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
No comments:
Post a Comment