Week 59: Check out these melons!

A little while ago I was reading an article about the most-googled price-related questions in every country. Canada wasn't included, but Japan was, and the most-googled price in Japan was about the price of melons. Whoever wrote the article seemed puzzled by this and thought it was really strange. But clearly, this person doesn't know anything about melons in Japan!

Melons in Japan are exorbitantly expensive. Muskmelons, which are just a bit bigger than cantaloupes and, in my opinion, taste pretty much the same, start at about 1000 ¥ on a very good day and go up steeply from there. For example, here is a picture that I took today at the grocery store:

Yup, that's about $75 / melon. MAYBE $75/box of four. But that's still a bit excessive!

I guess part of the reason why melons are so expensive is that people tend to give them as gifts rather than buying them for themselves, and in general I guess people are usually willing to spend a bit more on a gift. But last week on my favourite tv show (other than old reruns of DragonBall GT on Sunday morning), a show called Sa / What's the Difference, they investigated the difference between the most expensive and the least expensive melons. The difference turned out to be that someone wearing loofah gloves roughs up the expensive melons, causing the white webbing on their surface to be a bit fatter and flatter than the cheap melons. That's it!! At least, that's what I understood. There's no difference in taste or quality. Only the white webbing is different!! If anything, in my opinion, loosening up the webbing would probably help the melon to get a big bigger, which if anything would DILUTE its taste, making it worse than a cheaper melon!! What a scam!

Other than digging up dirt on big melon, I didn't do much this week. Saturday was the research centre open house, but it was a bit chilly and rainy so I heard that the turnout wasn't so great.  On Saturday evening the Sweet Potato Man came to haunt my neighbourhood. You always know when the sweet potato man is afoot because he drives around in a van with a bad-quality loudspeaker that plays a slow, sad-sounding song that is apparently about sweet potatoes. I read that the song varies a little depending on where in Japan you are; I tried to find a youtube video with the song, and this is the closest that I could find. "Iiiiishiyaaaaaaaaaaa-kiiiimooooooo!" I'm sure that there is more than one sweet potato man in Sapporo but they all sound the same to me. You usually see / hear them around festivals, so I'm not sure what he was doing driving around the university district the weekend AFTER the past two weeks, which held three of the biggest festivals of the year, but oh well!!

Week 58: Owls and Pokemon

This weekend I spent a bit of time in my new neighbourhood!

I hadn't been to the Tanuki Koji shopping area in a little while, so I went for a quick walk through on my way to other new sights. I knew from some signs I had seen on the subway that one of the many pachinko parlours there had just had a big makeover and a big re-opening, but I was really surprised when I passed by it and saw...

It's like the owlry in Harry Potter, only more depressing!!

Owls?!?! The sign said that owls are considered lucky, so apparently it then seemed logical to chain owls to a post inside a casino?!?!? Weird.

You could also buy some owl-themed pastries, but I resisted the temptation.

Next, I headed to a shopping mall that I had heard about called the Sapporo Factory. As the name implies, it is actually the former site of the Sapporo brewery, but the actual brewery is now much bigger and actually in the neighbouring city. Anyway, the mall was pretty cool, and it was definitely the most Western mall that I have seen in Japan. 

My favourite part was the beer elevator!

There was also art made from some of the old stills!

I finally remembered to upload the pictures of the Pokemon subway that I've ridden a few times now. Unfortunately the Pokemon are only on the outside. 

Week 57: It's the Yosakoi Soran festival again!!

Now that I've been in Sapporo for a year, it's kind of nice to see some things that I enjoyed coming around for a second time. The Yosakoi Soran festival is a non-stop dance party in the streets. Last year it really blew me away, so I was really excited to see it again this year! I made plans to see it with my friends on Saturday. Before we met up, I went to a Starbucks to leech some internet, and there was a dance parade right by the front window!

When we actually went to the festival, it turned out that this year it was 500￥to watch the parade, whereas last year it was free. But that was pretty much the only downside, because just like last year the dancers were amazing!

I liked this team because most of the dancers were probably at least 60 years old!

The team that followed them looked to be about high-school aged.

I think this team was my favourite. They had a huge number of dancers  (which was nice, because smaller teams tend to dance away from you and you only get to see half of their performance), and I really liked their outfits.

Some teams had......... interesting outfit choices.

Outside of the festival I didn't do very much. But I did have the good fortune to catch a Pokemon subway twice this week!!