A Bicycle on Tuesday

I am happy to see all the comments on the blog.  I noticed two requests that I will have to work on.  Dave asked to photos of the food and my Mom asked for photos of the crowds.  Look for these in the next blog posting.

On Tuesday Bre and I went to her office for her to start working.  When we arrived we learned that the internet is not set up for us to use.  We ended up visiting a Russian visiting professor that Bre knows, Tanya, who has unlocked wireless internet in her office.  We went out to get lunch at the cafeteria with Tanya and Bre's office mate Adit (ah-deet) and a friend of Adit's. 

Thanks to Bre's professor in Seattle, Jody, we made a connection with a Russian student, Olga.  Olga was good friends with Jody when Jody was in Sapporo last year.  Olga had a bicycle she wasn't using and suggested that we go to pick it up at 7pm.  We are very excited to get a bicycle.  The city is very flat and everyone rides a bicycle. 

We waited around at Bre's office until 6pm and then walked over to the Aeon grocery store.  This will be the closest grocery store to our apartment, we think.  It is quite big and has an exciting collection of fruit and vegetables, which we are craving.  Rice balls, fish products, seaweed and tofu only cover so many of your basic food groups.  Anyway the photos below are from the grocery store.  The first two photos are of a moving walkway that goes down a floor so that you can take your shopping cart to the underground parking garage with ease.

Here are some freshly caught fish in ice.

Maybe I found tomato sauce?

 I am not sure what this stuff is.  It looked exciting.  It was in the toiletries section below the toothbrushes.  I imagine it could be denture cleaning tablets, or some crazy type of mouthwash.

So around 7pm, or 1900 since the Japanese use military time, we found Olga's place (Tanya had thankfully given us a map and described in detail how to get there).  She lives in the international student houseing with her son Vladez (I am not sure I spelled his name correctly.)  Vladez is in preschool and was very cheerful.  Olga invited us in for Russian style dinner.  We had soup, bread, slices of tomato, pear and apple slices, some fish, tea, jam on crackers and cookies. Olga is very nice and helpful-- we are all very excited to have made a new friend.  On Saturday Olga says she will take us to a place to buy less expensive fruits and vegetables, and also a 2nd-hand store for things for our apartment.

The bicycle that Olga gave us is very old, but it works well!  As far as we can tell, all Japanese bicycles look like this, but with differing levels of shiny-ness. Olga warned us that the bicycle is not registered.  In Sapporo you have to register your bicycle with the police.  She was stopped by the police with the bicycle and told that it was not registered to her.  She told the policeman that she doesn't speak any Japanese and somehow got away.   She warned us that if the police stop us on the bike it may be confiscated.  I feel like this is quite the immigrant experience.  We are aliens with an unregistered and probably illegal bicycle.  :)

 This is a photo of the university campus at night.

This is the biggest personal car and the most ridiculous I have seen in Japan.  And of course it is American.  I underexposed the first photo so that you can see how bright its neon glows.

This is a photo of our hotel, the Chisun Hotel, which we will leave Wednesday morning.