June 2008

Camels (20080601)

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When going by bus to the airport I saw many camels.

Time difference (20080601)

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Morocco changed to summer time today, which seemed to not be taken account of in the ticketing agency's system. So my plane ticket claimed that my flight would leave at 13.10 when in reality it would leave at 14.10.

Desert (20080601)

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Marrakesh is in the middle of the desert. In town, there are many trees etc. so it does not really hit you then. But when flying I saw mainly sand and circle shaped areas of green around some central irrigation point.

Almost shopping (20080601)

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I wanted to by a jacket with embroidery, but the store turned out to be closed today, so I could not. The black one was very cool.

Shopping in the Medina (20080601)

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I tried shopping for a funny jacket in the Medina instead, and found a funny one. I had to haggle in French, so I did not get that great a price, but it was still quite cheap in actual money. I also bought a t-shirt. Surprisingly many merchants spoke a little bit of Swedish if they found out you were from those parts of the world. Not many spoke Japanese, though.

Good food (20080601)

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The best food i had in Morocco was this. I bought it at the Medina in Casablanca, and it cost me about one dollar. I did not even feel the need to haggle with this guy, so possibly I was overcharged a lot. He fried some kind of fish, stuffed it in bread and mixed in salt, tomato, and onions too. Very good.

Sights (20080601)

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The tallest minaret in Morocco is at the new mosque in Casablanca, and the whole place is very beautiful. Nearby is a beach too. These, and the Medina, was what was recommended to me by an American woman staying at my hotel (on her way home to Egypt from a conference in Spain).

Air France (20080602)

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When flying home I had the route Marrakesh-Casablanca-Paris-Tokyo-Sapporo, so the first stretch was with air France. The only airline to give you tips on strip clubs.

Japan Airlines (20080602)

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To Tokyo I flew with JAL, who gave you free "Granola", which I often eat for breakfast back in Sapporo. I also examined the air pressure difference during the flight using an empty pet bottle that had high altitude pressure inside and low altitude pressure outside. This time I ended up next to an Australian couple, so at least someone was willing to speak to me. On the way down, one fairly open Japanese man going to Germany spoke a little to me, but most just looked scared when they saw a foreigner (who knows when you will have to try to speak English, right).

Sweden (20080603)

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At the airport in Tokyo, they were showing commercials for going to Sweden, or more specifically to Stockholm.

Hokudai festival (20080605-08)

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The student festival of our university, were most men wore dresses and sold crepes.

Crowded (20080605)

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The festival is on the main street of the campus, so when it gets crowded cars, and here an ambulance, have problems passing through.

Recycling (20080605)

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These are the garbage/recycling staff. They have special uniforms.

Hokudai festival food (20080605-08)

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Mostly the students sell food. Here are some things I tried: dry curry, fried sandwich, deer burger, mango shake, deep fried ice cream, animal of some kind on a stick, chocolate dipped banana, ice cream crepe, tapioca, fried bread, rice burger, Russian piroshki, Finish pancake, tacos, more deep fried ice cream, glow in the dark soda, soda with ice cream floating in it, Thai food in a cup, curry dog (bread with curry flavored meat), ice cream and potato, normal chicken on a stick, more ice cream "floating" in glow in the dark drinks.

Rainy festival (20080606)

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Rain had an adverse effect on the number of visitors to the festival.

Tetris winnings (20080606)

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One of the student circles had a game where you could win stuff by beating the staff members at simultaneous Tetris. I won a seal.

Robot catcher (20080606)

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In Japan many game centers have something called UFO catcher, which is a claw in a glass box with which you try to grab stuff and then you get to keep them. Here I played robot catcher, so you remote control a robot to grab stuff and bring back. I got some candy.

Magic (20080606)

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The Hokkaido University magician circle had a cafe this year too, where they did magic at your table and also had stage shows. Very nice.

Planetarium (20080606)

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In the planetarium you were not allowed to take pictures, but now I know where to look for my star sign in the sky and other important things. They also showed slides with pictures of galaxies or aurora borealis.

Fried ice (20080606)

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In Japanese the word for ice cream is "aisu", from the English word "ice [cream]". So they actually sold deep fried ice cream, not fried ice.

International food (20080606)

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There were some new interesting food in the international part of the festival (that tends to be dominated by money hungry foreigners selling very expensive stuff, and some professional business people competing with the students). Here is a Spanish giant paella and Finish pancakes! Pretty much like Swedish pancakes. And the Finish girl selling them recognized me (I guess, since she knew I was Swedish before I said anything). From where, I don't know. Probably from when I took off my pants in front of a large audience.

Food and saxophones (20080606)

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I passed a speed eating contest accompanied by live saxophone music.

Dancing (20080606)

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There was some form of group synchronized modern dancing competition going on in the evening.

Disappearing coin (20080606)

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I ended up sitting fairly close to a nice woman who liked magic (and had the good graces to (at least claim to) never figure out how the tricks were done). She borrowed a 500 yen coin (5 dollars) from me to show me a trick she knew, but fumbled the trick and dropped the coin behind the bar counter. We asked a bartender to look for it, but it seemed to have landed in the huge ice box full of chopped up ice. It took him 15 minutes to dig down to the bottom, where he did find the coin though. A very interesting way to make a coin disappear. I was impressed.

Cheer leading (20080607)

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I have been told by my American (former cheer leader) pen pal that I am not allowed to have any opinions about cheer leading since I obviously know way to little about it. (This stems mainly from me expressing some mild surprise that while forbidden to train ballet by her father, because she would be prancing around in front of men staring at her body, she was allowed to do cheer leading, which I would consider worse in that regard, if I was allowed an opinion). The university team had a short show at the school festival, and I managed to take a picture of some girls flying high above the asphalt. No men in our university cheer leading team.

The Encourage[ment] room (20080607)

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I saw a sign saying "encourage room" in Japanese letters and wondered what that might be. The girl who explained this to me said that it was a collection of quotes and stories that they [who had organized this part of the festival] had found inspiring. So you walked around reading these and stuck little flower shaped stickers around things you thought were really good. If you answered a very short questionnaire afterwards you also got free tea and cookies. The girl who explained things to me was also very interested in Sweden, she had even written a report on Sweden when younger (when they had to pick a country and write up something about it). So she asked me quite a lot of questions too.

Blue grass (20080607)

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There was a blue grass festival part of the school festival this year too. Since one of the women learning Swedish from me has a daughter interested in Blue grass, I thought I should stop by and listen in a little. I showed up exactly when she and her band started playing. When they were almost done I got an e-mail from an acquaintance who ordered me to bring gifts from Morocco before I went there, who now said that she had time to receive the gifts, so I should come as soon as possible to another part of the city.

Yosakoi festival

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Yosakoi is like synchronized swimming without water, kind of, to the tones of techno versions of traditional Japanese folk songs. The rules are that every dancer has to carry small clappers in their hand during the performance, and parts of the "Soran" song must appear in the music. They dance on stages all over town and there is also a parade course where they dance their way around the huge Odori park. I ran into a friend from Obihiro (small place way out in the Hokkaido country side) and her parents from Fukagawa (small place not that far from Sapporo) at the festival, and another relative of theirs from Asahikawa (though not there in company with the rest of them). So I had a chance to hand out Moroccan nougat to two more people.

Our team (20080608)

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My university has a Yosakoi team. I did not see them last year, since they were then banned from competing after drinking too much during the cherry blossoming festival. This year they were good, and made it into the final for the top ten teams. They had the trick of all the guys throwing off their clothes and dancing the last half in "fundoshi", the Japanese traditional g-string (or "t-back" as the Japanese "English" word is; though if you describe a fundoshi as a traditional t-back to Japanese people they always protest and claim that it is completely different (g-strings are not popular in Japan and seem to be considered bad)).

Interested (20080608)

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The day of the parade performances, I went to the Yosakoi Soran festival wearing my "still single" t-shirt. These women found that to be fascinating when they ended up waiting right in front of me. They were also impressed that I could speak Japanese despite being blond, and asked me things like "Here, this is my daughter. About 30 years old. How about her?" Then they had to dance away and I never found them again.

Asahikawa hotel (20080609-15)

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I went to Asahikawa, Hokkaido's second largest city with a population of roughly the same size as Iceland (400,000). My hotel was OK but less impressive than the one in Morocco. A lot cheaper though. There was a temple outside my window, so waking up in the morning was not a problem... I also had a very pink "naughty boy" dust bin in my room. After staying almost a week, the staff bowed to me and said "thank you very much for such a long stay".

Magic (20080609)

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When walking around the creatively named San-Roku (meaning 3-6 in Japanese, named after it being located at 3-jou 6-choume (third block north of the station, sixth block to the west, kind of)) entertainment district of Asahikawa, I saw photos of magic. A "snack bar", meaning a place where cute girls sit and chat with you and pour you drinks, except here it was a magician instead of cute girls. Looked cool, but a bit expensive.

Japanese breakfast (20080610)

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Hotel breakfast was included. And included a lot of food. Some of it weird, most of it good.

Asahikawa sightseeing (20080610)

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Next to the conference place there was an art museum and a park, both listed as sights to see in Asahikawa (they have to really stretch it, because there are not so many things to see here) so I took a look around before the conference started.

The first international workshop on laughter in interaction and body movements (20080610)

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I was scheduled to talk about whether it is funnier to have jokes read to you by a robot than to read them yourself (it is) and if it is funnier to hear jokes when a robot is laughing at the jokes than if the robot is not (it is) at the first international workshop on laughter in interaction and body movements. The international part was an invited speaker and his wife, and three guys from my lab. So the majority there were Japanese. This is my colleague talking about research on whether it is funnier with a robot doing hand gestures while telling jokes than with the same robot telling jokes without moving. I did most of the translations/adaptations of the Japanese word play joke examples into English seen in the second photo.

The benefits of coffee (20080610)

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"You will enjoy a better quality of life; and find peacefulness and refreshment in the Superb Aromatic taste of M.M.C. coffee". Indeed. Too bad I don't like coffee.

Kimchi pasta (20080610)

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In the restaurant we found close to the conference place, they were almost out of food already at 12.30, so we could only order one mini-pasta and two normal pasta for four people. So one of us had to eat curry rice instead. I had pasta with kimchi, which was strange but not as bad as one could imagine.

Good feedback (20080610)

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After the conference presentations were over we all went to an izakaya (Japanese bar/restaurant) and had lots of strange food and alcohol. After that we went for karaoke with more alcohol but less food. This is the best part of the conferences, because you usually get some very good feedback when talking in more informal settings to the researchers that listened to you presentation. There was also a lot of below the belt humor going on in our corner of the table (surprisingly not really the fault of the humor research lab with foreigners that we make up, but actually instigated by a Moldavian woman. Who also suggested my robots should fart instead of tell jokes, which would most likely also be funny. So this is the next research project for me!). Interesting comment from neighboring Japanese researcher: "So what research do you do?" "I have a system generating stand-up comedy." "Oh, so why did you not have a presentation today?" "I did, actually". The drawback of being the first presenters.

More breakfast (20080611)

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I was surprised to find such a Swedish looking breakfast ingredient as a boiled egg on the table today. It turned out to be more Japanese, though, since when I tried to peel the shell off my egg, I noticed that the egg was raw. Things got a bit messy at that time.

More conference (20080611)

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There was also the JSAI (Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence) yearly meeting in Asahikawa. Which was huge. 3 days of 11 concurrent presentations of about 20 minutes each, from 09.00 to 18.00. Very much AI research in Japan, evidently. Some foreigners could be sighted, but only exchange students at Japanese universities. Best presentation I saw was a girl talking about a sheep dog robot learning how to herd sheep robots into their pens quickly.

Sighting Swedish things (20080611)

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We had a drinking party with our lab people (7) at the conference and our sempais (your seniors/elders/superiors) formerly at our lab (3). While waiting for this to start I went looking for a birthday card to send to my mom back in Sweden. I found a card with lyrics from a Swedish song for kids. When later standing and reading a poster outside, I thought I heard someone call out "Jonas" (or rather "yoonasu" that I go by here in Japan). I did not see anyone nearby so I figured I misheard. Then I heard it again and my Bulgarian colleague said that he thought someone was calling my name. It turned out to be the niece of a friend formerly in Sapporo, living in Asahikawa. Though this niece moved to Australia three days later. Many strange meetings in Asahikawa. She asked if I remembered her, and since I (and two other people) got crammed into her room when visiting her family over New Years (the one and only time we have met) I said of course I remembered her, we slept together for New Years right? She understood the joke and agreed, which is rare in Japan...

Egyptian food (20080611)

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Our drinking party with the sempais was to take place in the Egyptian restaurant I ate at on Christmas. The old lady running the restaurant said she remembered me and went "Oh, you come here a lot yes?". Well, this is my second time, so maybe not "a lot". Food was very nice, and the company was also nice.

More food (20080611)

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After the first party, there was another party with Japanese food and drinks. A Polish colleague surprisingly declined to go on to this party, saying he was surprisingly sick today after only drinking beer yesterday. Clearly his years are showing, feeling this bad from only beer. I said perhaps his drinking of two bottles of Japanese sake might have had something to do with it, since he said last night that he would never mix beer and sake (and then promptly did). This made him happy, since it meant beer was still safe, but he still did not want to keep on partying.

More breakfast (20080612)

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Another Japanese breakfast.

More conference (20080612)

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This is the boss of Asahiyama zoo, the most famous thing in Asahikawa. He gave an invited speech at the AI conference, talking about the intelligence and communication of different animals. His speech was very very good.

Stylish lunch (20080612)

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I went out for lunch with three lab mates today, one of whom grew up in Asahikawa. We found a very stylish place, and the food was good too.

Poster presentations (20080612)

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While I gave presentation with the normal Power Point like (though made with LaTeX of course) slides etc. many of my lab mates gave poster presentations. I prefer poster presentations in general. You get better feedback that way. Coolest presenter was the one with a huge portable laser that drew angels on the walls.

Fancy hotels (20080612)

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The conference gala dinner was to take place in a fancy hotel. Where they had a "Bunquet hall", "Erevator", "Main Loby", and a room of type "European Style Large".

The gala dinner (20080612)

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The gala dinner was the normal Japanese style of listening to endless speeches and drinking too much beer, while trying to grab a little food before it was all gone.

Interviews (20080612)

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Crews with microphones and huge cameras were interviewing people at the dinner. My theory was that they only interviewed cute girls, to show that not only geeks do AI. Then they interviewed my Polish colleague here. So much for that theory.

Stood up (20080612)

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Everyone I knew and some people I recognized from the workshop were all going for another party after the gala dinner. Then, right in front of the restaurant/bar selected, they all go "Well, I am rather tired, see you all tomorrow" and left in various directions. So I ended up in a party with 18 complete strangers. They generally talked about what had happened to their mutual friends lately, which was completely uninteresting to me. But some interesting things happened too. Like seeing the traditional way Japanese people use ice. they put it inside other people's shirts while they sleep.

Yet another breakfast (20080613)

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The breakfast of the last day of the conference.

Smelly lunch? (20080613)

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Asahikawa is vaguely famous for ramen, so I had ramen for lunch today. My Asahikawan colleague had suggested Aoba ramen, since they cook the ramen in water with fish something in it. So it is very smelly. I found a place called Aoba and ordered ramen there, but it was not smelly at all so I thought maybe I was wrong. But it turns out that the Japanese definition of "very smelly" is more like "mildly smelly, if you really really look for it". Tasted just like normal ramen to me.

Asahikawa sightseeing spot number 2 (20080613)

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I was wandering around in the Kaimono Koen (Shopping Park) of Asahikawa to kill some time and these guys started talking to me. They talked a lot, like one and a half hour, to me. About all kinds of things. They claimed that while the Asahiyama zoo is the number one thing in Asahikawa, their store is number two. Unsure about that, but they were funny. They also wanted to be photographed, and called on the poor girl who seemed to be working harder than them at the time, to be photographed too. I bought a necklace with pink vampire dentures as a thank you for being entertained.

Punny food and more coincidences (20080613)

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Since everyone else had fled Asahikawa right when the conference ended, but I was still there, I had a lonely dinner to look forward to. I found a restaurant where the menu said "Nan de pizza", which could mean either "Why pizza?" or "Pizza on nan-bread". Having just presented research on puns, I decided this was the thing to eat tonight. It tasted good too, as did the strange "has appeared in Hollywood" salad. They also sold non-alcoholic fake beer for kids, which would probably be considered very inappropriate in Sweden. When I was paying for my food and about to leave, the cute waitress said: "Maybe it is rude to ask, but are you by any chance Jonas?" Well, I am, but how on Earth did she know that? Turns out she takes a class together with my friend in Asahikawa and has thus heard the rumours about me... But why do people always ask this kind of thing when I am leaving, instead of when I show up? Probably because they do not actually want to talk to me.

Magic (20080613)

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It being Friday the 13th and all, I decided to go to the Magician Snack bar. The girl outside calling people into different establishments recognized me (evidently, foreigners make a strong impression, since I had passed by only once before) too. They had a weird door that was strange to open, and then a small bar. There was one older pro magician and his younger apprentice. When I came, there were no other customers, so I got 2 hours of private show. They did all kinds of magic, and also had napkins folded into rabbits and Godzilla. Very entertaining, but a bit expensive (4200 yen in the end, but if you drink more than I do, you will pay more). I left at midnight, when a group of four Japanese showed up.

Breakfast and news (20080614)

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This morning there was a very strong earthquake farther south in Japan. In Hokkaido it was not noticable, but all the TV channels broadcasted only earthquake stories the whole morning. Over 7 on the Japanese scale for earthquakes (taking into account the actual strength of the earthquake as well as the closeness to you).

Asahiyama zoo (20080614)

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Today I went to the zoo with the same three guides as when I was there for Christmas. We saw seals swimming in a tube etc. again, but also many animals that were not around during winter. I also saw a tiger pissing very wildly all over the tourists at that corner of the cage, just like the signs warn you about. I have never seen it actually happen before, so that was a little interesting. Possibly it was also something to do with the sign saying "No Flash when taking pictures", because the people sprayed were close to an old lady who kept using flash...

Lining up for polar bears (20080614)

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This time I stood in line for 20 minutes to climb up in the little dome inside the polar bear pen. If you wear a seal head looking hat, they come running and smack the glass. Today, they mostly slept, far away from the lookout place... Which was also covered in rain water, so you could not see anything. But it was still pretty cool.

Penguins (20080614)

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You can walk in a tunnel inside the penguins' water tank, and see them "flying" overhead.

Spiderman (20080614)

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The girl who was my driver today had Spiderman stuff stuck on her dashboard.

Free alcohol (20080614)

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Asahikawa has a few famous breweries for Japanese sake. We toured a few of them, and they all give you free alcohol to drink. One of us was driving, one cannot drink sake without getting sick, one is only 20 and thus cannot drink that much at all. And one was me. So I had to drink a lot of sake, and it all tasted bad.

Strange ice creams and more free alcohol (20080614)

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I tried water melon soft cream and pumpkin soft cream today. Water melon was best of these two. There was also more free alcohol in the ice cream shop, because tomorrow is Father's day in Japan... I did a magic trick on the parking lot of this place too. Our driver said she was sleepy, so I volunteered to do a wake up trick. Which in essence glues a huge life like cockroach to her hand without her noticing it. There was much screaming and running when they did notice the cockroach later. So she had the adrenaline shock to make her less sleepy.

Haunted tunnel (20080614)

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If you take pictures in this haunted tunnel you have a high probability of getting weird ghostly and scary things in you pictures I was told. I took many pictures but they all looked normal to me.

Fukagawa sightseeing spot number 1 (20080614)

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We went to the very small town of Fukagawa near Asahikawa, where two of my three guides grew up. There was a barbecue party to take place in her families garage. This is the JUSCO super market, the most interesting place in Fukagawa, apparently.

Dog (20080614)

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This dog kind of liked me. It dislikes my friend formerly from Sapporo, though.

Japanese barbecue (20080614)

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After a very nice barbecue (though when my male colleagues do barbecuing there is way less fire than with these girls) I was asked to secretly glue a cockroach to the hands of all other people they could come up with nearby. One of their mothers was a failure, since the cockroach did not stick to its tape well enough, so it fell off before being noticed. The second mother was a huge success, and she almost had a heart attack. And they got it all on video with their phones too. Then one of the fathers came home from a Japanese drinking party, but he was too drunk to notice a huge cockroach stuck to his hand, so that did not go so well either. When doing some more magic later, I was told that there was a magic bar in Asahikawa ("I know, I was actually there yesterday"). Enter one more person. "There is a place called Te to Te to Te in Asahikawa...", "yes, I was there yesterday". Enter one more... etc.

Last breakfast (20080615)

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My last breakfast at Sasaoka hotel.

Kaimono Koen (20080615)

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The shopping park in Asahikawa also has some statues. Very close to these, I was approached by another foreigner who spoke to me in not-Japanese. Evidently he thought I was his friend, but I was not so he went away looking somewhere else. I guess I just dress to normally so I get mistaken for other people.

Finding a restaurant (20080615)

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My friend in Asahikawa had to work today (since it was a Sunday). She works in a restaurant, so I decided to go there and have lunch. It turned out to take me over an hour, lugging around my one weeks worth of luggage too. I got a severe suntan too. But I got to see some very Swedish looking forests on my way there.

The restaurant (20080615)

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The restaurant was very nice, and I ordered their "pizza, risotto, pasta, and salad" set.

More "interesting" English (20080615)

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"Mist cologne is a aroma that fills your living with a fresh smell. It is possible to use it by the room, the rest room, and all the life scenes such as cars."

The Snow hall (20080615)

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This is the Taisetsu (big snow) Crystal hall, where I read poetry on Christmas Eve. Less snow in June than in December.

Science Center (20080615)

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On recommendation from my Asahikawan colleague, I also stopped by the Asahikawa Science Center on my way back to the train station. I was spun around in an astronaut g-force training machine, tried a jumping on the moon (low g) simulation machine, saw my skin and nails in huge magnification, watched slices of humans in a photo booth, saw soap bubbles large enough to be inside, and much more. There was also a room for "Try the experience of minus 30 degrees Celsius". Sounded cool and refreshing in the quite hot Asahikawa summer, but also completely unexotic to me, since minus 30 is not rare at all in the parts of Sweden where I did my army training.

Pink lemonade (20080615)

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"Enjoy the new taste and pleasant aftertaste. It's new type!"

Omiyage (20080615)

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When travelling in Japan you have to bring gifts back to your friends, colleagues, family, or anyone else you meet. Asahikawa and Sapporo have pretty much the same stuff when it comes to omiyage (gifts) so we bought zoo related cookies, mainly.

More pun based food (20080615)

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I managed to corner a Sapporo citizen into having dinner with me in a place that has "nan no pizza darou" ("what kind of pizza could it be?" or "pizza on nan-bread I guess"). Where the staff also wear completely normal Japanese clothing.

Sumo (20080615)

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Today I got some kind of paper based sumo simulator game from an old man in the science center.

Sapporo festival (20080616)

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While I was away in Asahikawa there was the Sapporo festival in Sapporo. It means stands selling food in the streets/parks, and the temple attendants dragging around huge floats all over town. As I understand it, they are taking their Gods out to see the town once per year. I missed almost all of it, but got stuck on my way to work today when they had stopped traffic on the streets to let some floats go around today too.

Back in Sapporo (20080616)

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A friend who no longer lives in Sapporo was back in town today as a chaperon for two high school students at her school. So she went off to dinner with me and another friend. The last photo is a banana, according to the menu.

Titanium toothbrush (20080617)

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I bought a new toothbrush today, and some part of it has titanium or platina in it. And it says you get good results even using only water and this brush when brushing your teeth.

Back at work (20080618)

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Today I was called into conference room 2 in our building, where people were playing Metal Gear Solid on the projector screen.

Strange Canadian adventures (20080620)

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Today I was asked to tag along in the capacity of someone who can speak English. The Canadian girl I met before is soon to go home again, and she wanted to see some things that she had not seen yet. So she wanted to go to a "lesbian club". As one might expect, I have no knowledge at all of lesbian anything in Sapporo, but a Japanese friend of ours had researched it on the Internet. There are very few clubs at all in Sapporo, and unsurprisingly no lesbian clubs at all. There are a few lesbian themed bars, though. We tried to find them, but two were no longer in business, one was actually a bar for gay men, and the only remaining one looked tiny (5 chairs in a small room) and not what the Canadian girl had imagined. And probably also quite expensive. We were discussing whether to go in or not, and I figured that if I walked in I would perhaps not be that welcome, being obviously not a lesbian. The Canadian girl did not want to go in first because she does not speak Japanese. The Japanese girl did not want to go in at all, because she was scared out of her mind of going in there. Why? Who knows. In the end, we went to some fancy cafe somewhere else instead. And I bought a bottle of "King of Mango" on the way. Turned out to be very normal mango juice.

More strange Canadian adventures (20080621)

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The Canadian girl wanted to go to the transsexual cabaret club again, and no one else she knew was willing to pay that much money again. So I tagged along, because I have nothing better to do, and I have money to spare. It was a lot of fun again, they had just started a new show for instance. And the one who sat with us (black dress in photo) at our table spoke quite a lot of English too, and was a huge geek. We got business cards with original manga style drawings, and photos of our hostess in Final Fantasy 7 costumes. The very lively hostess (white dress in photo) that liked to feel my chest muscles last time also stopped by because the Canadian girl looked familiar. And then my face also became familiar... That was probably the first time I was overlooked because of someone who looks Japanese, usually I stand out a lot here. Speaking of that, many people stared weirdly at us when I translated Japanese to English to my obviously Japanese girlfriend, instead of her translating for me... We also had some omelet covered spaghetti, some sushi with raw egg, and other interesting things. She also wanted to visit more lesbian clubs, but on account of there being no such thing in Sapporo, we did not succeed. She also wanted to buy gay paraphernalia gifts to her friend in Canada. So we ended up in a hard core gay porn shop, that she thought was a store for things like gay pins and stickers. They had very little of that, and very much very very graphic porn (magazines, DVD covers, toys). She also had me ask the owner if they sold something more along the lines of what she wanted, which was gay souvenirs with Japanese flavor. They did not, so I had to ask if he knew any stores that did. We got a "Hokkaido Gay Bar Map 2007" where he circled another hardcore porn shop. So we went there but that was even more hardcore. So I had to ask again if they had any suitably Japanese things for gifts. This owner said that the magazines to our left were only available in Japan. When she looked through one she quickly closed it and said that she wanted something with no graphic porn. I asked again, but the owner said that on account of this being a hardcore porn shop, they sold mainly hardcore porn... Which I already knew, but still... In the end she bought a rainbow colored deck of cards. And speaking of buying, I ended up lending her quite a lot of money (4000 yen) tonight, since she showed up with 5000 yen total on her. The show club entrance fee being 6000 yen, and then food costing a little bit, and her wanting to go home by taxi etc. it was a good thing I had some cash on me. Originally we were thinking of going to a transsexual club with Filipino dancers instead, since they speak English. But the dancers we spoke to said that for two people they had no fixed plan, so we would have to pay for anything we or our hostesses ordered, so even if we stayed only a short time it would be cheaper to just drag some random third person in from the street and pay for him too, since that would be the "only 5000 yen per person" plan. I hope to get my 4000 yen back some day, though the Canadian girl is no longer in Japan she is rumored to have left money with some common friend of ours. I was later told that some girl I know a little (the one who threw my 500 yen coin into the ice storage) saw us wandering around the red light district all night, but she thought it might be inappropriate to approach and say hi when I was walking around with a girl.

Swedish midsummer food (20080622)

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I got up hideously early (especially considering walking around to all those hardcore porn shops until early morning) and got a lift to Sweden Hills were they celebrated Swedish midsummer today. I got some nice food (pizza, another pizza, a not that nice but still OK sausage, and some home grown tomato juice) there.

Even more Swedish food (20080622)

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They also sold "Swedish plates" of food, which included huge mutant Japanese potatoes, fish, bread, etc. and looked almost like Swedish food. I also liked the proportions on the example set they had set up. 5 potatoes and 2 bottles of vodka.

Kaj (20080622)

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I spoke to a man named Kaj who had come up from the Swedish embassy in Tokyo. He was funny. Here he is being photographed with the Swedish folk music group. As usual, not a single Swede wore Swedish traditional clothing, but huge amounts of Japanese people did. I later got a copy of a Swedish newspaper article about Sweden hills, mentioning two funny Swedish words for roughly "Sweden kitch" and "Sweden porn". A little nasty, but almost true.

Strange gifts (20080622)

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The gift shop strangely enough sold bags with prints from the commercials from the Swedish railway company.

Raising a pole (20080622)

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Traditionally, Swedish people raise a huge pole and jump like frogs around it. Less frog style, but still some dancing took place.

Folk dance (20080622)

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I like the pairing here, with two meters tall guys dancing with tiny girls.

Japanese pets (20080622)

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My host for today has a son, who has a lizard.

The garbage dump (20080622)

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On the way home we stopped by Moere Numa park, which used to be a garbage dump but has been remodeled into an art park kind of thing. We threw Frisbee and climbed some hills. We also managed to hit a car and set off the alarm with the Frisbee (not my fault).

Riding two on one bike (20080622)

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Where do they get these nice things to stand on?

English (20080623)

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Having a shirt with "Synthetic it is who that is the strongest. It is meaningful to fight" is completely normal. Having a joke t-shirt with "Still Single" like I do is completely insane. Go figure.

Swedish (20080623)

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I found a post card with something that looks a lot like Swedish today. Designed in Japan. "Nordeuropeisk katt" (Northern European cat, OK) "God dag" (God day, could be OK), "Det er en böter dag idag." ("er" is misspelled, and "böter" I have no idea what it means as an adjective (as a noun it means "a fine"), but evidently it is a böter day today). "Jag ämna å gå för en gå någonstans" (misspelled, but says "I intend to go for a go today", but should probably say "Jag ämnar gå på en promenad någonstans" - I intend to go for a walk, though "ämna" is a very archaic word to use here).

Allergy (20080624)

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Since my allergies are really picking up speed now, I bought a face mask that says it helps against pollen. It turned out to work very very well!

Free (20080625)

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Today I went to see a Japanese movie at the cinema. An acquaintance had a free ticket left over. I did not understand the finer points, since they were speaking very fast and using quite a lot of words I do not know. But I still enjoyed it.

Stuff (20080626)

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One of the women learning Swedish from me gave me a table cloth she has woven herself (using bamboo something in it). Also, my new Hello Kitty face mask.

Tough (20080627)

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I tried to put a deck of cards inside a balloon. It turns out to be very hard. Then the balloon broke.

Sports fiesta (20080627)

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Today turned out to be the Engineering department's sports competition event. We (computer science, this year in snot green instead of the usual pink) traditionally lose everything, and we did again. I took part in "tama ire" (put balls in a basket), though the neighboring teams strategy of standing on top of each other to reach instead of throw seemed cooler than our more traditional approach. I also took part in the rope pulling, which made my clothes very dirty. After losing I said out loud that "Dammit, now I have to do laundry twice this year!" which some nearby girls in our losing team thought was rather funny. My Polish friend chimed in that Swedes must be unbelievable dirty people, because in Poland they do laundry both in the summer and for Christmas. So in the end, we had to take a group picture with the girls and the weirdo foreigners.

Genghis Khan (20080627)

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We had a Jingis Kan party today with our lab, which means barbecuing things.

Traditional Japanese clothes (20080628)

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A group of Japanese people walked around dressed as monsters, French maids, witches, and who knows what. Why? Who knows.

Last day (20080628)

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One guy (painted face) had his last day at work today at the bar I often go to eat. He recommended a glass of hot milk full of sugar to me today.

An even better face mask (20080628)

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I now have a mask that says "I am rich. Taking (urgent) applications for girlfriends". I was stopped no less than 4 times by strangers who congratulated me on my excellent mask and wanted to shake my hand. Sadly, only drunk men. Girls who read the message tended to run away. I ran into my guarantor for my apartment by chance too, and she had four of her friends along. She first laughed and was happy (and drunk), but then noticed the mask and said to her friends that she was sorry they had to see this. They were all guys though, so they thought it was hilarious.

Japanese food (20080629)

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In Japan it is considered completely normal to have potatoes (here potato salad, cream sauce, and broccoli) on pizza.

Animals (20080629)

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I was called out for a Swedish pick nick today and there got bitten by over 20 mosquitoes. There was also a very very lively dog that ran around and around and around. And I got to practice jumping rope again.