Week 7: Research Centre Open House!

Another beautiful week in Sapporo!

It has finally stopped raining and now it is HOT! It really feels like summer here. All week, all I could think about was trying to find a lake to go swimming! Apparently there are a few options nearby, but none of them are accessible by train or by bus, so it looks like I might be out of luck. Apparently there are a few public pools nearby (my friend's daughter takes swimming lessons a few times a week) so maybe I'll try to find one of them soon. Because I only learned to swim a few years ago, I want to make sure that I haven't forgotten how :p

Other than that fact that there are now fewer caterpillars and a LOT more butterflies, not a whole lot is new here. I have seen a LOT of critters this week! I saw a deer by the greenhouse at school - I wanted to go and check on my plants, but there was a young deer standing by the door!! I decided not to disturb him, but unfortunately I didn't get a picture. Then, the next day, I walked into a HUGE spiderweb that an equally huge spider had spun across the doorway to the same greenhouse ;__; I know that it belonged to a huge spider because he (she?) was still in the web. I'm lucky that I'm short because if I was any taller he probably would have fallen on me, in which case I think I would have started running.. and swimming.. and probably would have ended up back in Canada. My temporary neighbour (a visiting scientist who was working in my lab for about two weeks) told me that he caught an ENORMOUS spider in his room (which was directly next to mine) so now I am hyper-vigilant for spider intruders. Also, a minute ago, one of the huge crows just tried to come in my open window!! I am very glad that there is a screen. Actually, maybe if I have a crow for a pet, he can eat any spiders that are foolish enough to visit me. I have heard rumors about a feral cat or two wandering around here, so I might try to catch one of them. Maybe that will keep both spiders AND crows at bay! Jim and Luke would be so happy if I bring them home a feral brother to play with!

In other news, I was chatting with my Chinese labmate the other day and I complimented him on his excellent Japanese (and his equally excellent English) and asked him how he learned so quickly, and he told me that he took lessons before coming here, but that his wife learned Japanese from a group of volunteers here in Sapporo! He sent me a link to the group... their hours are a bit restricted (which is definitely understandable, since they are volunteers), but I think I might try to go next weekend. I STILL have not really been working on my kanji (although I have found time to read up to the fifth Harry Potter book...) so it would probably be good to have a little bit of an outside push to learn some Japanese.

In terms of fun and exciting things, on Saturday there was an open house at the research station where I work. It was sort of like a mini-College Royal. I attended with my labmate and her daughter because we were curious about what kids of research other people are up to in our backyard. It was pretty fun - we got to guess at the mass of sugar produced in a sugar beet, and we tried some rice noodles made from a rice variety developed at this research station. There was a "breath test" to see how quickly you could spin a wind gauge, and they gave you a certificate with your max speed on it; I did the test because I thought the folder was cute and I wanted one, but I spelled my own name wrong in katakana for the certificate LOL. Luckily I don't think the people running the booth noticed.. and I suppose my name COULD be Ringe...

Ringe's hard-earned folder.

 We went on a bus tour and saw all of the sheep and cows that live here. My friend's daughter also did a DNA extraction from broccoli and did a milk taste test. My dairy farmer pal in Guelph would have been pretty impressed with the focus on milk quality here, even though I still haven't seen even a single blue cow!

Surprisingly rare in Japan.

After we were finished with the open house, my labmate invited me to have some lunch with her family. We usually eat together while we are oot and aboot, but this was the first time that we cooked together. They made some potatoes with onions and carrots and a nice cabbage salad, and I made some miso soup and bannock. It was a very international lunch / dinner but it turned out delicious! After we ate, my labmate's husband gave us a dry run of a concert that he's preparing for. Have I mentioned that he is a professional guitar player at the conservatory in Bulgaria? So this concert was AMAZING. I should be able to get his youtube profile or soundcloud or something soon to share, because he is really an incredible talent and his music is beautiful. The only thing that could have possibly followed this beautiful music was a bunch of old Donald Duck / Chip and Dale cartooons that I watched on youtube with my labmate's daughter. 

I'm a little sad to be missing out on Canada Day... Canada Day in Guelph was always pretty tame compared to Ottawa, but I have a feeling that it will be even less of a big deal in Sapporo :p I am thinking of making some mini Beaver Tails to bring to school (veganized, of course). Actually, "real" Beaver Tails are vegan if you ask them to leave off the butter (which they only use to stick on the topping) and if you choose a vegan topping (i.e. not cheese or chocolate).. at least they were as of a few years ago, according to the Beaver Tails head office when I emailed them a few years ago to ask. Maybe I'll wear my Sens jersey to school. I have an old Redden jersey that, I have realized, I have worn for much longer than Redden ever did LOL.  Happy Canada Day!

Week 6: The Imaginary Garden

Ok, not imaginary. But (spoiler alert): non-existent.

On Saturday I went out with my labmate and her family to see the Christ Church Rose Garden. My friend had read about it in a guide book and had seen a few posts on the internet describing it as beautiful, especially at this time of the year. Since Saturday was the first day that it wasn't raining in about two weeks, we figured that the flowers would be in good shape, so we headed out. 

The garden was supposed to be near the edge of the city, near the top of a pretty steep hill. We took two subways and a bus to reach it, then climbed a steep and ENORMOUS hill on foot. Seriously, we saw several cars struggling up this hill. It took 20 minutes or so to reach the top, but in the end we found the Christ Church from the name and..... it turned out that the garden has been closed since 2009. 

Luckily for us, there was a beautiful view of the city since we had climbed so high!

We stopped in a park to eat some lunch, and we met a friendly American who lives in the neighbourhood and had brought his son to the park to play. He confirmed that the garden is long gone, but suggested that we head over to a nearby shrine since we had come all that way. He also told us about all of the edible mushrooms and stuff that grow in Hokkaido, and told us about all of the exciting bugs that we were likely to see. Apparently ENORMOUS horned beetles (like this) are going to be all over the place in the next month or so. I think that's pretty cool, unless I start finding them in my bed or something. 

I asked him a million questions about all of the bugs and plants because there are a lot of things that look similar to North American species, but with a twist. I keep seeing something that looks alarmingly like giant hogweed, but he didn't know anything about it. He did say that he's seen a few huge bears around, though, so I guess that's something to keep an eye out for. There are rumors that a bear or two live in the woods at the research station, but the most I've seen is a few foxes. Oh, and there was a golden eagle swooping around the door to the lab the other day. 

Anyway, we didn't end up actually making it to the shrine that this guy told us about, but we did find a cute neighbourhood shrine near the bottom of the hill that we'd climbed when we tried to find the garden. 

The Japanese maples make it look like autumn.

There are really a million bugs here. I caught some lady bugs and beetles with my friend's daughter. She is really not afraid of bugs at all (except for bees and wasps), so she will definitely be coming to my apartment if I ever see an enormous spider. 

My labmate's daughter and I are pals now because I had some yarn and I cut a piece so that we could play cat's cradle together. She taught me some kanji while we were waiting for the bus home, and I had a good kanji quiz from the pillars on the way into the shrine, which is good because I didn't actually work on my kanji this week outside of that >_> I DID read two Harry Potter books though, so I figure that's just as good. Oh, and from my predecessor's lab books (which I have been using to repeat some experiments), I have been learning some useful sciencey words in Japanese.
抽 = extract
出 = out
法 = rule or law
So 抽出法 is extraction protocol!

My google skillz suggest that this is a boxelder bug. I see them everywhere.

The most exciting news is that there is a caterpillar population explosion in progress. All week I have been seeing hoards of caterpillars all over the place. They like to fall out of trees and land on you while you are outside ;_; And they make incredibly sticky cocoons. I have had a cocoon on my spoke of my bike wheel all weekend which has barely budged even though I've probably ridden 10 km with it. Apparently they will soon be huge moths.

My new neighbour.

Week 5 - Hardly any adventures at all!

Well, I had a pretty boring week this week. My internet at home was broken from Saturday until Wednesday, which really stank. Also, I have officially been here for one month. It feels much longer. I miss the cats :( It's a good thing I google hangout with them pretty often. Here is a screencap from one of our many conversations (my Jim pictures never work out).

You didn't REALLY think that being 9,000 km away would keep me from posting pictures of the cats, did you?

To get through the internet drought I read a bunch. I brought a ton of e-books with me to Japan but I am really whipping through them; I've only been here for a month but I've been reading a book a week, which isn't going to be sustainable unless I start digging into either public domain books or every single Star Wars book ever published. I really enjoyed Star Wars books when I was twelve, but I gave them a shot this week and. Well. Nostalgia was not enough to get me through more than about a chapter. 

I should really work on my Japanese again. To be honest I've barely looked at Remembering the Kanji since I got here (unless you count being immersed in Japanese every day). To keep myself accountable, I'm going to put a counter up on this blargh, so that I might start to feel at least mildly embarrassed if I don't start working on things again. 

To address both my lack of Japanese AND my lack of reading material, I got a nifty book today: bilingual Peanuts!

A friend of mine suggested buying some children's books as a good way to learn to read, but I think this is a good alternative :) I considered buying one of these instead, but I wasn't sure I was brave enough to be seen carrying them around.

Sure, everyone needs a book about poo, but how could I choose??

My work is starting to pick up. I had a really productive meeting on Saturday and I finally have some direction in my work. My meeting ran really late so I went for lunch with my prof and two other lab people at a Chinese place close to the lab. Because Chinese food in Canada is pretty non-authentic, I was curious to see what Japanese-style Chinese food would be like, but to be honest, at least my dish was the same as food I've had in Canada. It was good and I enjoyed it; it just wasn't very different. My coworkers' meals were ENORMOUS and were served as several small independent dishes, which is probably more authentically Chinese but is also similar to the way that Japanese meals are served, so there you go. 

On Sunday I went on a quest to find a health food store because I really wanted to find either some flaxseeds or some xanthan gum to bake with (as egg replacer). I considered going on an amazing 16 km bike adventure to find a store that is pretty far from any subway stations, but is also close to a library that has an English section (as a prevention against a future book crisis), but it has been raining for a week solid and today was no exception so I decided not to brave the trip. Instead I went to find a store in Susukino, which is a nightlife district in the downtown area. My favourite thing in Susukino is this:

There's a ferris wheel on top of a department store!! Very Jet Set Radio.

Sadly, either I have gone blind or the store was closed because I couldn't find it anywhere! :( So I was forced to make cookies with starch as an egg replacer. It seems to have worked out ok. By the way, it is VERY ANNOYING to make cookies when you can only fit six cookies per tray in your little oven!

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.

Week 3: Tanuki Koji

This week I got to play with my Arabidopsis!! My seedlings are so cute! Using Arabidopsis makes me finally feel like a real scientist. 

I also heard a lot of cuckoos (the common cuckoo is the official bird of Sapporo!) and helicopers (which makes me feel like I'm living in Night Vale). On Wednesday we went for a lab lunch at a vegan restaurant! It was really delicious, and I think most people from the lab were pleasantly surprised. It was relatively close to where I live (maybe a 20-30 minute bike ride) so I will definitely be back. 

Today I went on an adventure to find Tanuki Koji, an open-air shopping arcade. I had heard that they had some souvenir-y type things in addition to some "normal" stores, so I was curious to check it out. When I went to leave the research facility where I live, I forgot the key code for the gate, so I had to scramble up a hill like a mountain goat to get to the other side (the passcode is a permutation of some of the numbers on a sign that can only be seen from the other side). So that was dignified. Then I had to open the gate for my bike. When I got downtown, unsurprisingly, I got kind of lost trying to find the place I was looking for and I wandered in circles for a while before I found my way in (which of course turned out to be right beside the place where I started from). I managed to find an open-air fish market in the process, but I decided not to buy anything for the cats because I didn't think my parents would appreciate receiving a probably-spoiled package of crab in the mail. . 

When I eventually found Tanuki Koji, most of the stores were still closed (at 10:30 am on a Saturday?) so I got the chance to wander around and see what kind of stores there were before I actually did any shopping. Two things they had in spades were crane game parlours and casinos?? Like, several slot machine casinos, sometimes right across from each other. I had no luck on the crane games; I used to feel like I was pretty decent at them (I won the first few times I played the last time I was in Japan!) but this time I got NOTHING! Tragic.

The empty shopping arcade. It turns out that things open at 11 am, and not 10 am which would be a sane time to open on a weekend.

These are tanuki and they are HILARIOUS.

One of many slot machine casinos. I didn't go in so I don't know what other games they had. 

PenPen!!!!! This is one of them fancy crane games. I didn't play it because I figured the odds of winning were too low (and then I wasted like $10 on keychain machines soooo...)

After the shopping street, I went back to Daiso for some more basic baking and organizational type things, and this time I managed to take pictures! Unfortunately, they all suck :S So here are some socks I saw instead! I have already received complements on my socks from people in my lab. My Pac-Man socks were a hit!

Looking at this picture, I actually wish I would have bought some / all of these.

I did a quick grocery shop when I got back to my subway station. I finally got baking powder and baking soda and vanilla so I can do some baking!!! When I was ready to head home, I discovered that a) my bike basket is a little smaller than I thought it was and it can really only fit one bag of junk, and b) I had my second bike parking ticket! I guess they're more of a warning than a real ticket, but apparently they give them to everyone all the time for parking bikes in front of the subway station. Everyone told me that nobody cares and they only rarely confiscate your bike, so MEH. It looks like I was pretty lucky though, because all the bikes about two away from mine had been removed so that someone could set up a stand, so I think I might have to try to find a better place to park my bike. It would be a little embarrassing to have to ask someone from the lab to help me call the city or whoever to figure out what happened to my bike.

Photographic evidence that I am a delinquent.

 Anyway, because I had a basket full of HEAVY groceries and a second bag of groceries hanging from my handlebars AND a heavy backpack AND I was wearing a skirt AND the streets were crowded because it looked like there was a signing at the Ham-Fighters swag store (which is in between the subway station and my place), I had a pretty interesting bike ride home between trying not to flash anyone and also trying not to fall off my bike. I don't have any shorts and it is about 30C today, so I didn't want to wear pants, and I figured that schoolgirls ride their bikes in skirts and seem to maintain their dignity, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. This is an artist's rendering of me riding my bike home:

Subtract the cigarette and add a bunch of groceries and a bike parking ticket.

During the course of the day I saw some HILARIOUS signs and t-shirts. These are for you, bro.

"Snobbish Babies." This one was a pet stuff store and there was a chihuahua inside barking at me. 

"Zero Planning," an unfortunately-named travel agency of some sort.

S'up bra?

Why was the zombie skating over the other zombie / vampire? I think he really does care.

Maruyama Zoo!

Whoa! Fixed the internet thanks to some trans-oceanic tech support from my brother. I'll update the previous post with a few pictures, but I thought the zoo deserved a post of its own.

So. The Maruyama Zoo. The setting is beautiful; the zoo itself is nestled among a bunch of smallish mountains, near the edge of the city, in a park. There's a baseball stadium in the park and I could hear a game for most of the time we were at the zoo :) It was a nice, clear day, but it was also pretty darn chilly in the shade. I was wearing a coat and a sweater and I was cold most of the time. 

Some parts of the zoo were really great. There was a joey in with the kangaroos and he was drinking milk from his mother (though sadly I think he was too big to get in her pouch). The giraffes were cute and they kept making hilarious faces as they ate. The red pandas were ridiculously adorable!

He never did eat that strawberry..

Some of the animals were being pretty lazy, probably because it was around lunchtime and some of them had clearly just eaten

A tiger with a small child for reference. 

The Japanese macaques were having a great time eating bugs out of each other's fur and occasionally screaming. 

Canada was pretty well-represented. There were polar bears and wolves and prairie dogs and a mystery beaver who had an enclosure but who was not home while I was there.

There was a mynah bird who refused to speak for some reason, despite hoards of children (and adults) screaming "O-HAY-OOO! KON-NI-CHI-WAAAA!!!" every few seconds :p

One bird was in jail but the other was free in the tropical bird zone.

There were also some FLUORESCENT flamingoes! Maybe I've just never seen flamingoes before (likely) but these guys were seriously bright.

Based on some propaganda at my friend's daughter's school, we had been led to believe that there would be some sort of an exhibit about the tapirs, but we didn't see anything special (though it's very likely that we just were unable to read the programs and figure out if / when there was some sort of a demonstration).

He sure was a tapir!

The chimpanzees really stole the show. There were several young chimps who were riding around on their mothers' backs, and some wise old men-chimps who were staring at everyone (which was sort of disturbing).

Because it was Japan, there were also some intentionally and unintentionally hilarious signs.

I'm not sure if "buzzard" is really an ornithological term...

Ok this one was clearly on purpose but we really enjoyed it (and also when we looked up there really was a monkey sitting on some mesh RIGHT above us...)

I also learned about a hornet that I saw outside of my window the morning I went to the zoo! They kill 30-40 people a year in Japan and can cause random people to go into anaphylactic shock. I'm pretty sure this is the type of hornet that stung a friend of mine once O__O Also I am never going outside again. 

They were no joke 3-4 cm long ;__; 

Sadly, as I mentioned in my previous post, some of the animals were in some pretty pathetically-awful cages. Considering that most of the zoo was pretty good, these were truly shocking to me. I'm really hoping that the situation for these guys is on the list of planned improvements for the zoo expansion that was under construction.

A mangy-lookin' raccoon with a rat tail, who was pacing back and forth frantically.

This is the snow leopard who was in leopard jail, while his buddy had a huge and more appropriate enclosure right beside him. I assume that these guys take turns being on alternate sides, but this was really not great. He was also pacing angrily and people kept knocking on his glass. He made a motion like he wanted to eat a little girl at one point.

I'm not sure if cement floors are a lion's natural habitat.

In the end, as a noted hippie, I wasn't blown away by the conditions of the animals in this zoo but I was mostly not completely disgusted, either. I don't have any grand plans to go back while I'm in Sapporo but I don't feel gross for giving these folks 600¥.