Week 4 - Hitsujigaoka Observation Hill and Yosakoi Soran Festival

This week had some pros and a con.

The con: my internet at home has been really wonky all week, and on Saturday I got home after a long day oot and aboot to find that there is now a password on our router?? Not sure who did that or what the deal is, but as of now a) I have no internet at home, and b) I have no access at all to my gmail address (including google hangouts) or facebook unless I leave the campus (I'm at Starbucks now! And WOW I am impressed with the speed of the internet). I do have access to my U of G email though, so if you need to get in touch with me for the next little while, that's your best bet - the address is the first letter of my first name, then my last name, at uoguelph.ca (with no spaces or underscores or anything). Sorry! :p

The GOOD news is that I had a great week! On Thursday we had a lab progress report meeting, which was probably most enjoyable for me seeing as how I have not really done any work yet and so I didn't have to do a presentation :p But it was really interesting seeing what everyone's up to, and I had the chance to see who is working on things that are similar to my project. The answer is: only the undergrad who was assigned as my English / Japanese conversation buddy. I now realize that our "English time" chats are in lieu of weekly progress report meetings haha, because as an undergrad she's just digging into research for the summer, and as a slacker I have done no work.

After the meeting, two of my Japanese labmates insisted on taking myself and my Bulgarian labmate to Hitsujigaoka Observation Hill. He told us that it's really the only famous place in our neighbourhood so it would be a shame if we didn't get a chance to see it, and it's a little hard to get to on foot or by bicycle (since it's a really big hill). It was a fun mid-day excursion. There were tons of school trips and tour buses so it was super crowded, and there was a wedding going on as well. The main feature of the hill is a statue of Dr. William Smith Clark, who more or less founded Hokkaido University.

"Boys, be ambitious!" That's what the plaque said. I guess it's a famous saying in Japan.

The view from the hill. You can see my house from here!! (but it's tiny). The shiny thing is the Sapporo Dome.

On Friday my prof asked me what I was up to on the weekend and mentioned in an offhand way that there was some dance festival (the Yosakoi Soran Festival) going on in Odori Park that might be worth checking out. I mentioned it to my labmate and we figured, welp, what else were we going to do, so on Saturday we headed out. I have been to Odori every weekend since I arrived and I'm not particularly into dancing, so to be honest I was kind of meh about this festival. When we first arrived, we were sort of confused because we mainly just saw dance teams hanging out in the park and eating, waiting in line for the washroom, sitting around together and chatting, etc, and we were kind of like "why isn't there any dancing?" It was also chilly and a little overcast, and I am allergic to something that is blooming right now and my head was feeling so foggy and snotty that I was considering being like "ok forget this I am going home."

We finally found some dancing going on around a fountain, but it was a little strange because it was obviously very informal and there were a bunch of random members of different dance teams together, as well as some small children from the crowd. The dancing was good, but it was just kinda meh considering that I had been led to believe that this was a high-level dance competition.

Finally we found the REAL stage on the far side of the park; you had to pay to get a seat, but this was where (I'm pretty sure) the actual competition was being held, and teams had the chance to go up, one by one, and do an elaborate routine on their own without any uninvited crowd members. We watched from the sidelines for a little while, but we were pretty far away and it was hard to see the action.

After that, we discovered something that I'm not sure how we missed: there was a non-stop dance parade going in circles around the park O_O Teams would do a four-minute dance routine up a block, stop for a minute or two at the intersection, then go again down the next block, and so on. THAT was where the real fun was for anyone without a ticket to the main stage!

Eventually we staked out a great spot and I took a billion pictures. I don't think the pictures do them justice. The dances were really amazing. Each team had like 20-100 dancers (it varied wildly) and a singer or two riding ahead on a truck. It reminded me of watching a musical. The dancers were all amazing and because we were near the end of the first block, they all had tons of energy and enthusiasm (I'm sure they must have been EXHAUSTED by the time they made it to the end of their route!). Their costumes were beautiful and almost all of them were reversible or in some way easy to alter for a mid-dance costume change, which almost every team did.

I took some shaky videos - check 'em out!

So, in the end, the dance festival turned out to be AMAZING and I am really happy that I went! 

TV update: everyone keeps asking me if I have watched any Japanese tv, but to be honest yesterday was the first time that I turned on the tv in the lobby of the place where I live. In the morning before I left, I saw footage of the dance festival, a children's anime (it was Saturday morning), and a soccer game. I flipped on the tv in the evening, and there was baseball, more baseball, and a kind of talk show where they show the hosts videos and then you see their faces as they react to what they're watching?? It's a little hard to describe but it's a common format here. Anyway, I stopped and watched that because the video they were showing the hosts was that Molson Canadian commercial where they placed beer fridges in cities around the world that can only be opened with a Canadian passport. I just enjoyed watching a Canadian commercial haha.

Critter update:

1. I caught a daddy longlegs-looking spider in my room. He lived beside my bed, and I was really glad to catch him because I first saw him a week ago and I wasn't crazy about the idea that he was living under my bed ;_; I brought him outside so that he can live wild and free.

2. My labmate's husband and daughter saw four deer chillin' in a baseball field just up the street from where we live!

3. On the way home in the evening on Saturday, my labmate's daughter and I were having a bike race and we saw a fox run across the road in front of us!! I lost the race, by the way.