Week 33: T'was the week that contained Christmas....

And it was the longest week in the history of the world! Sapporo had a very white Christmas.

Last Friday I was chatting with my newest labmate, who seemed surprised that I had made some egg and dairy-free cookies for our lab holiday party. It turns out that her son is allergic to dairy and eggs, so I gave her the recipe I used (and promised her stacks more in the future). In return, she made me a dish of beans and pumpkin on Monday!! It was the winter solstice, and apparently if you eat red beans and pumpkin on the night of the winter solstice you will be healthy for the winter, so she brought me a treat to keep me healthy! I was really touched. It isn't often that someone brings me a vegetarian treat in Japan!! She is also an excellent Japanese teacher. I have learned a lot from chatting with her!!

Tuesday was a holiday because it was the Emporor's Birthday!! I celebrated by going to work!!! I also made three types of cake with my friend's daughter and watched Elf with her and ate popcorn :) 

Wednesday was Christmas Eve!! We had a party at the International Hall. We had vegan leek banitsa and Velingrad salad and sweet potatoes and vegnog (which has really grown on me for the past few years!) and the cakes that we made the day before. There was also a type of soda bread with a coin hidden inside, and whoever receives the piece with the coin will have a lucky year. That piece went to my friend's daughter!

I got the smile!

A festivus feast!

We also decided to open gifts because it would be cruel to make my neigbour's daughter wait until her mother was home on the 25th (as she knew that she had to stay late). 

Most of these were for some lucky kid

My friend's kid received a MAGIC SET!! So now she can be a magician!! She also got a 20-in-one game set from Santa Claus (who is Canadian, y'know) and a copy of The Little Prince in Japanese (because she has already read Anne of Green Gables). We played several rounds of Othello, which is one of my favourite games, and my friend's husband serenaded us on the guitar. Have I mentioned that he is a pro guitar player? Here is a YouTube video of my friend's husband playing Sapporo Christmas, a song he composed last year. 

For Christmas I received some CAT SOCKS, a cool Japanese comb, and a copy of his cd!

Christmas socks!!

On Friday I found out something that I wish I would have learned earlier: next week is a holiday??! Nobody bothered to tell me or my Bulgarian pal, so luckily we have lots of things in the works that can't be put off until later, and in any case there is a lab progress meeting the week after the holiday anyway... so I don't think we will be the only ones hanging around. But it might have been nice to know in advance :p

The weekend flew by, and I didn't have much time to do anything exciting. The snow was too wet again for effective snowboarding practice, but I made plans with a labmate to try going to a REAL hill in the new year. I am excited!!

Week 32: T'was the week before Christmas..

And all through the lab... People kept falling all over the place because outside is glare ice. The temperature has been hovering around 0C for several days now, so everything keeps melting and refreezing. But it's really beautiful!

On Thursday we had a lab holiday party!! The party was held at the International Hall, where I live. We mainly ate hot pot, so there was a big pot in the centre of each table, and inside we cooked tofu and mushrooms and lots of veggies (and, at other tables, meat). It was really good! There was also lots of sushi and oysters. My friend's husband and my prof serenaded us on the guitar and violin.

On Saturday I went snowboarding again, and my friend's daughter came to go skiing! We had fun, but the snow was really wet and very heavy, which even I know is not exactly optimal for skiing or snowboarding. In total we probably have about 40 cm of snow on the ground, but there are already some pretty impressive piles, especially under the overhang of the roof. All of the roofs are metal around here, so there is constantly snow sliding off of them. Some nights it sounds like a neverending avalanche as giant snow chunks keep rolling off of the roof. 

Avalanche remainders

On Sunday we went skating again!! We also had a bus adventure; it was really so icy that it wasn't possible to actually walk to the subway station, so instead we caught the bus that stops just outside the research station. 

I know I said before that when I went skating with a few people from my lab, they were the fastest skate-learners I had ever seen... but today my friend's husband tried skating for the first time, and he is officially the fastest learner ever! I was talking to him while he was doing some really awkward shuffly-walky thing that is common in new skaters, but all of a sudden his eyes lit up and he was like "I should move like a penguin!" And that was it! He just starting skating! 

I can't believe that this week is Christmas. It felt like it was a few weeks away for several weeks.... and now it's just a few days away! I'm really glad that the 23rd is a holiday (for the Emporor's birthday!) but Christmas itself isn't a holiday. I plan to spend the 23rd baking and cooking with my friend and her family, and we'll have a Christmas meal together on the 24th or 25th. I feel really lucky to have such nice friends to share Christmas with here. They have really taken me in as part of their family and I know I'd be feeling pretty lonely without them!

Week 31: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

There's finally a decent amount of snow on the ground, the stores are jammed full of people, and there is Christmas music everywhere! And Christmas is coming up pretty soon... so maybe it's time to start thinking about Christmas!

On Friday evening I went on an adventure to try to get some replacement parts for the straps that broke on my snowboard. I spoke to a guy in the lab about where I could find them, and he pointed me toward a big sports store. I even checked their website in advance to make sure that they had what I needed, because the store is a good ~3 km walk, and I would be cutting it close to their closing time by the time I would be able to make it there, so I wanted to make sure that I didn't need to wander around too much.

So of course that means that they really DIDN'T sell the straps at all; they do repairs, but they were baffled when I asked if I could just by the straps themselves, and after a lot of hemming and hawing and phone calls and terrible Japanese (on my part) and ok English (on the part of the extremely patient guy in the store) I was able to convince them just to drop it. They tried to convince me to buy some new bindings (on sale for just $300!) but I wasn't so interested in dropping $300 on a $15 snowboard. On Saturday I went to the USED sports equipment store (which is beside the new sports store, but was closed by the time I could convince them to let me leave), and was able to get some used bindings for just $20. Crisis averted! On Sunday I gave my new bindings a test run and they are MUCH better than my old ones! They didn't even explode! I also had some company on my little hill, because a dad was teaching his son how to snowboard! It was also the kid's second day trying, but he put me to shame. 

The only other big news this week is that there was some sort of three-day concert (??) at the Sapporo Dome for Arashi, a boy band. Holy cow. I thought the streets were busy when there was a baseball game, but it was a total madhouse the ENTIRE WEEKEND for these guys. Plus, I literally saw ONE man heading for the dome; the other thousands of people were all women. It was bananas! I knew that idol groups were a big thing in Japan but I had no idea that there even WERE so many women in the entire city, and it was crazy to see them all converge at my end of the city! But from talking to people in the lab, it sounds as if the vast majority of women are genuinely into this band. It kind of reminded me of the Lego Movie.

One thing that goes along with concerts at the Sapporo Dome is seeing women lining the walls holding up signs (and often hiding their faces??). I am pretty sure that they are begging for someone to give / sell them tickets. It is seriously bizarre and the first time I saw it (for a SMAP concert a few months ago) it really weirded me out. I mean, to each his / her own; I'm not saying that I have great taste in music, but even as a teenager I was never into boy bands or sugary-sweet pop music, so I really have a hard time understanding how women my age or older can be so desperate to see a band like that. But who knows... maybe the next time I am in Ottawa someone will catch me standing around outside the Canadian Tire Centre holding up a sign and begging for hockey tickets :p

Week 30: A bunch of stuff!

This weekend was exciting!

On Saturday, I went to a museum with my friend and her family. My friend's husband is an amazing guitarist, and he has made some musician friends here in Sapporo. On Saturday, one of his friends was playing at the museum for a reading of a new children's book.

The book is about a little ghost, Maaru, who lives in Sapporo and has various Sapporo-themed adventures. In the most recent (?) book, he visits the Migishi Kotaro Museum of Art and the paintings come to life and he hangs out with them. At least that's what I think happens. There was a reading of that book, as well as a reading of another Maaru book, and the illustrator (who may or may not have also been the author??) was present to sign copies of her books! My friend's kid won a free copy of one book. I bought a copy of a book where Maaru goes to SPACE. I think I have a better chance of comprehending this book than Anne of Green Gables.

On Sunday I did more baking with my friend's kid. We also got about 10 cm of the powderiest snow I have EVER seen, so I figured that it was time to break in my snowboard!

I think this hill is perfect to learn on because it has a steep side as well as the (pictured) short and gentle slope.

Sick powder

I am proud so say that I managed to make it down the hill without falling a few times, and I didn't even break my wrist! I did, however, manage to absolutely destroy the bindings that hold the boots to the board, and I'll need to replace them before I can try again :S But considering that I got the boots and the board for about $30, I suppose I got what I paid for, and I had enough fun that I don't mind investing a little money into it so that I can continue horsing around and learning. It's also a good excuse to try switching around the orientation of the bindings, because I am pretty sure that my natural stance is opposite to the way that the bindings were attached :p

RIP foot holders

Week 29: Skating and Science

This week I went skating!!!!!!!

I heard from my prof that it was possible to go skating in the neighbourhood beside ours (Tsukisamu), so I made plans with my labmate and her family to go on Saturday. My Chinese labmate overheard, so we invited him and his wife.. and then another labmate overheard, so we invited him, too! In the end there were seven of us, but only two of us had ever skated before. I was glad that my Japanese labmate came, because he already knew how to skate and I wasn't sure how I was going to teach five other people how to skate simultaneously.

After I led everyone to the wrong location, we eventually found the arena at the Tsukisamu Gymnasium. I was a bit surprised, because to me the rink was tiny considering that it is the sometimes-home of the Oji Eagles, but the ice was in great shape and there were a good number of people.

Go Eagles!

Everyone turned out to be a very fast learner, so there were no injuries and only a few small falls. By the end of our two-hour session, pretty much everyone was skating with only minimal use of the walls! The rink also rents skates, which is helpful because it seemed like there ware a lot of first-timers on the ice. The default was actually (black) figure skates, which I think is a good move because I think it's much easier to learn to skate with figure skates vs. hockey skates, but I wasn't sure I was going to be able to convince the guys to try figure skates. 

There were some young figure skaters practicing in the middle of the ice. They were AMAZING. If I could have taken photos without being a horrible creep I would have. 

On Sunday I ran a few errands. I picked up a Japanese copy of Anne of Green Gables ("Redhead Anne" in Japanese). That will be my winter project. I had been thinking of buying it for my labmate's kid for Christmas, so I asked her mother if she thought that she'd be able to read it, but she worried that it might be too difficult. But today I showed her my book and asked her if she could read the title and she told me that she's reading Anne of Green Gables at school! So I guess it's a good thing that I didn't buy it for her after all :p

Redhead Anne

I made muffins today with my friend's kid and helped her and her friends make some "invisible ink" lemon juice drawings. That made me very popular with her friends. I have a lot of friends under the age of ten in Japan. Here is some artwork:

A snowman

 

Two artists

Kitty!

A ghost

"Linda-san"

Week 28: Nooooo snoooooow!

The snow melted!! I am so sad. I was sure that it was here to stay, but we got some warm temperatures, and slowly but surely all of the snow melted.

It's another long weekend!! Japan is overrun by holidays!! Monday is Labour Thanksgiving Day. I plan to celebrate by doing no labour. 

Despite it being a long weekend, I haven't been up to too much. On Sunday I made cookies and did some little science experiments with my labmate's daughter. I showed her how to make a model of the hand with straw bones and string ligaments, and she was impressed enough that when her friends came to visit in the afternoon, I was recruited as head tape-cutter and needle-threader to help them all make their own. We also made a density tower (although ours were not nearly this involved...) and started some salt crystals growing. It was a bit hard to get her to understand the science in a hybrid of English and Japanese, but I think she sort of got the gist of it?? I think the timeline of crystal growing (i.e. not instantaneous) was a little beyond her, but meh.

I replaced the main overhead light in my room. That is actually big news because the light bulb probably burned out about three months ago. During the summer it wasn't a huge deal, but it was getting to be be awfully gloomy in my room past 4 pm. I actually found the necessary light bulb at the second hand store after buying the wrong bulb from a REAL store. Hooray for second hand stores!

Oh, and I got this.

Why yes, I DID bring this home on my bicycle!

Everything in this picture (boots, board, and carrying bag) came to 4,000¥, which is pretty much what it would have cost to rent it for a single day. There is a small hill just up the street that's tall enough to practice on, and there are a few small, cheap ski hills within the city. So this is my winter goal! I used to play a LOT of SSX so I imagine that I will have a leg up on other beginners. Video game skills like that usually have a high transfer-over rate to real life.

Week 27: SNOOOOWW!!!!

They weren't calling for snow, but on Wednesday we got some flurries.. that turned into a small snowstorm by the evening... 

... and then it snowed overnight...

The view from my window

.... and continued for 48 hours straight!! 

I was beside myself with joy, but I was pretty much the only one. Since there wasn't snow in the forecast, people were unprepared, and a lot of bicycles are now going to be overwintering at the lab :p

Note basket full of snow

All told, we probably got a good 10-20 cm; it was pretty heavy, so it weighed itself down. Sadly the temperature has been above 0 C ever since, so the snow has actually melted quite a lot, and unless we get a top-up this week it will probably be gone soon. But I was happy to get a blast of winter anyway.

During the week, someone brought in a whole bunch of burdock root! One of my favourite vegetarian restaurants in Ottawa serves burdock, but other than that I don't think it's common in Canada. I took home some of the root to give it a try, and it was really delicious! It smells a little bit like sweet bell peppers and has kind of an earthy, mushroomy flavour. Now that I've tried it I'll have to buy some more. Maybe when I get home I'll start digging up burrs to feed my addiction.

As a result of the snow, I had a lazy weekend. My bicycle is now retired, so I had a nice walk to go and buy groceries. I am now stocked up with a big bag of rice and lots of tea. Ready for winter!

The most exciting thing I did this weekend was attend a wedding on Google Hangouts!! I have a friend who will be getting married in Mexico in a week, but she had a small legal ceremony over the weekend. Outside of the witnesses and the legal lady, I was the only guest. I felt so honoured that I had to wear my Marvel superheroes dress!!

In conclusion, this is why it snowed:

Linda every day after October1st

Week 26: Nakajima Park

Ah, week 26. Did you know that 26 is half of 52? What an interesting fact!

This week I received something thrilling!!!! It was sent about six weeks ago, but according to the tape and stamps all over the box, it was rifled through by Japanese customs.

Canadian items!!!

The bag of maple candies was perhaps a little on the light side, and some of the yarn had already been knitted into the shape of a Hello Kitty, but other than that everything survived unscathed! The maple candy has proven very popular with the Bulgarian under-10 demographic.

This week I went to Nakajima Park with my friend and her family. Nakajima Park is a beautiful park inside the city, with a big lake that rents boats in the summer!

There were tons of ducks!

There were also tons of ravens, including this cool dude who was VERY bold.

He kept picking at sticks and junk on the ground, so I offered him a tantalizing treat.

A DELICIOUS STICK THANK YOU HUMAN

YOU LIED THIS STICK IS AT BEST A SIX OUT OF TEN ON A SCALE OF DELECTABILITY

 After the raven got tired of us, we continued enjoying the park.

There were still flowers in bloom!

At the edge of the park there was a large shrine!

Not pictured: the playground at the edge of the park! I had a great time playing on the monkey bars!!