May 2008

Japanese French Tapas (20080501)

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There is a Japanese restaurant offering "French Tapas". Why a Japanese store claims to make Spanish food in a French way, who knows.

Sundwich (20080501)

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Here is a restaurant specializing in "sundwiches".

Japanese cell phones (20080502)

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This is what your phone should look like. If you can see the camera lens or the clock display, you have not decorated your phone enough.

Japanese hamburgers (20080502)

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In Japanese there is a difference between "hambaagu" (from the English "hamburg steak") and "hambaagaa" (from the English "hamburger"). The difference is, obviously, that "hambaagu" means minced meat with anything (here pine apple) eaten on a plate, while "hambaagaa" means a hamburger with buns (like McDonald's).

Transvestites (20080502)

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I was called in as translator to guide a Canadian girl who speaks very little Japanese in the strange world of Japanese culture. Today they were going to a transvestite club, where transvestites or transsexuals (this is not my strongest part of the Japanese language and it might be rude to ask them to clarify details) come to your table and chat with you while you buy them drinks. There is also a dance and comedy performance. And of course free drinks. People on the left side of the table are the staff (men) and the people on the right side are me and the girls that I was there with. The show was funny, as was the conversation, but it was very hard to keep up when translating (and when just listening). And they threw around a lot of below the belt jokes that I most likely only rarely understood. The one in the turquoise China dress asked repeatedly if he could touch my impressive chest muscles. I said sure, he did, and there was much rejoicing (and screaming).

Karaoke (20080502)

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Since the Canadian girl loves karaoke and Japanese people also see that as a fine form of entertainment, we ended up in a "all you can drink and a lot to eat" karaoke. The thing that tasted like hot water with some coffee powder on top of a mountain of whipped cream (made from vegetables instead of milk) was not very good though.

Purikura (20080502)

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Purikura is of course English ("print club"), and means taking pictures and having them printed out as stickers to stick in your diary, on your phone, where ever. The motto of this place seems to be "We present to you in upper class Therefore all are the best quality".

Time workshop (20080503)

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I was invited to go to a time workshop with a friend. Who also did not have the faintest idea what a time workshop might be, but who "likes workshops". Since I have too much time on my hands, I figured why not. It turned out to be a lot of people who were super stressed and suffered from similar time management problems, and me. There was a lot of talk about Mayan calendars and balance and other New Age like things. Quite interesting to see that even in Japan there are people who believe that if over 20 people gather in one place the effect from all the cell phones brought along is as intense as being in a micro wave oven etc.

One night stand (20080504)

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"One night stand" is what this woman feels is appropriate to wear on her shirt. And people think my shirt saying "Dr Hato" is too weird to wear in public.

Japanese food (20080504)

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This is actually normal Japanese food, a set meal in a cheap normal Japanese lunch restaurant.

Comedy (20080504)

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I was asked if I wanted to go see a stand up comedy contest, since I am known to be a researcher of humor. I said sure, but also mentioned that I was not very interested in competing, commenting, being interviewed or anything like that (which tends to happen every time, since I end up being the only blond person in sight). "OK!" was the answer. It turned out that I was scheduled to be one of the three judges of the competition, so of course I end up speaking more into the microphone than most teams competing... It was a lot of fun, though. A lot of stuff that I did not understand at all (difficult Japanese, speaking very very fast, cultural references I do not know of, etc.) but also a lot of stuff I did understand. I also had to pick my choice for my "judge special award", and got a hug in return from the super funny "incompetent rapper" guy I selected.

Cars (20080504)

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This is my neighbor's very small car.

Cards (20080504)

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My special order of playing cards had arrived so I went to pick them up. I especially like the ace of hearts.

Towel emergency (20080504)

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This is fish, served with a very spicy tomato sauce. My friend back in Sapporo for the Golden Week (4 days in a row without work! unbelievable huh!) likes spicy food but the side effect is sweat. Lots of sweat. She brought a fairly big towel, but that was not enough. Most interesting part was to try and meet up with the other people, since my friend in her usual fashion sucked at giving instructions. She managed to write two of four letters in the name of the restaurant correctly, but the rest were completely off. Which did not make finding this place that easy, since the name was the only thing they gave me to go on...

Strange chocolate cake (200805)

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Once more, I ended up in the penguin restaurant. The penguins were not very impressed, but there was some interesting food. There was something called "Gateau Chocolate in pudding", which turned out to be pretty much chocolate cake stuck inside pudding. There was also was liver pâté, which is common in Sweden but this was the first time I saw it in Japan. Unlike in Sweden were it is super cheap, here it was quite expensive. We ended up ordering this after the waitress brought one set to our table by mistake (should have gone to the next table) and two in our company just could not take their eyes of the liver pâté.

Sakura (20080505)

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The cherry blossoms have had a hard time, and most froze to death slightly before blossoming fully and where then torn down by strong winds and a lot of rain. Here are some that are still around.

Chinese food (20080505)

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Meeting up with another group of friends back in Sapporo for Golden Week, we were set to have Chinese food. Since I had picked the restaurant, I had no trouble finding the place. No one would however tell me when we were supposed to be there. I asked one person also eating Thai food (above) when the event was to take place and she said "I will e-mail you the details later". So I figured maybe it was not decided yet, but it turned out that everything was decided three days before... So I waited and at about 6 P.M. I figure they probably forgot about me because they usually eat early. So I e-mail and ask "OK, when is it?". Still no reply. At 6:25 an e-mail comes "Oh, you did not know? We start at 6:30 and everyone except you are already here"... OK, I may be a little late... (I was.) How can the Japanese trains be so punctual etc. when the normal people are so incompetent at these kinds of things? The food was good, like the fried peppers with trace amounts of chicken bones. The yellowish things with slimy threads are apparently eggs. No penguins in the aquarium though.

Rain (20080505)

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When leaving, it was raining. A lot.

Rockers (20080506)

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A Swedish friend of mine thinks that the funniest thing in the whole of Japan are the rockers dancing in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. Every time I went there, there was a sad lack of rockers (their heyday seems to have passed), but today there were Sapporo rockers in Odori Park!!

Friendly (20080506)

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When going to the other side of town to see if there were still any cherry blossoms in the big cherry blossom park, I got a red light and had to stop with my bicycle. As luck would have it, right at that time a couple that I know were crossing the street right in front of me with their little (half year old?) kid. They wondered who they weirdo with a rope instead of a belt etc. standing in the middle of the road was, but then recognized me. So they invited me for tea in their nearby house, and I skipped the flower thing. Instead I got to play with their kid for a few hours, and they got some time off to deal with some card board boxes left from when they moved in. They also gave me a big jar of home made Canadian cookies brought from Canada. Very nice.

Paparazzi (20080509)

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I was polaroided today, and the picture put on the wall of the restaurant.

Swedish party (20080510)

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Today I was invited to meet up with a guy over from Sweden to visit Sapporo and a Swedish friend of mine here. When I show up for the "party" it turned out to be "I am going to Japanese class for three hours or so, look after the kid". So I was a baby sitter for most of Saturday, but in the evening we did go to a "Viking restaurant". In Japan, Viking just means "all you can eat, buffet style", so there was no particularly viking like food.

Recognized (20080511)

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My bicycle sadly broke down today when I was going out for food. So after this tragedy I wandered into some nearby restaurant, where one waitress recognized me and was very enthusiastic about having me there. In the end, three different staffers came out to my table to speak to me. They also sold me a slice of cake for half the price, since it was close to its last minute of safe consumption. They also call their food strange things like "salad pizza" (first picture).

Welding (20080511)

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When walking home with my dead bicycle, someone was welding huge things together on top of a high building, causing burning things to cascade down from high heights.

Cookie (20080511)

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The waitress who recognized me gave me a cookie that she had made herself (?) when I left the restaurant. I think everyone got a cookie, but still.

Another one (20080511)

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My seventh bicycle to break on me during my two years in Japan. No wonder bicycles cost only a small fraction of what they cost in Sweden.

More breakage (20080511)

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Since I have too much money (this is at least my theory), I also managed to break my pants today. When stuffing my wallet back in the pocket. My nice 1000 yen (i.e. super cheap) pants from my first ever trip to Tokyo.

More flowers (20080512)

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We have flowers inside Hokudai too. These were located very close to where a mother dropped a tiny bag belonging to her little kid, which I had to retrieve and give back since they did not notice anything.

Nurse day (20080512)

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Evidently, today was "nurse day", so if you like me went to the hospital you could pick colorful band aids or a towel. And my doctor is sadly no longer in love with me and does not want me to come back to see her any more. I guess she got over her crush during these seven or so hospital visits.

Again (20080512)

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While trying to watch a movie in my room, I was disturbed by about 18 fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, etc. coming with shouting sirens and stopping more or less right outside my balcony. I think it was not my building that was on fire, but I went out to check anyway. By then, they were all gone.

Cool cards (20080514)

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I bought a cool post card today.

Nomikai (20080515)

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Today saw another nomikai for our lab. It was "all you can eat sushi, all you can eat shabu-shabu, all you can eat sukiyaki". A lot to eat. And of course four hours of free drinks. At our table of six people, we ate 24 plates of meat, four or five plates of vegetables and noodles, and over one hundred sushi pieces. One student who was not even at our table got very sick from over eating and had problems walking.

Chocolate fauntain (20080515)

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I photographed this sign many months ago and no one has seen fit to correct the misspelled message yet.

Street magic and balloon animals (20080516)

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I spent about half an hour talking to this guy standing in the middle of our red light and restaurant district doing magic. He was very nice, and did some funny magic. His real skill was in making balloon animals, though.

And again (20080516)

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At about 3:50 A.M. there was again about 20 fire trucks stopping outside my window. And they come three at a time, so when the first three start quieting down, three more come crashing in. This time everyone went swarming away into the block across the street. But at least I got to see some of my neighbors for the first time, since everyone went out on the balconies in their pyjamases to check if we were on fire of if we could sleep.

Almond jelly (20080517)

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Annindoufu which is evidently translated as "almond jelly" in English is a popular dessert in Japan (originally Chinese and popular in China and Taiwan too I hear). It is not a very interesting dessert, with the normal Japanese lack of taste. This is almond jelly taste ice cream, which quite correctly is almost completely tasteless.

Swedish special (20080518)

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I was scheduled to meet some friends in the middle of nowhere, and since I went there by bicycle (35 minutes or so) and they went by car, they arrived 25 minutes late... Since I arrived ahead of time, I had a lot of time to kill. Luckily, the Royce chocolate company had a large store nearby. They have a "Sweden fair" now (again), as it is "soon" Swedish midsummer and their factory is close to "Sweden hills" that celebrate Swedish midsummer every year. I said that I am from Sweden and was then allowed to take pictures of their things (and I also bought some stuff). It is more "inspired by Swedish cookies" than actually cookies you would find in Sweden. I have never seen chocolate dipped meringue, chocolate dipped marshmallows or even chocolate with vodka (though it sounds Swedish when you think about it). But if there were such things in Sweden, they would likely be called exactly what was written in Swedish on these things. Something that is common in Sweden is "kokosbollar", but the ones they sold here were nothing like Swedish kokosbollar. Still tasty, though.

The meeting (20080518)

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As Japanese people suck at giving directions (see above and other earlier entries), I was not surprised that all the directions I got this time were: "We meet up at Sindouhigashi station, from where we go by car for about 15 minutes. It is similar to a game center. You go straight there and we can meet outside the main door." OK, something that is similar to a game center, and is within a fifteen minute radius (by car) from some station. Right, that will be easy to find. I wrote back and said that I may need slightly more specific directions, and they answer "Oh, you do not know this place?" What place? You are the only one telling me where to go and you have said nothing... But she did write a name of a place and said "maybe you can search for directions on the Internet by yourself?" OK, I did. 0 hits on the Internet for that name. Mainly because she wrote something else than the actual name of the place... I managed to find something with a fairly similar name, which seemed to be about 15 minuted by car from the mentioned station. It also seemed to be about 45 minutes from where I live (that station is about 55 minutes from where I live), so if I went to the wrong place, that would not be great. So I asked "I found something called this instead, is that the place?" "Yes, I think that may be it"... Great. It turned out that of course no one I know was anywhere in sight (mainly because they showed up 25 minutes late), but I was in the right place at least. And while waiting (they called and said they would be 10 minutes late, when I noticed that they were already late), I also noticed that there is a free bus (the one in the picture) going to pretty much where I live... If someone could have mentioned that, that may have been an important factor in deciding on how to get to this place...

Not army trained (20080518)

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I am by no means an expert on guns, but since I have had basic army training, I do know that this is not how you are supposed to hold this type of gun... As a friend put it "good for them that there is no recoil in that game".

Leisure Sports (20080518)

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The place we went to, Leisure Sports (or Reashua Supo in Japanese) is a place where you can play almost any game. You can play badminton, basket ball, squash, ping-pong, smash training ping-pong, golf, darts, billiards, baseball batting, archery, BB-gun shooting, endless rows of TV games, rock climbing, trampoline jumping, karaoke, drums/guitars/base/piano (in sounds proofed rooms), bull riding, boxing, roller blades, and who knows what. There was no end to the amount of stuff they had. You pay 70 yen per 10 minutes and can then do anything you like. Like fishing for real fish.

Japanese games (20080518)

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This is a weird Japanese game. It is a stand up comedy game, and in Japanese stand up comedy you work in pairs. Here, you watch your computer animated stand up comedy partner on screen and when he says something stupid you have to slap the life sized human shaped doll on the head, on the arm, or wherever is appropriate for his kind of stupid comment. Other rules are unclear.

Skillz (20080518)

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When leaving the leisure sports palace, you get a "one more free try" for a "UFO catcher" game on the first floor. These are games where you control a UFO like claw inside a cage and try to grab some doll (or candy, bizarre porn movie, soft air gun, bread mixer, live gold fish, or whatever is available in the game you happen to play) or something and drag that to the drop spot and thus get a doll. So I got to play twice for 100 yen instead of only once. Who can resist such an option. I ended up with no less than seven small dolls, while my two friends managed to get absolutely nothing (though they aimed for more valuable stuff).

More skillz (20080519)

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We went across the street to have yakiniku ("grill meat", which consists of meat that you barbecue yourself, unsurprisingly). A huge rabbit showed up and played janken (stone-paper-scissors) with us and if you won you got some chocolate. I won. The rabbit also managed to turn over the basket of chocolates so some waitresses had to pick them up from the floor. When we were leaving, I noticed that it was hard to get my foot to fit in my right shoe. The reason turned out to be that there were three more kit-kats stuck in my shoe from that little accident.

Sweden (20080519)

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On my way home I passed a huge shopping mall like thing and went inside. They had Swedish flags.

Bad weather (20080520)

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We had some bad weather, which affected the trees on campus.

Penguins again (20080521)

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Someone who I have not met since about a year ago is back in Sapporo and we had dinner at the restaurant with penguins. This time the penguins were much more energetic than before. And evidently the tomatoes was the best ever.

Healthy food (20080522)

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I was surprisingly enough invited to a healthy viking buffet today. I don't know what the grey stuff is, but I am sure it was healthy. As was the almost self luminant orange thing (juice from 50 types of orange vegetables), and all the ice cream and cakes.

Event (20080523)

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Something was going on on campus when I was going home. Ainu Pride, it said on the sign. Seemed to be a young girl talking about her self, sitting on a lawn.

Farewell birthday party (20080523)

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I went to eat at a place I often go to, and it turned out to be a party for the store boss, who is moving to Tokyo in June and whose birthday it was. He got a plastic mannequin like thing to take with him.

Cabaret (20080523)

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Two of the transsexuals from the cabaret I went to see earlier were also going home from more or less the same place as me, heading in the same direction.

Crows (20080523)

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Crows busting into a garbage dump to steal food. A common scene in Japan.

Expensive machines (20080524)

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When posting a post card I ran into the Canadian girl and her host family's daughter. They were going to have a make-up consultation, so I tagged along to interpret between Japanese and English. I was of little help, though, since my strongest side of Japanese is not exactly in the area of skin care products. I am not sure I would know what these words meant even in Swedish... They had a very cool (and expensive) machine there to check you skin (color etc.), basically a very hand and powerful microscope hooked up to a computer! And the staff told me I looked like Tom Cruise. Possibly it meant "you wear sunglasses vaguely similar to sunglasses worn by Tom Cruise" according to other people, though.

Today's shopping (20080524)

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Having nothing better to do, I followed along when the girls went shopping in a department store for girls too. I managed to buy an Alice in Wonderland comb, a card patterned wallet, some kiss mark stickers I actually have been looking for, a "Jonas" (dove of peace) belt, and women's underwear. The Japanese girl said I should go for it, since they will stretch out when washed anyway. Despite them being "fit anyone [meaning anyone who is a very skinny Asian girl]" size, they did not fit me. I also got a bottle of something for free. Probably bleach mixed with sun block.

Curry Danish (20080526)

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On the plane from Tokyo to Frankfurt, they served curry filled Danishes...

Toilet in Casablanca (20080527)

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After getting up at 4:30 Tokyo time and visiting the Chitose, Haneda, Narita, Frankfurt, and Casablanca airports, I reached my hotel in Casablanca at slightly after 02:00, Moroccan time (10 hour time difference, so roughly 32 hours later). It says "disinfected", but when looking at it, that seemed hard to believe. The rest of the room was nice, though.

Weird foreigners (20080527)

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After sleeping a few hours and having an excellent breakfast, I checked out and wandered around randomly in Casablanca waiting for my flight to Marrakesh. I saw these weird foreigners filming, was shouted at by the police for trying to take a picture of a tree, and was introduced to the local "let's scam foreigners out of their money" culture. Some poor person attached himself to me and "volunteered" to be my guide. He did not speak English, and not that much French (though he was very willing to harass any random passerby to tell me stuff in English, like where to go to do some shopping), and he did not know of any place of interest to me either. He was quite funny though, and had for instance never used an escalator before (so when he had to follow me down one, there was quite a lot of entertainment). When I got tired of him and tried to pay him to go away, he asked for more money than I offered (unsurprisingly), so I gave him something like 500 yen which would by him two restaurant dinners, roughly. Not much for me, but likely quite a lot for him. I also had problems buying things in a huge supermarket. I wanted to buy a snack for 1.6 dirhams, and pay with a 100 dirham bill, since that is the smallest thing the cash machines dispense. Since 100 dirham is about 1000 yen or 10 dollars, I thought that would be no problem in this huge store, but in the end they refused to sell me the things since they did not have any change. Not in any of all the registers they had. How you can run a supermarket and not have change for 100 dirham, who knows.

Hotel in Marrakesh (20080527)

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My hotel room in Marrakesh was expensive, but also quite nice. About three times larger than my apartment in Sapporo, with two double beds, a sofa and some chairs, a balcony with a table and more chairs, etc. And a huge bathroom.

Breakfast in Marrakesh (20080528)

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The breakfast of the hotel was also quite nice, with people baking pancake like things while you waited etc. Many many things to choose from.

Work (20080528)

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The conference place was nice, but just like the very time consuming pass port control at the airports (like waiting 3 hours in line in Marrakesh despite only flying domestic from Casablanca (I see why people recommend taking the train...)), security was tight. You had to flash your badge all the time, despite looking very little like a Moroccan terrorist. The large conference room held seats for thousands of people, with several floors of chairs.

Lunch (20080528)

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I found some friends from Sweden and we had lunch across the street from the conference place. Not cheap by Moroccan standards, but nothing in this area was. Nice pizza like food, and the tashines (spelling in English unclear) that are typical local food were good too.

Conference reception (20080528)

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The conference reception was very very good. There were huge amounts of traditional food, though I have no idea what any of it was called. There was also entertainment like snake charming, fire eating, dancing, staged "riding bandit attacks", camel riding, and much more. And free alcohol for those so inclined (my Swedish friends). Afterwards we went to look for a place to sit and talk over a beer or similar, but it turned out that almost no place in Marrakesh sells alcohol (the Muslin culture, I guess). We found a night club, though, but it was more like "standing up and screaming to be heard over a beer". It was also strictly forbidden to take pictures there. There was one table full of young girls in very revealing clothes, which was a surprise. One Swedish researcher believed that they could be college girls out having fun, while other researchers mainly believed that they were prostitutes. In the end, two of the girls from that table got into a fight with one similarly dressed girl at the bar counter and some got thrown out by the guards.

Henna (20080528)

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Another Swede was looking at snake charmers when suddenly someone started painting her hand with henna (sticks to you for weeks, does not wash off). Afterwards, she asked for 400 dirhams, which is very expensive and a bit of money. Since at basically the same time the tattoo also started to hurt, there were upset feelings on both sides and no agreement at all on payment. In the end, 10 dirham (which would be cheap for a normal tattoo) changed hands, and evidently it was a very good chance to hear swearing in Arabic.

Strange keyboards (20080529)

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In Morocco the use strange keyboard layouts. French style, perhaps? Difficult to type with, since "m" is not where it should be, and "a" and "q" have switched places etc.

The king of Morocco (20080529)

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The king of Morocco seems to be revered, his name was mentioned countless times. He also stopped by across the street from the conference (and I thought the only thing there was a night club?) so there were even more armed people bothering you at that time. I did not even get to see him, though, since I was listening to the presentation about pronunciation of Japanese names by native speakers of strange languages.

Italian food (20080529)

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Today there was no fixed event for the conference, so my old buddies from Stockholm had found out about a nice restaurant with traditional local food. Everyone was supposed to go there, though no one explained where this place actually was. Or at what time one should be there. Having a Japanese cell phone, I could not get hold of the others (who could communicate using their Swedish phones, though), so I ended up going with some non-Stockholmish Swedes to the restaurant later. By then it was already full, and there was no place for us at the Stockholm table. We went to an Italian style pasta place nearby instead. Which was OK. Afterwards, everyone met up and we went to one of the few places that served beer around there.

More breakfast (20080530)

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Some more breakfast photos.

More lunch (20080530)

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I tried the western style food they had near the conference place too, but it was not very exciting.

Conference gala dinner (20080530)

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The last day of the conference was the day I had my presentations. I had two presentations, that were scheduled to both start at the same time... It turned out OK in the end, and many people appreciated my presentations about a system for generating jokes in English and a lexicon with naughty words in many languages. Right after my presentation, the gala dinner started. The food was not as good as at the reception, but quite nice. Unless you were a vegetarian, because then there was nothing you could eat (according to the two vegetarians at our table). The highlight of the dinner was the belly dancers that showed up and danced around between the tables. I have never seen professors stuff cash down the clothes of young girls at any other conference though.

Not used (20080531)

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My hotel had a pool, but there was only one time when I saw it being used.

Minaret (20080531)

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I had nothing to do at the conference today, since it was already over, and my flight home was not until tomorrow, so I walked around in the interesting parts of Marrakesh. This is the most famous minaret in Marrakesh. I was also supposed to meet up with two Swedish friends below this minaret at 13.00, but they did not show up until about fifteen minutes later. I met two Danish speaking (though not Danish) researchers waiting for the same people though.

Wildlife (20080531)

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There were many cats in Marrakesh. Some lay dying in the street, some seemed more healthy.

The Medina (20080531)

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The Medina in Marrakesh is the place where all tourists go, and there are endless shops selling stuff to tourists. You have to haggle aggressively (in French or Arabic) to get a reasonable price, though. The whole place is built like a labyrinth too, so getting lost is not difficult. And many many people ask you if you need directions and if you don't say something like "go away, I don't want to talk to you" they will walk in front of you and when you reach something interesting they will ask you for money for guiding you there.

More wildlife (20080531)

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Not only cats and dogs were running around on the streets, but also birds, cobras, donkeys, and many other types of animals.

Koran school (20080531)

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This used to be a Koran school, and it has very intricate decorations in many places.

Art museum (20080531)

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Another beautiful house is now an art museum.

Not a car (20080531)

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Many people used small donkey drawn carts instead of gasoline driven transportation.

Ice cream (20080531)

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A Danish speaking Italian woman showed us this ice cream place. Possibly the best ice cream I have ever tried.

Even more animals (20080531)

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Some more animals, snakes on the market and horses on the streets.

Fruits (20080531)

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Along many of the streets there were trees with citrus fruits, like limes, oranges, etc.

Dinner (20080531)

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The Swedes from today disappeared somewhere in the labyrinthine market, and I ended up going to dinner with a Danish group instead. In the new part of Marrakesh, where I also tried to do some shopping. Clothes turned out to be more expensive there than in Japan, though, so I did not buy anything.

Almost worthless (20080531)

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Moroccan money is strange. You have a hard time finding any place that accepts even 100 dirham bills, much less the 200 dirham bills you always get when exchanging money. And to make things even more interesting, it is illegal to bring money out of the country and into the country, so you cannot even exchange money at home before you go to Morocco. Which was interesting, since my flight arrived at midnight, when everything is already closed. Luckily, some ATMs accept foreign VISA cards, so I could get enough money to pay for a cab from the airport. Since you often end up having to haggle over the price of the cab, I wonder what the locals do when they travel abroad. Do they leave the left over money at the airport and pick it up when coming home?