September 2007
More festivals (20070901)
People doing weird things in the streets. Beats having cars
there, I guess, though I was not allowed to ride my bicycle
either.
Running (20070901)
Why? (20070901)
Why do the same store have one sign saying "liqure and tabacco"
and one sign saying "liquor and tobacco"?
Over eating (20070901)
We went out to eat. Since we were 6 people, there was no space
for us in the packed streets. The food is in order: renkon (lotus
root, perhaps? tasty,
ordered by me), some kind of snails or such (dead, at least), sliced
raw squid in squid entrails sauce (not that great), sliced raw octopus
in slimy sauce, vegetables covered in small slightly dead raw albino
fish, rice and salmon in tea (good), fried octopus parts, salad
containing slime and tofu, raw but sliced squid on a base of ice, the
squid entrails sauce you dip the squid in, sour vegetarian food,
sashimi (raw fish, squid, clam, shrimp, what not), fish with
vegetables in sauce (good), barbecued fish (don't forget to eat the
head!), potato salad with salmon and fish eggs, rice. There were some
other types of food too, but the photos were not that great.
Let there be light (20070901)
An acquaintance who moved out of her house (leaves for China
forever tomorrow) had a light that she did not want to throw away
(mainly because it is a pain to throw away garbage in Japan, especially
big things). Since no one really needed a lamp, and I happened to be
in more or less the same neighborhood, I was ordered to take
it. Riding a bicycle for 45 minutes with this thing in your hand is
perhaps not the greatest joy ever.
Japanese Italian food (20070902)
The basket set contains fried potatoes, fried chicken and some
form of cheese covered rice with shrimps.
More Japanese Italian food (20070902)
I found a restaurant that sells Italian food, mainly
pasta. Everything comes with renkon, which one of my friends claims is
the best food ever. The food was good, but the juice was not.
School uniforms (20070904)
I don't know who decides on the exact look of the school uniforms
for the high schools in Japan (they all differ), but isn't the skirt
of the girl here rather short? What do you do in winter? In winter
they wear boots, but since it is colder inside than outside in Japan,
I would still think studying would be rather bad.
Japanese people are small (20070904)
Today I noticed that Japanese people are rather small. Especially
when recently born. Also, not the excellent taste in music (as deduced
by already being used to the "horns").
Japanese food (20070904)
Why do Japanese people believe the best thing to go with ice
cream is a piece of bread? Perhaps because Japanese bread is not like
bread at all, but instead very much like cakes.
Photos of photos (20070904)
This restaurant staff was about to take a picture of some of
their food. They laughed at me.
Company (20070904)
There is a sad lack of people who deign to hang out with me. At
least there are plenty of insects that like to hang out in my room
though. Such as this rather large spider. Hopefully it will eat some
of the other guests.
Badminton (20070905)
Today I and one more person from far away got called out to go
play badminton on the other side of town. When we show up, we are told
that the room with a badminton court is actually being used the whole
evening by some other association of importance. So we change to "OK,
then we are here to visit person X instead". The one who said we had
to show up and play. Who was not at home, but was actually down town
shopping... All in all, a rather failed evening. Later, the hard core
badminton people showed up and told us that the badminton would begin
two hours later. Taking pictures of people doing sports in the dark is
rather hard.
Weird Italian food from Japan (20070906)
In my new resolve to only visit restaurants I have never been to
before, unless I have company (which is rare), I once again ended up
eating "Italian". Unfortunately, they had two dishes that seemed to
weird to miss out on, so I had to order both and ate too much. The
first was a pizza with cheese, mayo, and potatoes. The second was the
rather ambitious combination of hamburger, pizza, spaghetti, French
fries, deep fried shrimp, and a small salad.
Kobe again (20070908)
One of the most important parts of Kobe, the delicious sweets,
are sometimes available in Sapporo.
Sapporo fashion (20070908)
Fashion report from Sapporo. Currently, try out pink maid
uniforms, or perhaps a gas mask (left person in right picture).
Aesthetical food (20070908)
Aesthetical floors (20070908)
If you touch the picture on the floor, it changes (as if you
dipped your foot in water). Actually, you only have to shadow out a
part of the picture.
Snacks (20070908)
A dried piece of fish, perhaps not the most exciting snack I have
ever eaten.
Hokkaido Marathon (20070909)
Today was Hokkaido marathon. And very hot. Bad timing for them.
Strange food (20070911)
Meat balls that are too sweet and too soft to be like Swedish
meat balls, cartilage on a stick, baked potato salad on salmon. The
potato salad was good.
Good food (20070913)
I had to leave our lab early to try to be on time for a dinner
invitation. "Let's all cook something together, and you are in charge
of bringing desserts." Of course, it turns out that the organizer is
not there on time, but sends an e-mail later that she will be
late. Later also calls, saying she is leaving the same university now
(one hour after the appointed time) and will be there in 30
minutes... and that there is no time to by food to cook, so let's skip
that and go to a restaurant instead. The restaurant was nice, and I
followed my recent strategy of picking the most expensive thing on the
menu, if nothing particularly stands out. Hand made (?) beef stew
having simmered over 10 hours. Quite nice. There was also evidently a
need for pancakes, that came with a small mountain of whipped cream,
so a lot had to be eaten. Especially since the one who wanted pancakes
only wanted to taste a small part. The rabbit shaped (or so named)
pink rice desserts were then perhaps somewhat overkill. I ate mine
anyway.
Shabu shabu (20070915)
Today two people from Tokyo both showed up in Sapporo. Since one
of them rarely comes here, we were to have a party. Of course, two
hours before this was to start, he got a call from his company and had
to go back and work. But the rest of us still went to eat. I suggested
the all you can eat for 2000 yen place right where we were when
discussing when to go, but it was voted down. "It is expensive and I
am not hungry enough to make use of such expensive meals." Me pointing
out that we normally never spend less than 3000 yen per person in
other places was ignored. I suggested shabu shabu instead, since I
have not eaten shabu shabu since I was in Tokyo with my brother 2
years ago or so. Not something you order when you are alone. Having
one more person on my side, we quickly declared this the winning
suggestion and just went, and the rest surprisingly enough
followed. Shabu shabu is named so because you take thin slices of raw
meat and swirl them around in boiling water. The sound effect for
swirling motions in Japanese is "shabu". Of course, after ordering all
kinds of weird stuff and all the shabu shabu, we had to pay roughly
3000 yen per person... Then we went for desserts somewhere else
(included in the all you can eat menu), adding another 800 yen. Since
I have too much money anyway, I was still happy with this food, but I
fail to understand the reasoning of Japanese women.
Not my fault (20070916)
Japanese bicycles fall over all the time. Why? Because it is
windy here, and they put the balancing parts of the bicycle too far
away from the middle. Also, if one goes, they all go.
Suspicious (20070916)
We had a Sweden party today and went to a park to set fire to
things. Foreigners out after dark is evidently suspicious, so the same
police car passed us about seven times before deciding we were not
about to steal the gravel from the baseball court or something. Also
interesting was one type of fireworks that looked very much like
something we have in Sweden. Where you would expect it to fly up into
the air and explode. The problem was in figuring out which part to put
on fire to make it do whatever it was supposed to do. Since you don't
want to be holding the Swedish things in your hand when they go off,
we were cautious and failed to understand what to do. We tried to send
our kid representative Swede over to some Japanese people to ask them,
but she refused. She was not budged by the argument "it would be
embarrassing for use since we are grown ups and should already
know". We finally figured it out. You have to hold it upside down in
your hand or nothing happens.
Stalked again (20070915-20)
My stalker or whatever it could be is back. Over 30 phone calls
from a secret number, being too short to have a chance to pick up and
talk. Since it is a secret number you cannot call back and ask (which
also makes it unlikely to be a fishing type phone scam) what they
wanted, and you cannot ask your phone to block the calls either (works
with normal numbers though). Who calls at 2 in the morning? Well, I
might since I am up anyway, but still... Evidently, for about one
dollar per month, your cell phone provider can block even people with
secret numbers for you.
The elderly (20070917)
This Monday was a national holiday. The day of the elderly. Since
I was alone and bored, I went to a fancy (expensive) restaurant. There
were only old people there, but the food was good.
Japanese product names (20070917)
Who would order a spam burger? Not that the name is the only bad
thing about it, but still. Pink grapefruit soda combined with spam and
fried eggs. And they call the store chain Freshness burger.
Strange pizza (20070917)
It said that the pizza would contain sausages, but I was expecting
them to perhaps be cut into smaller pieces. Instead, the pizza
actually contained a couple of sausages that just lay there in the
middle. Tasty, though.
Puncture (20070919)
How do you manage to get you rear tire to look like this?
More Japanese product names (20070921)
If you don't like crunky chocolate, perhaps you would prefer
panky chocolate?
Spelling (20070921)
The word "cabacula" in Japanese actually comes from English. It
took me quite a while to figure out which English word. The Japanese
writing conventions for foreign words are somewhat less than
transparent, especially when actually written with Latin letters. The
English original is "cabaret club".
Nomikai (20070921)
Today we had nomikai (from "nomu" - drinking, and "kai" -
meeting). First off was all you can eat Chinese food and all you can
drink anything. After two hours of this, we waddled over to the bar
next door, for two more hours of all you can drink. The people who
could still stand on their own went on for bowling, in which my team
won, more despite me than thanks to me though.
Mafia business (20070922)
Today was spent with two Japanese friends looking at houses (I
need to move soon). First we went to see the house being built by a
friend of a friend, but it was not that great. Nice place, though, so
we went to check out some other houses in the area. The guy showing us
around failed badly according to my friends. One should not chew gum
while talking to clients, nor talk on the phone while driving them
around, or be rude to them etc. His colleagues also failed, since we
came back after lunch, taking a detour, just to pick up some print
outs he should have for us by then. Since he was not there at the
time, no one else could hand them over, evidently... They all looked
like hosts working in the host bars in the red light district too, I
was told. We continued on to another firm to see houses closer to the
entertainment district. The photos are from the quite unbelievable
car we were driven around in there. No suspension, so when going over
the railway nearby I almost flew out of the car. The back seat was
huge, had curtains, a large DVD collection, some books, food, and
other things. The driver's seat was wide enough for two, and reclined
enough to sleep in. The front also had a TV screen with a DVD player,
blaring Japanese pop at us from the very loud surround system during
the whole trip. Three different cup holders too. And illegally dark
tinted windows. Yakuza (Japanese mafia) according to people I
know. The boss of the company also showed up (in his pajamas?) and
also looked very yakuza. They also claimed to not be able to show an
apartment we wanted to see, but my experienced friend claimed that
this was likely not true, so we went across the street to a third
firm. They showed us that apartment with no problems. It had a very
nice view, so I will try to move into the building next doors to that
one, it turned out.
Chinese (20070922)
The mother of a Chinese friend is here in Sapporo and spent a few
hours cooking real Chinese food for me (well, not only me, but
still). Enormous amounts of food. All very tasty. Also interesting is
the Japanese TV explanation system for peoples names. So Chinese
people also write their names with kanji (these being Chinese letters
and all). And since even in Japan people cannot be sure what a person
calls himself just from reading the name in written form (same kanji
can be read in different ways), they also write out the way to read
the name. So why do they write the normal Japanese way of reading a
kanji when the person is Chinese and the name is pronounced completely
differently in Chinese? Last picture is "fruits" they tell me.
Sushi (20070923)
As a foreigner in Japan, you need a native to vouch for you to
get an apartment. This person will have to pay anything I should have
paid, if I don't. University policy is more or less "never sign that
stuff, then we would have to pay", so I was told to ask one of my
friends. Having excellent friends, most said "no", and the one who
said yes lives two hours away by airplane. This makes sending paper
work slightly less than fast and convenient. Today someone came up
with a new person living here to ask, and that person said yes! So I
had to buy both of them sushi, as thanks. This was the first time ever
I went to a normal sushi place (instead of the cheap, fast food style,
sushi places were sushi moves around the room and you grab whatever
you like that passes you by). I ordered the cheapest thing they had,
since it seemed the most delicious. The other two ordered other things
and I paid out of my nose.
Japanese culture (20070924)
I was standing around in the park trying to answer e-mails with
my cell phone when these guys approached me. One of the tried to ask
me a question in English, but he was not that great so I could not
understand what he was asking. All the time they filmed us with a
camera too. I kept asking him in Japanese what he wanted to know, and
he kept saying things like "man this is difficult" in Japanese and
then once more trying to ask me his question in English... Finally, I
understood that he wanted to know if I thought his photo of a forty
year old woman's face was sexier than the photo of a forty year old man
his friend had on his shirt... Neither was especially sexy, so I just
indicated the woman. Then he had to bend over and be hit on the ass
with the green baseball bat by the other guy, while singing something
in Japanese. I still have not come to understand the finer points of
Japanese culture.
Ignored (20070924)
A TV crew interviewed everyone in the park. Except me.
Tourists (20070924)
A huge group of Chinese tourists came along and started taking
pictures of the TV tower. This made the Japanese slackers lying in the
grass take pictures of the tourists taking pictures. And me take
pictures of all of them.
Interesting names again (20070924)
Who thought that naming a store with clothes for young girls
"Johanna ho" was a good idea? Especially if you write it in Latin
letters without capitalization.
Cuteness (20070924)
In Japan cuteness is everything. You have to start practicing
your posing when young.
Nice inventory (20070924)
This shop sells several "shoes" but only one "book". I also like
that they have "inner wear" instead of "underwear". No wonder they are
one of the largest department stores in Sapporo.
Home cooked food (20070924)
In return for the sushi as finder's fee for finding a sucker to
guarantee my apartment, I got home cooked Japanese food today. The
Japanese dish tasted like Swedish food, but the Chinese dish was quite
good.
Nice shirt (20070925)
I found this shirt today and thought it was funny. It was also
super cheap, so I asked if they had larger sizes. I was told this is
"free size", so there is only one size which fits anyone. I asked if
this included Europeans, and was told that it likely did. Of course,
this is girl's clothing, so I had some problems even figuring out how
to get this thing on me. For a normal guy-shirt, this is fairly
straightforward, but this shirt was more complicated than I believed
possible. Size wise it fits me, but the arms parts become stretched
enough to be quite transparent and looks really weird... But who can
resist things with pearls and jewelry sewn on? Perhaps the funnies
shirt I have bought so far.
Catchy slogan? (20070927)
Evidently the students are supposed to gather under the slogan
"Do One Go". Whatever that means.
Too much food again (20070927)
Today I was treated to lunch by a grateful colleague. It was a
lot of very nice Chinese food. I tried a new Italian restaurant in the
evening. It was also very good, with a huge (rare in Japan) pizza with potato salad (!), bacon, corn and broccoli,
some salad like things and three desserts. For only 100 yen more you
can have three main dishes and all the desserts you can eat in two
hours instead. Strangely enough people keep telling me they think I
have lost weight. Perhaps from the stress of trying to make a stamp to
sign things (since you cannot really sign things here, that is
insecure; real security comes from a stamp that no one else can fake
(unless they bring your stamp with them of course)).