Week 44: I am basically ready for the Olympics

I spontaneously spent the entire weekend snowboarding!!

Lately it has been really warm and rainy, and a bunch of our snow has melted. During the week, I was thinking that I had probably missed my last chance to go snowboarding and I was kind of sad. But then I woke up on Friday morning....

....and so I realized that this weekend I still had a chance!! My friend's kid likes to ski, so I made a tentative plan with my friend and her family that we would go on Saturday if the weather was ok.

When I woke up on Saturday, the temperature was below zero and it was snowing softly, so I got amped up (and geared up) and decided to go even though my friend and her family couldn't make it because the day of the week that we were supposed to go was lost in translation (or, to use my favourite Bulgarian expression, "it went to the cinema"). So although I had an amazing adventure trying to find the shuttle bus, I eventually made it to the hill. I even managed to ask for directions in Japanese AND to understand the answer AND say thank you without blurting out anything too strange!!

The weather on Saturday was really nice, and although the snow quality wasn't fantastic, it was pretty darn ok considering that the hill is going to close for the season at the end of the month. 

I always enjoy the scenery from the top of the hill!

My sweet board and my hand-me-down snowpants from  9-year old. Life is good!

When I finally made it home on Saturday evening, I was tired and a little sore, but then my friend knocked on my door and we realized that we had had a miscommunication about the date, and that she and her family REALLY wanted to go to the hill, and were expecting to go on Sunday.

Soooo on Sunday I went snowboarding again!!! It was fun having my friend's daughter as a lift buddy. I managed to MOSTLY not get hurt, but I badly bruised my dignity (and definitely also my butt) because I slipped while I had only foot strapped in and I managed to fall and smash my tailbone on my binding. So I might need a butt cast. But other than a very sore butt, I escaped unscathed!! And now I can almost turn like a big girl!!

To top off the weekend, I bought a green tea and it came with a totally awesome pog (?). It appears to be a ghost named Whisper holding a ghost iPad (he is from the extremely popular ghost cat show / game that I predict will Pokemon it up in North America soon). 

Anyway, next weekend there is a "snow festival" at the ski hill, and my friend's husband really wants to go skiing......

Week 43: Happy Women's Day!!

Happy International Women's Day!!

I celebrated with my friends by making a cake and a colour wheel with my friend's daughter, and then we played a game of chess and had an early dinner together. My friend's husband got a second guitar, so he and his daughter played us a duet!! They make a great team!

Chocolate cake with chocolate-peanut butter frosting, decorated with bananas, apples, and dried papaya and kiwi.

I also got a beautiful phone charm! Being a woman is awesome!

I also celebrated by doing womanly things, like buying a new external hard drive and some pants!! Of course, I needed to buy the pants because my other pants got a big rip in them.. but it was still a pretty girly thing to do, I guess. 

It's starting to feel pretty spring-y around here. Things were melting like crazy, and on the subway all of the baseball fans were out in force! I guess there must have been some sort of an event at the Sapporo Dome because it's been a while since I've seen so much Ham Fighters paraphernalia. 

Week 42: A dream come true!!!

Brace yourselves. Today I did something that I have been meaning to do since I arrived in Japan.

WE WENT TO THE CAT CAFE!!!!

Oh boy. It was amazing! There were probably ~15 cats in a  5m x 5m room, along with about 20 people (at least when we first arrived). The crowd thinned out after cat snack time, which was a sight to see. I sometimes felt like I was living in a zoo when I had four cats in my apartment, but fifteen cats was really something!

Mostly the cats were sleeping. They were pretty chill considering that they were surrounded by strangers!

Google translate really does a number on the translation of the LoveNeko cat cafe's website, so I highly recommend it.

There were Luke-looking cats....

And extremely fluffy and nervous cats... 

And a Scottish fold....

And my friend, an angry grandpa cat...

And a big cat with a mustache....

And a talky Prussian blue....

And some rowdy orange cats...

And some not-so-rowdy cats....

And a mustachioed catloaf!

My favourite cat was the one who was wearing a diaper! He got in a fight with a cat that might have actually been an ocelot. He was scrappy! I mostly hung out with an angry looking grandpa cat with a weird growth on his head (Riku, according to the website). I considered stealing him, but then I got a points card (you can earn a free visit!) and I figured that I didn't want to burn any bridges just yet.

When we eventually left the cafe, we went to the Indian shop!!! Now I have lentils!!!

Week 41: HUMMUS!!

This week I bought a lot of food! Other than that, I didn't do too much. It was a warm week, and the snow is really starting to take a beating. The temperature has been hovering above zero for almost a week, and the next week looks similar, so I'm curious to see what is going to happen to all of the snowmelt because.. there was a lot of snow. So it's a good thing that I learned to swim, I guess!

On Saturday my friends discovered that there is an Indian food store in Sapporo! I don't know why I never thought to check for something like that before, because Indian food is very often vegan and I usually eat a lot of it in Canada. So when my friends mentioned that they were going there, I gave them a shopping list and they did not disappoint. They brought me some tahini and chickpeas, so now I can make hummus!! I actually just whipped up a batch. Hummus is probably the #1 food that I complain about missing so I am very excited!! I'm going to eat hummus and cucumber sandwiches every day this week!!

On Sunday I went to Starbucks to get a bit of work done. That's something that I could't do with my old laptop because it crashed every time it was physically touched. I spent a good chunk of time editing some stuff for my labmate. I actually really enjoy editing stuff, so I had a great time chugging coffee and watching the kids around me doing their English homework (they were just googling answers on their phone). And actually, there were two adults beside me that were working together to compose a letter in English. So apparently everyone goes to Starbucks to learn English! And in retrospect, the cashier did speak excellent English when she explained to me that there was only one empty seat left. That place was hoppin'!

Week 40: a plague of holidays!

Happy Foundation Day! Happy St. Tryphon's Day! Happy Valentine's Day! It was an eventful week!! The only one of those days that was actually a day off was Foundation Day, which made for a very nice Wednesday off in the middle of the week. I used my holiday to sleep in a bit.

On Saturday I had a ladies-only party with my friend and her daughter while my friend's husband was out at a concert. We ate some veggies, then did some art together and played some chess and Othello. I am not a good chess player, but I usually can beat my friend's kid, but in the first game we played SHE BEAT ME IN 5 MOVES. Not one of my proudest moments :p I won the second game by the skin of my teeth!

For our art lessons, we did some upside-down drawing from an art book that I brought some home, then we practiced our calligraphy using traditional ink and rice paper. My friend's kid does some calligraphy at school, and she was excited to try some of the kanji from my poor, underused kanji flash cards. She was pretty much just flipping through the deck and choosing characters at random, but when she mentioned that she wanted to bring them to school to show her teacher, I had to talk her out of practicing the kanji for "placenta." Here are some of my extremely important artworks.

Cat

Hokkaido

On Sunday we had a fine blizzard, so it was a pretty good day to be lazy. My brother sent me some pictures from home. I think these guys look pretty lazy, so I used them as my inspiration. 

Week 39: The Canadians were here!!

Whew! This past week has been a whirlwind - just a real whirl of wind (and snow!). My friends came to visit last week!! They arrived on Friday, and I got them settled in by getting lost on my way to meet them so that I was like 20 minutes late. But they stuck it out for some reason!! By the time I found them we pretty much just headed home and I rustled us up some grubs.

On Saturday we went to the Sapporo Snow Festival!!! I had been looking forward to it since I got here and it did not disappoint!!

As soon as we arrived, the first thing we saw was a moguls competition!!! I tried to take some photos but they didn't really turn out. One of the competitors was only nine years old and she was amazing!!

The real attraction was the snow sculptures. I can't express how amazing they were!! We were VERY lucky that we went on Saturday morning because all of the really big sculptures were still in very good shape, but things were starting to get a little melty by the afternoon. It probably goes without saying that my favourite was the STAR WARS SCULPTURE!!

Even the non-Star Wars sculptures were pretty impressive!!

When we were finished at the festival, we took a trip to the Sapporo Beer Museum!! It isn't the real brewery (which is located in the next city), but the old beer factory is located nearby and today is a mall.

Inside the museum was a collection of items explaining the history of Sapporo Beer, along with a diorama revealing that Sapporo beer is actually brewed by monkeys / elves!

There was also a collection of old bottles and cans. I am not sure why there is an egg or a spaceship??

Outside the factory were some very pretty candles!

On Sunday we headed to Otaru, which is next to the ocean! I visited Otaru and wen to the aquarium shortly after I got here, so it was really nice to walk around and enjoy it in the winter. The scenery during the day was nice, and we did a bit of shopping.

But as nice as Otaru is during the day, it was BEAUTIFUL at night. Otaru was having their own ice / snow / candle festival and it was really wonderful.

The festival had lots of things to do, like tubing (my friend and I went while her husband rolled his eyes), and free concerts and lots of games and snacks and drinks. We had a great time!

On Monday it was time for my friends to leave, but we had time to go to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant!! I have always wanted to go but I never really had an excuse to go alone. Essentially there is a conveyor belt running through the restaurant, and you just grab whatever looks good. You stack up your plates and are charged according to their colour and number. We had a feast!

Week 38: The Canadians are coming!

I can't believe that January is already over!! It passed by super quickly. That's a little scary because I don't have a ton of time left to finish up my work (and find another job..) before I leave Japan!

This week I made a big jump forward in my work, which I am very happy about!! Of course that also means that now I have a lot more work to do. Also, one of my labmates got some bad news about his project, so that stank.

This Saturday I went skating again with my friends. The rink was jam-packed, and there were some hockey players practicing in the centre of the rink! It's sort of fun to go back week after week and to see a lot of the same faces. But I am a little disturbed by the fact that, week after week, I have seen the same few (apparently unsupervised) kids flying around the rink at breakneck speed, totally out of control and faceplanting at least once per minute. I admire their persistence, but it seems a bit dangerous to me to have a little 60 pound torpedo with knives strapped to his feet barreling around wildly without any apparent improvement. To me it seems like only a matter of time before he really gets hurt or hurts someone else, but I guess I'm not the Queen of the Rink so there's not a lot I can do about it!

On Saturday evening, my prof invited me and my labmate and her family to his home for dinner!! We had sushi and it was delicious. I actually haven't eaten sushi since I got here! My prof gave us a crash course in how to play shogi (Japanese chess).

On Sunday we had another blizzard, and the streets are once again GLARE ICE, which made for some fun walking! I guess it must have also made for some fun ski conditions for the Sapporo International Ski Marathon(!) which was held in my backyard. I saw a ton (a total of 5) foreigners out and about this weekend as a result. 

Next Friday, my friends are coming to visit! And so I spent the rest of my time cleaning and getting things ready! I don't have a specific plan for what we're going to do while they're here. Next weekend is the legendary SAPPORO SNOW FESTIVAL which is supposed to be quite the big deal, so I think that we will spend a fair bit of time there. They also mentioned something about a trip to Otaru, which would be a nice change of scenery. I'm really looking forward to seeing them!!