Kyle and Bre in Japan: April 2012

We went out to the Sapporo Art Park on Wednesday. Mom took the photos of me. Way to go mom! Speaking of photos of me why does the back of my head look so pale? Where has the hair gone?

Above is a photo of Jared and me being silly on the bench with the sculpture. I am ashamed to see what he is doing to that sculpture.

Above, a silly moment.

The speed walker.

Mom and Jared were pretending to be owls with the owlish sculptures until a real bird flew by. They had to check out the bird to see if it was pretending to be human in a mind bending life imitating art-imitating life-imitating an anthropocentric view of a bird.

This is the first time I saw the statue of the sitting people. When I visited in the winter they were protected from the snow by an impenetrable canvas hut.

We had to try them out.

And to finish our day I found another inscrutable sign. What does it mean?

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre who was at work for this adventure) in Japan

I happily walked home from work today after Kyle and Karen took off with my bicycle. Walking home meant that I could finally take pictures of all the lovely spring flowers that have appeared over the last week or two here. My walk was an adventure because it was very windy, approaching dusk, and threatening to start raining at any moment. But I and my little point-and-shoot camera made it home safely. Be pre-warned, my photos are not Kyle-quality.

This photo above is right outside my office-- you can tell that it is spring because of the hundreds of bicycles parked outside.

This is the first flower that came up in Sapporo-- I first saw them poking through the ground in the last few days of March. It was the only growing thing I saw before I left for my trip to the U.S. Does anyone know what kind of plant it is?

NOTE: I learned the name of this one while at the Botanical Gardens... it's a type of Burdock

I know this one! It's skunk cabbage! It is growing at the edge of the pond near my office.

The stream is running very high from the snow melt.

There are a few piles of snow remaining, but I doubt they'll be around for much longer. I remember this pile of snow from the winter-- it was from when a snowplow plowed the road after a heavy snowfall, and dumped the pile right across my shortcut. I was not happy.

The snow has been accumulating a lot of debris all winter.

I especially like this snow pile. It's as tall as the woman next to it, and the right hand side is completely covered in pine needles.

Back to flowers-- In the historical village part of campus, white and yellow flowers cover the ground. I thought the white ones were snow drops (because they were droopy in the evening) until I looked closely and saw they have the wrong kind of leaves. Now I don't know what they are.

NOTE: I learned the name of this one while at the Botanical Gardens... it's Primula takedana, I don't know that the common name is, but it's related to primrose.