A subway ride and a snowstorm

I was surprised to find these photos on the camera when I uploaded them.  I forgot that I took them the other day.

The first set of photos are from Bre and my subway ride to get our official certificate of alien registration from our ward office.  We went from Bre's office to the Chuo ward office near Odori Park.

 Bre is pointing to the English option on the ticket machine (in the subway) to change the language from Japanese to Engish.

 This is the subway station where we started from.  It is Kina Juni, or North 12 on the Namboku Line.  There are three lines in Sapporo and they are conveniently color coded.  Namboku is the green line.

 Here is a view inside the subway car.  Japanese people are very respectful of your privacy, so I felt like I had to come up with an excuse to take a photo of them in the subway, and there I had Bre to photograph!  The kid on the left side of the photo seems to have figured out my game.

 Here we are in the Odori station changing to the Tōzai Line.  You will have to imagine the feeling of hundreds of people all around you rushing by.

 This sign explains about the women and children only subway car that runs in the morning until 9am. 

 Here we are climbing up out of the subway.  On the right side there is a very detailed sign of all the bad things that can happen to you riding an escalator.  At some point in the future I will get a better photo so you can see the sign.

 We just happened to walk by the streetcar on our way there.  I don't know where the streetcar runs.

 These photos are from today.  It started snowing last night and snowed for most of the day.  Back to a cold snowy world.  You may notice that the cyclist has a headlight, and no helmet.  I don't know why but the only places I have seen bike helmets here in Japan are in the bike store and on the head of a Gaijin (foreigner.)  I have never seen a Japanese person wear a helmet.

 If you look to the left side of this photo you can see the the blizzard stake marking the edge of the sidewalk.

 Bre's umbrella had an unfortunate turn for the worse.  I guess you only get so much when you buy a 210 Yen umbrella.

 We found the Jupiter store in the basement of the JR train station.  Jody and Maiko told us about it.  Jupiter is an import food store.  I took photos of a few of the more interesting things they had for sale.  I ended up buying (and not photographing) Skippy peanut butter and Arnots TimTam original chocolate biscuit.  I discovered TimTam in New Zealand.  They are lots of fun to have with tea.  You can bite the ends off and use it as a straw to suck up hot tea.  This turns the TimTam into a hot molten chocolate mess and is very fun.

 We found Durian Chips in the store.  I am not sure what the sign is saying, but I suspect that it is something to the effect of please don't eat these in public.  If you want to learn more about
Durian fruit just click on the link.

 They have coffee from all over the world.

 Here are the photos Dave requested as his prize for winning the caption contest.  Here are two Japanese keyboards courtesy of Adit, Bre's co-worker.

 The last photo is a Japanese keyboard on a Macbook Pro.

I have a correction to make about my last posting.  I had a photo of a pole that looked German, and I was wondering what it is for.  Turns out Sapporo has a sister city, Munich Germany.  The pole is a gift from the city of Munich and the location of the annual Odori Beer Garden.  I also learned that Sapporo is sister cities with Portland Oregon.  So there you have it.  Thanks for reading and commenting.

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)