us this or that would be on the test, but by the time the test came around, absolutely NONE of the stuff they said would be on it, is on it. Hell they’ve put things down that we haven’t even learned yet.

It was currently Fall break and I spending some time with my family for the holiday trying to get my mind off of school. I was watching over my brothers rough house in the backyard. God they were so lucky they don’t have to deal with the harsh school life just yet.

“So (y/n) how’s school going love?” I heard my mum say. I quickly looked up at her and said quickly.

“School’s fine.” She looked at me skeptically.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yeah mum, everything’s fine.” Then fortunately saved by the bell, the doorbell rang and I immediately shot up and said. “I’ll get it!” I quickly raced to the front door and cracked it open. And there at the door was the mail carrier. He took out of his bag our mail for the day and he said.

“Here’s your mail ma’am.”

“Thanks Gardner, have a good day.” I said. He nodded and walked off the curb and continued down the road with his route. I closed the door and skimmed through the mail. Most of it was bills, some Queen stuff for dad to sign and look over, but then there was a letter from the school sent to me. At this point my heart was racing.

“Who was that?” Oh shit dad. I turned around to see him coming down the stairs holding my baby sister who had probably just woken up from her nap.

“Oh just the mail. Mostly bills this time, but then again what else is new. And there’s some Queen stuff for you to look over dad.” I handed him most of the mail but kept the letter from London University for me.

“Well what’s that?”

“What? Oh this oh it’s just junk mail. Something about 20% interest rate on life insurance from a different company. Damn things are just scams anyway. I’ll shred it dad.” I walked up and kissed his cheek then my baby sister before racing upstairs.

As soon as I reached my room, I closed the door and locked it and leaned against it in a panic. Nervously I opened up the envelope and it read the worst thing I could imagine.

To Miss (Y/n) (M/n) Deacon,

It has come to our attention of your low grades. It is required that your parents come in for a meeting with the Headmaster in regards to your low grades.

At that point my mind went blank as I ignored all that the letter said. Tears formed in my eyes. Goddamnit why did they send this letter? Cause first comes the letter, then the phone calls will follow. I’ve tried so hard to keep my struggles in school away from my parents because I didn’t want them to get involved, that all I needed to do was try better since that’s all teachers seem to push onto me, if not then I’ll make it up in summer school.

I just wanted to prove that I was as smart as my dad is.

So I hide the letter in the folds of my diary knowing that my parents don’t go snooping around it and putting it in the secret place where I know my snoopy brothers can’t get to it (thank god I change places every week) and tried to forget about it. It was then a knock was heard at my door.

“(Y/n)? Poppet is everything okay in there?”

“Uhh—yeah dad everything’s fine.”

“Then why is your door locked?”

“I’m changing clothes dad, I’m meeting Stacy and Courtney for a movie later tonight.” There was a brief moment of silence before he said.

“Alright but at least unlock it. We’ve talked about this before, plus your brothers think girls are gross so I doubt they’d pop in on their sister changing.”

“Okay dad sorry.” Thank god he bought it. I then went over to my phone and tried to make my lie seem real as I called both Stacy and Courtney to meet me at the theater in 15min.

Thankfully since it was the weekend, my parents let me go out later than usual so long as I was back before ten. My dad gave me some money for the tickets and food and we kissed each other goodbye and I drove off to the theater.

I soon met my two best friends and we decided to just walk around the mall instead going to see a movie. It was there I told the girls everything. As they were trying on new stuff from a new store called The Gap, I said to them.

“What am I gonna do girls?”

“Well you know me girl, if I were you I’d just come clean.” Said Courtney.

“Are you crazy?! No way can she tell them about this. Okay chick this is what you do. You answer any calls the school makes and come up with any and every excuse you’ve got.” Stacy said as she peeked over her changing room into Courtney’s.

“Stace, no offense but your parents may buy into that but I’ve met her mum and dad and they aren’t stupid like yours are.”

“Yeah you got a point. Hell I could go to prison for murder and my parents wouldn’t care.”

“Guys hello! Back to me.” I begged.

“Sorry. Well looks like your screwed chickadee.”

“Oh gee thanks Stace.”

“Look (y/n). All I can tell you is that you won’t be able to hide this forever. Just—show them the note and tell them the truth. I’m sure they’ll understand if you explain it to them. And I can back you up about Mr. Crowley. Guy’s a right up arsehole if you ask me. Gave me -20 points because I used the wrong citation for the Bibliography page. And it was only one source that was labeled wrong” Said Courtney.

“Yeah and our Geometry teacher Miss. Ringo, I can barely understand what she’s saying with that thick Dutch accent of hers. Gave me a 30% on our last exam.”

“That’s because all you did was doodle and call her an old bat.” I said bluntly.

“Oh yeah. But oh man you should’ve seen the look on her face on the last homework assignment we had.”

“I don’t even wanna know.” Said Courtney.

“Trust me you don’t.” I vouched.

“Hey come on, let’s forget about school, get you to try on some clothes. We’ll go to the food court and get your mind off of things. Sound good?” Stacy said as she came out wearing a new jean jacket with suspenders underneath. I nodded and said with a smile.

“Thanks guys, you’re the best friends I could ask for.”

“Hey divas in diapers remember? The three musketeers. The triple threat angelz.”

“With a Z because…..”

“We’re bad bitches!” we all exclaimed as we held our right hands out in a fist touching each other’s in a triangle shape. And so that’s how it was, the girls helped me get my mind off of the letter and the stress of school with a good Girl’s day out.

A couple days later I was back in school in my Ancient Religions class. Mr. Crowley of course barely allowed any time for me to fully write down what he had on the board because he immediately went to the next thing. He never once asked if anyone had any questions and if someone stopped him, he’d slam the ruler down on the student’s desk and either ask them to meet him after class, or just give them detention.

“Alright students; I’m going to give you your final assignment for the semester for you to do just before winter break.” Everyone groaned. He had just give us a 10 page paper on how Christianity as a whole effected the Global conquest, and now he’s giving us another essay to do. “Hey, hey, hey, hey! No complaints you miscreants!”

But just before he could continue, the intercom beeped above us.

“Mr. Crowley?”

“Yes?” he said annoyedly.

“Will you please send Miss. Deacon into the office.”

“She’s on her way.”

“Thank you.”

“(Y/n) Deacon.” At that point everyone but Courtney all made the ‘oooo busted’ vocals. I flipped them off as Mr. Crowley made me my hall pass so that I wouldn’t get caught by a teacher patrolling the halls. I grabbed my bag and left the classroom.

I walked down the second floor staircase, down to the main level and turned towards the entrance where the main office was. I walked in and I said.

“I’m (Y/n) Deacon. I was told to come here from Mr. Crowley’s class.” The receptionist said.

“Ahh yes Miss. Deacon. The Headmaster would like to speak with you.” Oh shit. This is probably about that letter. I swallowed nervously and hung my bag further up my shoulder and walked down the corridor towards the Headmaster’s office. It felt like the walkway was getting longer as I walked towards that dreaded office room, that was until finally I arrived at it.

Slowly I reached up and knocked on it. There was a brief period of silence before a low voice said.

“Come in.” I opened the door and there standing at the grand desk was Headmaster Byron. He was a fairly older man (if I had to make a guess I’d say currently around Miami’s age). He was a bit—you now stout shape wise. He was going bald and he wore glasses over his hazel eyes. “Ahh Miss. Deacon please sit down.” I walked in and nervously sat down at the chair in front of me.

“You—wanted to see me sir?”

“Yes. I’ve called you down here regarding a letter I had sent over the fall break. I expected to hear a call from your parents but I hadn’t heard anything back from them. Is there a problem?” Oh god what do I say to him?

“Well I—I guess the mail service was just a little slow. Because we haven’t received the letter just yet.”

“Hmm well that’s unusual. Usually the mail service is properly on time. I mean at least we’re more organized than the American system at least to my knowledge.”

“Yeah guess they must’ve lost it.” I said nervously fiddling with my fingers, anxiously picking at my nails.

“In that case; I can send you with another copy of the letter. But if I don’t hear anything within 24hours expect the first phone call.” I nodded as he handed me the same letter that I had gotten in the mail over the break. I thanked him and quickly headed out of the office. On my way back to class I ripped the letter up into as many pieces as I could before discarding it into the nearest bin and returned to class like nothing happened.

After school I was in my room trying to make sense of the math homework I had to deal with and that’s when a knock was heard at my open door. I looked up and there stood my mum.

“Hey love. So you’re dad’s working late tonight with the band so I’m ordering a pizza for dinner. What would you like on yours?”

“Get me a full cheese and my toppings are sausage and pepperoni.”

“You got it. Doing homework?” I nodded solemnly. “Which class is it for?”

“Geometry.”

“Oh yeah, I remember taking that class. Hardest thing I ever knew. In fact all math was difficult for me. Thank god for your dad though, he was always better at finances than I was. That’s how we met as a matter of fact, I was struggling with my Algebra homework and he offered to help me since we were in the same class together.” Lucky her that she at least had dad to help her, meanwhile I on the other hand had absolutely no one to help me.

Everyone was in it for themselves, not even the teacher was willing to give us tutoring sessions if we didn’t get any of the stuff taught in class. He just expected us to memorize and do everything correctly.

“Say, speaking of geometry did you get the midterm results back yet?” Oh god that’s right. Dad actually skipped out on Queen rehearsals to help tutor me for the upcoming fall midterm exam.

Unfortunately for all that hard work, nothing we had practiced was on the midterm, half the stuff was gibberish to me so I just wrote random answers that I could and I ended up with an F.

“He uhh—he got super busy grading our other stuff that he didn’t have time to look over the midterms. But he said hopefully in the next week or two he’ll get to it.”

“Are you sure?” I nodded and she looked at me skeptically.

“Okay, if you say so. I’ll call you when dinner arrives okay?”

“Sounds good mum. Love you.”

“Love you too.” She kissed the top of my head and left my room. I turned away and tossed my books and homework off my bed and buried my face into my bedsheets and softly began to cry.

Why? Why does this have to happen to me?! Why can’t I just get the damn work? Why do I have to be such a fucking idiot!?!?

Days passed and I still didn’t have the heart to tell my parents that I was failing school. And when the phone started ringing I tried to make an effort to try and answer it before they did, fearing that it was the school.

Some calls it was to which I would make excuses for the school and then tell my mum and dad that it was just boring telemarketers trying to sell us stuff. Other times it’d be Uncle Freddie or uncle Roger calling for Deacy about some Queen business stuff (and of course I chatted with them, I’ve known them ever since I was a baby, plus Freddie was my godfather—or I should say fairy godmother).

But it wasn’t until one day when I came home from an afterschool football game Stacy and Courtney invited me to, that I would pay dearly for the lie that I had been trying to keep.

“Yeah I know and when Bobby finally scored the winning goal I swear it was a one and a million shot he got that!” Stacy exclaimed as we got out of her car and walked up my driveway before stopping at the gate.

“I tell you you’ve got one lucky man right there Stace. Your boy’s gonna go far in football.” Said Courtney.

“All I know is that for the first time in decades our school is finally in the playoffs and that we might have a shot of winning the district championship since 1971.” I said.

“Well we definitely have the best team to get us there. Not to mention the cutest.” Courtney said before snickering towards the end.

“I’ll drink to that.” I said taking a shot of my water.

“(Y/n). Can you come in here please?” I looked up to see my dad standing there by the door. His arms crossed over his chest and I could tell something was wrong.

“Yeah dad I’ll be right there. See you girls Monday then?”

“We’ll save you a seat at the cafeteria before homeroom.” The girls then walked back to the car and they drove off. I opened the gate and trotted up the stairs before standing in front of him.

“Is something wrong dad?”

“Come in the house and let’s talk.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and guided me inside. As we walked through the house towards the kitchen, I could feel the tension in the air. It was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. My mum sat there at the kitchen table looking distraught almost. “Have a seat.” Okay now I was getting a little freaked out.

I sat down and that’s when dad stood behind mum placing his hands on her shoulders.

“(Y/n), has something been going on at school that you’re not telling us?” asked my mum concerned.

“No—why do you ask?”

“Well we caught Robert and Michael reading your diary and—”

“They what!? MICHAEL! ROBERT GET YOUR ARSES DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW YOU LITTLE BUGGERS!!!”

“Hey! Hey! Hey! Language and lower that tone in your voice!” dad snapped at me. “We handled the boys, but it was then we found this.” He took something out of his pocket before unfolding it and placing it down right in front of me on the table. My heart sunk and my throat grew dry.

It was the first letter sent in by my school.

“So we called the school and they said they’ve been trying to get in touch with us. And that you said we didn’t receive any letter the first time around so the Headmaster gave you a second letter.” Mum stated more in an interrogating tone than the concerned tone she had earlier.

“Have you really been failing your classes? And this time don’t. Lie. To us.”

“No!” I exclaimed.

“They said you’re barely holding a 2.50 GPA.”

“Well I—I just….I don’t mean to I-I-I-I….the teachers they’re…..” I kept rambling as I felt tears in my eyes and my throat clenched. “I don’t get why I’m being target.”

“The better question is why did you lie to us!? You’ve known about your grades for what weeks? And you lied to us every time a grade was mentioned! Do you have any idea the level of betrayal you’ve given to me and your mother!?” my dad’s voice slowly raised up in anger.

I tucked away in fear at his intimidating voice. He rarely and I say this with a big emphasis that my dad rarely gets mad, but when he does—oh god help us all. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer him.

“(Y/n) (m/n) Deacon answer me when I’m talking to you!” he snapped. I looked up fearfully and ashamed and I did the only thing that was running through my mind.

Run.

I got up and as quick as I could I raced out of the house and down the street. I fucked up. I know, but at this point it was too late. Just seeing my dad get angry with me, I knew he hated me now.

I ran all the way down the street and turned left and ran towards old widow Johannsson’s back garden. I opened the gate that stood around her AC vent and locked the door so that no one could open it. I leaned against the corner of the gate and just sobbed as hard as I could.

All of my fears and sorrow came out as I wept hysterically and choked on my sobs, that’s when I heard my dad’s voice calling out my name. I held my hand over my mouth to try and keep quiet as his voice got louder and louder. I soon saw him through the cracks in the fence as he looked around. Unfortunately a sniffle just had to come out and soon dad turned towards the fence.

“(Y/n)?”

“Please just go away and let me cry in peace.” I choked out.

“That’s not going to happen, now c’mon open the gate.”

“No you—you already hate me.” He scoffed out a sigh.

“Wha—what makes you think I hate you?” he asked in disbelief.

“You only yell when you hate someone. And now you hate me. You hate me that I lied to you. You hate me for keeping secrets. And you hate me because I’m stupid.”

“Hello? What—what is going on out here?” widow Johansson came out on top of her deck and looked down towards us.

“I’m sorry Valarie but—could you give us a few minutes?” she must’ve looked down and saw me because that’s when she slowly backed off and allowed my dad to talk to me again. “(Y/n), love I—I don’t hate you. Yeah I’m upset because you lied to your mum and I but I could never, ever hate you.”

“But you do dad don’t deny it. I kept this from you and you’ll never forgive me. You’ll never love me again because I’m a stupid bitch who can’t understand anything!”

“First of all you are not a stupid bitch. You are a brilliant, smart, beautiful young girl. And I will always love you no matter what.”

“Stop saying that. Please just go away please…..” I trailed off before pleading out one last time. “Please.” With that I didn’t hear another response from him as I continued to softly weep. I could hear footsteps walking up widow Johansson’s back deck and then the back door closed. I looked up and saw my dad as well as widow Johansson gone. I wiped my tears and just curled myself into a ball.

I don’t know how much time passed but I knew it wasn’t long, maybe 5-7 minutes because the next thing I hear are footsteps walking back down the deck and my dad sitting himself down against the gate. It was then I heard a guitar being strummed before a familiar tune was being played.

It was strange to hear it on guitar instead of an electric piano like it was on the record but the tune was easily recognizable, especially when my dad softly began singing the lyrics. And sure he didn’t have as good a voice as my uncles did but—he still made the song count.

Oh, you're the best friend that I ever had I've been with you such a long time You're my sunshine and I want you to know That my feelings are true I really love you Oh, you're my best friend

While it is true that my dad wrote this song for my mum back when a Night at the Opera came out, he also written it for me as well. Because when he first played it for us, he said he wanted a song dedicated to his favorite girls.

So taking the electric piano he practiced and practiced till he knew how to play the tune and since then the song’s been like a comforting lullaby to me. And he’s played and sung it to me ever since.

Ooh, you make me live Whenever this world is cruel to me I got you to help me forgive Ooh, you make me live now honey Ooh, you make me live

You're the first one When things turn out bad You know I'll never be lonely You're my only one And I love the things I really love the things that you do Oh, you're my best friend

Ooh, you make me live

I'm happy at home You're my best friend

He stopped playing and slightly turned towards me. I wiped away my tears and just like it always did, it made me stop crying.

“Guess I still got it huh?”

“Shut up.” I muttered which made him softly chuckle.

“Can you please open the gate love? Let me see my best friend.” He asked. I slowly scooted towards the gate and slowly reached for the handle. I held onto it for a while and I pulled one side down which caused the other side to lift up. The gate slowly opened and there sitting a few feet away from me was my dad. “There she is.”

I sniffled and wiped away the tearstains but I was still afraid to look him in the eye for more than a second. I felt his hand cup the side of my face wiping away the tears.

“Do you think you can talk to me now?” I nodded. “Okay. Now (y/n) please explain to me why you lied to us about your grades?”

“Because I—I wanted to prove myself.”

“Prove yourself about what?”

“That I could be as smart as you. You’re the smartest man I know and you never seem to get stumped about anything. You graduates college with the highest in your major, you’ve built your own amps from old junk, and you handle both our finances as well as the bands. But—the schoolwork I’m given is so beyond hard. I tried my best dad it’s not that I don’t do the homework because I do. I really do, it’s just that…..”

“Hey, hey poppet. Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay.” I sniffled and harshly wiped my tears away but my dad stopped me and replaced my thick sleeve with his gentle but calloused fingers. “I know you do the homework. I’ve seen you do it and so has your mum.”

“But the teachers make it so unfair to learn. They say this or that will be on the test but then something we haven’t even learned yet is what ends up as majority of the questions. Or they’re not consistent with what they want on the papers before giving us a bigger paper the next day after the previous one. Dad I—I’m a failure. And I didn’t want you to be ashamed of having a stupid daughter like me.”

“Oh (y/n),” he scooted closer to me and cupped both sides of my face forcing me to look up at him with teary eyes. “I am in no way, nor will I ever be ashamed to have you as my daughter. You’re my first baby girl and I love you soo much. You don’t have to be a genius like me to be my daughter, because you are smart in your own clever way.”

“But I—I’m failing my classes, how can I be smart when I’m failing?”

“You’re still trying, are you not?” I shrugged.

“I guess.”

“Then that proves your smart. Oh my sweet girl I wish you had come to me about this sooner instead of feeling like you had to hide this from me.”

“I’m sorry daddy.” I softly choked out.

“It’s okay love. Now come here, you deserve cuddles and kisses right now.” I immediately fell into his arms and buried myself into his shoulder. He rubbed my back in soothing circles and stroked through my hair. “We’ll get this sorted out okay? But promise me that you’ll never lie to us about school again, okay?”

“I promise…..never again.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And they did just that. I showed my parents everything regarding exams, homework and showed just how unfair the work was for me. I showed them my notes and told them what my teachers were really like.

The next day they scheduled a meeting with the headmaster and they talked about how the teachers are treating me and my fellow classmates unfairly with too much work and not unfair teachings of not asking for help.

Now one would think after telling you this I got off scot-free right? Wrong. I was grounded for the same amount of time that I had lied to my parents about school, so that meant over a week and a half of no TV, no after school activities and no phone privileges.

But after getting the teachers fired and currently dealing with substitutes for the rest of the year, whenever dad wasn’t busy with Queen; he made a promise to sit down with me and if there was anything I was stuck on, he’d help me with it. No matter how long it took.

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kaitlinmcandrews · 7 years ago

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Hello again!

So, to continue where I left off, the next season I want to showcase is winter. Winter is a lot shorter here than in Canada and it starts a lot later as well. As you may have noticed, my last blog was talking about Fall and it went into December. Maybe my memory is terrible, but I’m fairly sure that there are no Autumn leaves in December, back in Canada.

Okay, side note: Let’s talk about Canada’s winter (well, like northern BC and Alberta since I haven’t lived in the rest of the gigantic country I’m from. It’s freaking huge! The weather in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are probably 20394848x better than it is where I’m from, but let me vent for a sec).

I swear that winter goes from October to May. By winter, I mean that there is a presence of snow. When I was a kid, it often snowed on my birthday. My birthday is at the end of September. Usually, it would melt right away, then it would warm up again and it would snowy again by the time Halloween rolled around. Also, I remember mid-November being the time of year when the ski hills open. So, that basically means that you can expect the snow to be there to stay from that point forward.

However, In the last couple of years, the snow comes and goes basically starting in November and we don’t get consistent snowy weather until Christmas or early January. The ski hills now seem to open in mid-December. So, uh, to all those that don’t think global warming is a thing, you are wrong. My Northern Canadian life is proof enough, in my opinion.

That being said, I don’t think the Autumn leaves stick around until December. That just seems absurd. Well… I also feel like the weather where I’m from is incredibly volatile and sporadic. I mean, it literally will go from 20C and sunny, to 10C and rainy, to -10C and snowy, and back to 20C within a 2 day span. I’m not kidding. So, if I was a leaf on a tree, I’d jump ship early on in the year, too.

Okay, okay, you aren’t here for crazy Canadian weather…

Back to Japan!

So, Japan is pretty diverse, just like Canada, surprisingly. I think I had a misconception about the size of Japan before coming here. So, because of that, remember that everything I say about weather is not really about the entire country. I can only speak about our experience in Kyoto, Kanagawa aaaaaand, Nagano!

Winter in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Kanagawa is pretty tame. I’d say it snows once or twice throughout the year and doesn’t stick. In the Kyoto area, it seemed to stay a little bit longer, especially in Northern Shiga (where me and Pat used to work).

Okay, the moment I’ve wanted to talk about since we went there.

Nagano Prefecture (長野県)

In mid-February, we headed Northwest to Nagano prefecture. It is not that far from Tokyo, yet it has quite a different climate. It is a pretty mountainous prefecture with many ski hills.

Okay, let’s get out the good old Google Maps screen shot!

As you can see, it is a pretty big prefecture. As you can probably also see, I have starred the area that we went to.

Since this area is pretty rural, for the most part, the options for getting out there are a bit limited. I think going to Nagano city first is the best option, depending on your destination I suppose. Basically, from Tokyo, you have 2 options (unless you can drive of course). You can take a shinkansen, which is the high speed bullet train, or a highway bus.

The Hokuriku-Shinkansen takes about 2 hours and costs about 8,000 yen. My coworker told me that this shinkansen line is fairly new, so not too long ago this wasn’t even an option. Interesting.

As for bus, this is where there is a lot of discrepancy with times and price. We went through a company called Willer Express. I used this website: http://japanbuslines.com/en/ to find all the buses that went from Tokyo to Nagano and picked the best option for us. It was significantly cheaper. I think it was like 3,000 yen or something. The downside was that it took twice as long. I believe it was about 4 hours.

For us, we took the Shinkansen to Nagano on our way there and took the bus from Nagano on our way back.

So, we decided to have a pretty late night when we left. We decided to make the most of a regular 2-day weekend. I sorta based the timing of going on the activities I wanted to do, rather than wait for a long weekend. I wanted to go skiing and I wanted to go to a monkey park. I had to figure out the best timing for both the ski season and if the monkeys would be out. If the weather was too warm, the monkeys wouldn’t be out in the onsen (I’ll get into this more, later) and if it was too cold, the skiing experience wouldn’t be as fun.

**Also, sorry for the lack of photos, I didn’t take as many as usual. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.**

We requested to leave work a bit early and we were able to take the shinkansen out to Nagano around 6pm or so. We had a bit of a hectic time at the shinkansen gates (which I have ranted about enough times on this blog…) and barely got onto the train we paid for. Since we didn’t book ahead, there wasn’t too many options for sitting together.

It was actually a bit frustrating because it seemed like many business men were taking this train (seems to be the norm from 5:00 -7:00), and they all book the window seat. So, basically, every pair of seats was taking by one business man. Like, c’mon man, by you single travellers wanting to sit alone, you make it incredibly irritating for anyone that is travelling with someone. It just seems selfish. If you are a single f’ing person, you shouldn’t have reserved seats. You should just be put with all the other business men. Ugh.

So, it wasn’t terrible, but a bit frustrating. The ride was only about 2 hours so it wasn’t too bad. When we left Tokyo, it was actually one of the warmer days that it had been in awhile. It was pretty crazy how different the weather was when we arrived in Nagano city. I found the temperature on the accuweather website. For reference, we left Tokyo on Friday, February 17th.

Tokyo:

Nagano:

So, not only was the temperature much colder, but it was also one of the nicest days in a long period of time in Tokyo.

Darn.

We arrived pretty late so it was even colder. Also, it was raining (well, like wet snowing) when we arrived so it was pretty chilly.

So, unfortunately for us, our final destination was not Nagano city. As soon as you get off the beaten path, transit becomes sooo difficult and confusing. I did a lot of research on ski resort websites to get as much information as I could. I found that there was a bus that went basically to our hotel. For some reason, the times for this bus were really bizarre. Luckily, I was able to get the following bus schedule, to confirm what I read online.

For whatever reason, the bus times out to where we needed to go ran every hour until 5pm and then nothing until 9pm, which is the last one of the night. It was a little bit stressful. Knowing that we had to get the one and only bus out there was not comforting. We had an hour and a bit to spare when we arrived in Nagano, but my first priority was to find out where on Earth the bus stop was. I was so stressed about missing this bus. I swear that the internet just said “go to East exit. finished”…. ugh, not helpful. I don’t think I can make it any more helpful, though, to be honest.

So, when you get out of the East exit, we went down a small escalator, and down the stairs. There was 2 bus stop areas. One looked like it was for city buses, and the other looked like it was for highway buses. I assumed we would need the highway bus, but I really had no idea. I gave up and asked the gift shop lady. The bus stop was basically right by the gift shop. So, I guess it was a city bus?

Don’t trust me… I think this is the stop, but my memory is not great and I didn’t take any photographs… That’s what I use to trigger my memory.

I think it was even more stressful since it was so dark and cold outside. Like, not only could we be stranded, but nobody is outside, things are starting to close and I still wasn’t 100% sure where to catch the bus. Thank goodness for the bus stop lady. Having this bus schedule helped as well because I could just show it to her and she knew what I wanted.

Once we knew the bus stop, we went to eat and get some starbucks. We took the bus without any problems. We had to tell the driver what stop we were going to and pay for our ticket before going on. Since it was so late, there were maybe 10 or less people on the bus. It was a pretty quiet busride. We were on the bus for a little over an hour.

When we got off, we then had to walk to our hotel. This particular hotel had a pickup service but I really didn’t want to bother them so late at night. (Actually, at this point I was emailing them back and forth letting them know our arrival time and such since it was such a late check in.

The bus stop seemed to be in the middle of a ski lodge town. The place we chose was pretty far away actually. We started walking. It really isn’t a long walk, but remember, it was like 10:30pm. It was so rural that there were no street lights. It was also in the mountains so the roads were just like they are back home: icy and snowed over. And, we were dragging our suitcases behind us.

Well, after about 5 minutes or so, a vehicle passed us, which was weird since it was so dead. Well, that vehicle turned around and it was the owner of the hotel! I don’t know if he was driving up and down this road, or if we had lucky timing since I was emailing him our ETA. So, he picked us up and drove us to the hotel. He was so sweet.

We checked in and got ready for our big ski day the next morning.

Shiga Kogen mount yakebitai Ski (志賀高原焼額山スキー場)

We woke up pretty early to make sure we would get to the mountain and have enough time to get our ski rentals. Since our ryokan provided breakfast we decided to grab some before we left. We had the choice of a Japanese style breakfast or an American/Western style one. We opted for the Japanese option just to take in the culture.

Well, to be fair, I don’t really like any western breakfast items. I hate bread, muffins,cereal, oatmeal and yoghurt with fruit in it. The only breakfeast food I like is bacon and eggs. We didn’t know what the western breakfast would include so not worth the risk for me, the picky eater. That being said, for most people, that is definitely the safest option haha. Who knows what will be in the Japanese breakfast!

It was quite nice to have a Japanese style breakfast. When we had a home-cooked breakfast in Korea, it was an experience that I think will always be with me (if you can’t remember, we had freaking bulgogi for breakfast and it was the best bulgogi I have ever had, ever).

So, to our relief, the one breakfast item that I definitely did NOT want (natto, ie, fermented soy beans) were not part of it. Lucky! We had a fish, miso soup, some tofu, some fruit, salad and rice. To drink, we had tea! Not exactly what we would eat for breakfast in North America. It was pretty good. It was really filling and really well-rounded.

After breakfast, we saw that many other guests were getting ready to head out. Since this ryokan is just ran by a couple, they would only be driving one vehicle out to the bus stop. Me and Pat were impatient, and a bit anti-social, so we just walked. It wasn’t a long walk. It was slightly uphill, but it wasn’t bad. We were wearing our jackets, and brought our toques and gloves. We were going to rent the rest of our gear so we didn’t need to carry much at all.

Since we arrived in the dark the night before, we really had no idea how much snow there was. It felt like we were back in Canada! It wasn’t too cold out and was actually a pretty nice walk to the bus.

The bus stop was pretty easy to find. The busses out to the ski hill was actually free since it was a shuttle bus. I was pretty surprised. You cooouuuld take a fancy highway bus, but it wasn’t free. It didn’t run too often, so we ended up leaving a lot later than we had expected. Using that bus timetable from before, everything under the pink was free.

We missed the first bus, but made the second one. As you can see, they don’t really run too often so we had to wait for a bit. Luckily, there was a little bus stop shack that was heated and had benches and a vending machine. So, it was not terrible.

Once the bus came, the lady that worked at the bus station let us know and we got on. Since we were only the third stop, the bus wasn’t full yet. It filled up really quickly. We were so lucky that we got to sit down the whole time (although, I felt kinda bad since we didn’t have any gear and we got to sit, yet some people had their skis, helmets, boots, etc. and had to stand…).

The first thing we did when we got to the ski hill was go to the rental shop. Since this ski hill has a fair amount of foreign guests, they carried a pretty good range in sizes. We were able to rent ski pants, board/ski and boots and jackets. We didn’t rent jackets since we had our own. I was hoping that they would have goggles, but they didn’t. I could have bought a pair, but they were soooo expensive. This was the first time in my life that I went skiing without goggles.

Now, back in Canada, I have my own gear. I haven’t had to rent anything in a loooong time. But! Every time that I have been to a rental shop has been a terrible and long process. This guy was super quick. There wasn’t a line at all, which is surprising since I can’t imagine many Japanese people have their own stuff. I mean, unless you live in Nagano, where are they going to go skiing?? Maybe we went early/late enough? Who knows. I don’t remember how much the rentals cost… I wonder if I can find that out.

http://www.princehotels.com/en/ski/shigakogen/rentals.html

Found it! Looks like its about $30 for the board/ski and boot set. Since the only snow gear we rented was the snow pants, I don’t think he charged us $40… I really don’t think we paid that much. At that point in time, we were thinking of doing a night ski. This made it a bit complicated about returning out rentals. They shop closed basically at the time of the last chairlift, which was hours before the night ski started.

The rental guy was pretty understanding, and perhaps too nice/trusting. He said we could return them in the morning OR just leave the stuff outside the shop. What the heck? Just leave it there? That is way too trusting, Japan! We weren’t sure what we wanted to do, so told him we would return it in the morning (Even though this is the most inconvenient option for us, especially since our hotel is so far from the ski hill and now we would have to lug all of our stuff back to the hotel and back).

After we got all the stuff we needed, we bought some tickets.The full day pass costs $50. I wish we had arrived a bit earlier to make that cost worth it, but it wasn’t a terrible price. We also got our night ski tickets for about $20 at the same time. Our passes were really interesting. They were like hard plastic cards (they reminded me of our train cards) that were used to beep into the chairlifts/gondolas. Isn’t that cool?

I tried to take a photo, but the line was moving pretty quickly. So, I have a fancy ski pass holder in my jacket’s arm so it was really easy for me to beep in. Pat took the card out every time.

Y’know, sometimes Japan really is high tech. Usually it isn’t, but sometimes unnecessary technology pops up where you’d least expect it. We were given two cards that look the exact same so we had to put our night ski cards separately from our day lift cards. Finally, we were off to the slopes!

I didn’t take my fancy camera with me skiing, obviously, so I don’t have many photos. I took a few photos on my phone, so let’s go with what I got….

As you can see, they mountain isn’t really that big, but it has decent amount of runs with an okay variety. Me and Pat tried (and I thiiiiink we succeeded) to go down every single run.

The snow was nice and powdery at the top, but a bit icy near the bottom. There was a good mix of groomed runs and natural. The runs that weren’t groomed had some pretty fun naturally formed moguls. As a boarder, moguls are pretty difficult, but I personally think they are a lot of fun. The trees were different that I’m used to back home so that was kind of an interesting difference that I never even thought of.

We were pretty lucky with the weather. It wasn’t too cold, there wasn’t much wind chill and the sun came out quite a bit. I had a hard time without goggles, though. I could barely keep my eyes open because of the sun reflecting off the snow and having the wind go into my eyes. I decided to wear my glasses and that seemed to help a little bit. Sunglasses would have been much better. Oh well!

It wouldn’t be a Pat and Kaitlin adventure without a mishap…

So, it you are going to this mountain (yakebitai) be aware that it connects to another ski hill (OkuShiga).

Now, I was under the impression that the ShigaKogen ski hills were all covered by the day pass, so I actually wasn’t too concerned when we ended up over there. Well, I must have read something wrong or misunderstood something…

When we arrived at the chairlift at the other ski hill, our cards wouldn’t beep in.

sigh….

Luckily, right by the chairlift was a small rest stop where you could by the ski pass for this hill. When I talked to the front desk lady, we were hit with dissapointing news. She said to get back to the other hill we had two options: take that bus that we took on the way up (but, remember, it runs like once an hour…) or buy a pass to go back up the chairlift. Before talking to her, I thought the only option was the full day pass, which would have been another $50, or a half-day pass, which was around $30…

That’s an expensive mistake!

I’m pretty glad that the lady at the front counter spoke English and understood our situation. We were able to get a one lift pass. She told up how to properly beep in and what to do with the card when we were done. Phew!

I can’t remember how much they cost, but they were significantly cheaper. It was kind of an interesting idea, especially if you were staying near the hill. I dunno, I kind of liked the idea of just paying for a few runs. Probably not worth the cost, but interesting…

It was one of those situations that really sucked at the time, but was easily rectified and didn’t really cause too many issues. It was a small blip in an otherwise nice ski day.

When we were at the chalet for lunch, I started looking at information on how to get back to the hotel. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that it might actually be in a bit of trouble. Let’s look at the bus timetable again:

Do you see the problem?

Well, just to remind you, we were planning on going night skiing. Night skiing started at 6:30.

…..

Lame.

So, the LAST bus back to our hotel leaves at 5:10. The last run is over at 4:30, so it actually doesn’t give you much time. It was kind of disappointing because we don’t really like taking the last bus because it is so risky, but the bus before left so early!So, I guess night skiing is only available to the people that are either staying at the Prince Hotel or driving. Oh well.

Luckily, we were able to return the passes and get our money back. I’m sure that we weren’t the only ones to make this mistake so it was a fairly easy process.

I feel like we did take the last bus since we wanted to stay as long as possible. We were able to return our rentals, so that saved us some trouble. We waited at the bus stop near the hotel and got back safely. We were pretty hungry at this point. For whatever reason, the restaurants at the ski hill ALL closed before the last run. Isn’t that strange? The ski hill and all the amenities turned into a ghost town as soon as 4pm hit.

Once we got back to the bus stop, we realized that were no places to eat. Seriously, there was nothing! It seems that every person out there ate at their hotel? There wasn’t even a convenient store (they are literally everywhere in Japan, so it was pretty strange).

We headed back to the hotel and hoped that we would be able to get something to eat there. As I mentioned before, these hotel owners were just a sweet old couple. We could have arranged for them to pick us up at the bus stop, but we just walked back. It wasn’t really a long walk.

They were really accommodating and it wasn’t a big deal.

I got a pasta and Pat got an udon (a Japanese noodle soup). Of course we had beer!~

After dinner, I really wanted to go into the onsen. I’m usually not allowed in one because I have tattoos. I thought that I booked a room with a private hot spring bath, but the website was a bit misleading. The Ryokan itself had a “private” onsen, but it was for the entire hotel… This wasn’t a very big hotel and didn’t seem to be full of people or anything.

I decided to risk it. Pat was not interested and stayed in the room. They were separated by gender so we couldn’t be in the bath together anyways. I was pretty lucky and nobody was in there and no one came the entire time. So, I guess I did have a private bath after all! If you didn’t know, you go into an onsen naked. If anyone came in, not only would I be embarrassed about my tattoo, but also that they would see me naked!

In this onsen, you put your clothes in the pink basket, shower yourself off (not shown) and finally you can relax in the natural hot spring. It felt really great after a ski day.

We had a pretty early night and didn’t really do too much. We didn’t have to wake up so early the next day, but we did so we could get the breakfast.

The breakfast was similar in some ways, but obviously had different types of food. The one kind shocking/strange things were the fish that you can see at the bottom. I initially took a bite from the stomach area and it was FILLED with fish eggs. I googled it to figure out what the heck I was eating. I found out we were to eat the whole thing, except the head and tail. I ripped of those parts and ate it. It was… ok… It definitely wasn’t my favourite dish. I would never order it.

We went back to our room and packed up all of our stuff. We only went skiing for the one day so we were off to a new adventure!

Jigokudani Monkey Park (地獄谷野猿公)

The next day, we headed to a monkey park in Nagano. It was actually only 3 bus stops away from the hotel. I don’t want to show that freaking bus timetable again, so just trust me. The monkey park isn’t part of the free bus section so we had to pay at the bus stop before we left.

As soon as I found out about this place, I have wanted to go. When we lived in Kyoto, I was willing to travel all the way there. To put that in perspective, here’s another Google Map image!

Here’s a tip if you ever want to go somewhere sort of rural in Japan: Look at directions to the nearest train station and go from there. When I tried to find out how to get to this Monkey Park, I couldn’t find anything! To be fair, I couldn’t find directions to the park from Nagano using Google Maps either. There was a lot of extra Googling from there on and finding local bus stop timesheets that needs to be done

Japan: The Future….

Anyways, as you can see, the average trip from Kyoto would have been almost 4 hours just to get to Nagano. If our jobs weren’t so crappy and we actually had time of like real people, I may have made Pat make this trek with me.

Luckily for us, I suppose, we moved to Kanagawa and were able to make it there in a much shorter trip. Since we were already in the area to go skiing, it was a pretty quick trip to the monkey park.

We had already checked out of our hotel and had to bring our luggage to the monkey park. The bus stop had “Monkey Park” in the name so it was hard to miss. When we arrived, it seemed that everyone was going the same way. Not only that, but there were signs along the way. I think it took about 15 min or so to get to the entrance.

I looked up details beforehand so I knew that we were able to store our luggage at the office/gift shop area. It wasn’t too expensive to store our stuff so we were happy to do that instead of finding a locker or anything.

I really didn’t know what to expect going into this park. I was reading online that in order to see the monkeys, the temperature should be pretty cold. Before we left Kawasaki, the forecast was supposed to be super cold. I was sad that skiing would be terrible, I was excited that the monkeys would be awesome.

Regardless of the forecast, we actually experienced the opposite. The weather was quite nice and skiing was definitely more pleasurable (especially since I didn’t have any goggles), but I was worried about not being able to see the monkeys. From the entrance, we had to do a bit of a hike until we hit the park. I did not know that. I thought that the ‘entrance’ was the monkey park ‘entrance’….

hmm…

Seems like it was falsely advertised OR falsely assumed by me.

There were quite a few foreigners on the trail, which is always so surprising. I mean, we are in rural Japan. Foreigners are about 1% of the population, so to see another foreign person is always shocking. To be fair, the amount of foreign tourists that are in Japan is sooooo mush higher than the foreigners that actually live here. Sorry, that was a tangent. What I wanted to mention was a small, blonde haired girl that was with her family, was talking about how disappointing she was. I remember saying to Patrick that I didn’t think we would see any monkeys…

It was a pretty nice hike so I wasn’t too disappointed at this point. The weather was nice and the scenery was actually really nice. I don’t think you can tell, but the sun was shining through the trees and gave such an amazing view. At this point, I was wishing I would have seen the monkeys, but I was enjoying the hike regardless.

Until….

… A freaking monkey walked by us!!!

I was so excited, but I was actually a bit scared. I didn’t think I would be, but, like, I have no idea what these guys are capable of! He didn’t seem to care. He walked on by like nothing.

I really didn’t know what to expect so I thought that THIS was the monkey park. I thought that we were already in the area to see the monkeys. I’m glad that I was wrong. There was a little office at the end of the hike where you could buy tickets into the monkey park and get souvenirs. The tickets weren’t too expensive. I believe they were under $10.

We actually hesitated about buying the tickets. That little girl that I eavesdropped on really faltered my confidence. Also, when I read about this place online, I heard that if the weather is warm, the monkeys won’t be in the hot spring. Since the weather was actually really nice, I really thought that buying those tickets could be a waste of time.

Man, I must have misunderstood what I read. I also think that poor little girl’s family didn’t pay to go in. Because, there were definitely monkeys! At first, we just saw some playing on the mountain. They were soooo cute!

Yaaaay~

I was pretty excited. They were actually playing around together like human children. It was really adorable. We ventured our way down to the hot spring (the main attraction) and continued to see monkeys scattered around.

There were a lot of ups and downs and quite icy. At one point, Pat almost wiped out really bad. He slipped down this huge hill and it was like a cartoon. Luckily he was able to gain his balance and a man at the bottom was ready to catch him if he was to wipe out. Point is: if you go here, wear boots.

Once we got to the hot spring area safely, we got to see so many monkeys!! Photo time ^^!

And finally, the main attraction~ The hot spring!

Like I said earlier, the weather was fairly warm so the monkeys weren’t really interested in hanging out in the hot springs. It was just the mama and her baby, but I was so happy to see ANY monkeys in there!

It was pretty amazing how close you could get to them. They weren’t scared or curious. They just walked around and didn’t mind the people at all. It was a pretty cool experience.

We headed back home after we finished at the monkey park. We had a really great weekend and were pretty happy to be able to experience a “true” Japanese winter. It was nice to see snow again, believe it or not.

The 4 seasons of Japan – Winter Hello again! So, to continue where I left off, the next season I want to showcase is winter.

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