Japanese lawn mowing

After growing non-stop since the snow melted in mid-April, the lawn in front of our apartment building has finally gotten a hair cut.  Lawn maintenance in Japan is dramatically different than in the U.S..  You won't find perfectly manicured lawn anywhere in our neighborhood...  you will see many beautiful gardens, but none of these maintained areas have grass.


Below are 3 pictures of what the lawn used to look like from the end of May.  We wrote about it in this blog entry.

It was very green...

But very tall...  in this photo, the grasses come up to my waist or my elbows.  In another part of the lawn, they came up to my head!

Only a small path had been cut to the garden area.

Last Monday, we got a note in our mailbox saying that there would be someone cutting the grass on Wednesday.  Since the weather forecast said rain on Wednesday, he came on Tuesday.

From the way the note was written, I was expecting that the whole lawn would be cut in one day (boy, was I wrong!).  I was imagining what was common in the U.S., where a whole crew of people would arrive and work like crazy for 1 day.

But there is only this one guy with a weedwacker, and a very big lawn.  A few times I've seen him have a helper who would pull large weeds but hand.  But I never saw another guy with any equipment.

It rained Wed-Fri, so he didn't work those days.  He started again on Saturday, working from 10 am to 7 pm.  I think he will finally finish today (8 days after starting).

In the photo above, from early Sunday, you can see the area he cut on Tuesday (on the right) is more yellow than the area he cut on Saturday (upper left).  He cut the rest of the grass in this photo on Sunday and Monday.

Another photo from Sunday.

From this morning.  There are only a few areas on the edge of the property that need cutting still.

I'm very curious to see if they will remove the cut grass or if they will leave it in place.

Because of all the dead grass, it smells like a hay field outside our place.  Brings back good memories of my youth.

That's all for now

-Bre (and Kyle)

Hokkaido Shrine Festival

Last weekend was the annual Hokkaido Shrine Festival here in Sapporo.  Kyle and I headed downtown to check it out.  With our limited Japanese and  with our being unfamiliar with the customs, this was probably one of the more mysterious things we've experienced here.

Our friend, Maiko, provided us with a map of the parade route and told us where the parade would stop for almost 1 hour.  It was pretty crowded at the intersection, but Kyle towered over everybody.  A majority of the audience were elderly, hence the shorter average height than normal. I was not as lucky as Kyle-- there was usually a few heads about my height blocking my view.

So what is a Shrine Festival?
Well, I'm still not 100% sure, but here's what I've figured out based on the internet and watching the parade.

The Hokkaido Shrine contains 3 kami (Shinto deities) and the Emperor Meiji.  Possibly the Emperor Meiji is now a kami because the Hokkaido Shrine's website lists there as being 4 gods in the shrine, including the "God of the Emperor Meiji".  The other three kami were enshrined in 1869 and brought to Hokkaido (by an order of Emperor Meiji) when Hokkaido was first being settled by the Japanese.  These kami I think were supposed to help in the "reclamation" of Hokkaido.  According to the Hokkaido Shrine's website, the other three kami are
1. Okunitama: the god of the land of Hokkaido, and from which all things can be produced in nature.
2. Onamuchi (or Okuninushi): the god of developing the land
3. Sukunahikona: the god of healing, who works with Onamuchi to reclaim the land.

with
4. Emperor Meiji


During the Shrine Festival, these 4 gods are taken out of the Hokkaido Shrine, placed in portable shrines, and taken through the city and the "gods see the prosperity of the town".

 

Here is the very first thing that arrived in the parade.  We first thought it was a portable shrine, but later learned otherwise.   This... whatever it is... was carried down the street by a group of men taking little jumping steps and chanting together.  It was pretty cool.  Yes, their traditional outfits do not include pants.

 

 

After the chanting men arrived, many more people paraded past, all in traditional clothes of one kind or another.  I saw many traditional outfits from hundreds of years of Japanese history.

 

There were some horse-drawn carts too.  But I couldn't see them because my view was blocked.

At the end, the 4 portable shrines arrived.  Many of the participants of the parade put down their carts, swords, banners, etc. and joined the crowd around the shrines.  What followed is a great mystery to me.  I couldn't see what was happening, but someone was chanting into a microphone and the crowd would bow their heads in prayer at different intervals.  Besides the microphone, it was very very quiet and after a while, Kyle and I realized that we were the only foreigners around.  So after 10 minutes or so, we left our confusion behind and went shopping.


That's all for now,
Bre (and Kyle)

Exchange Yen to Dollars - buy in Sapporo!

I am getting ready for a brief trip back to the US.  I wanted to buy some US Dollars in preparation for the trip.  When I moved to Japan I remember how I felt like I was getting a bad rate buying Yen in the US.  The Seattle Travelex office that I visited offered me a rate of 70 Yen to the dollar.  At the time the exchange rate was actually around 77.5 Yen to the dollar.  This meant the fee I was charged was around 10.71% for the privilege of buying Yen at the Seattle branch of Travelex.

With this initial experience of buying foreign currency I was worried that it would be expensive to buy US dollars in Japan.  I was amazed at the rate I was offered by the Travelex office in Sapporo.  I was offered a rate of 80.905875 Yen to buy a dollar.  At the moment the exchange rate is around 79.2707095.  This means the Sapporo branch of Travelex only charged about 2.02%!


                                            Seattle November 2011             Sapporo June 2012

Exchange rate                     $1= 77.5                                     79.2707095=$1

Actual Rate at Travelex      $1= 70.0                                     80.905875=$1

Difference                            7.5 per $1 or about 10.71%       1.65 per $1 or about 2.02%


Based on my limited info I can say it was a much better deal to buy currency in Sapporo than Seattle.



Disclaimers
I am not an expert in international currency exchange.  This blog is intended for entertainment only and not as actual advice.  I don't have the receipt from the purchase in Seattle, so I am relying on memory for the information about the rate the Travelex store offered me in Seattle.  I don't have enough data to say if it is more favorable for travelers making currency purchases to make those purchases in Japan or the US.

I used Wikipedia and Google Search to fine the exchange rates of Yen/Dollar.

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre)

Sapporo Art Park in Summer

Another trip to the Sapporo Art Park.  I have now been there in 3 seasons: Winter, Spring and Summer.  It was a sunny day when we went to the Art Park.  There were only a few other visitors.  We started out in the Way to the Hidden Garden by Dani Karavan.  It is a seven part sculpture, though I have only included photos of the Sundial Place, Water Channel and Cone.  We also visited the Hidden Garden referred to in the name.

This sculpture is called You're My Chair, I'm Yours.  It is by Fukuda, Shigeo.  It is very tempting to try to become part of the human chair, however after the improved translation by one of our readers of a sign in the blog post from my spring visit, I now know I am not supposed to climb on the sculptures.  Thanks for clarifying the mysterious "Don't rise to the work."  I resisted the temptation this time.

This sculpture has grown on me over time.  It is Mirage by Toru Suzuki.  He is intentionally incomplete.  The incomplete nature of the sculpture gives me space in my imagination to create many different possibilites.

I took this self portrait in a reflective tube at 1.9.8.5 Intellectual Depression by Kazuo Yuhara.

This sculpture is called Man and Woman.  It is by Gustav Vigeland.

This sculpture is called Girl Gliding Through the Branches of a Tree.  It is also by Gustav Vigeland.  There is a whole series of his sculptures on display at the Art Park.  I like how the Girl Gliding sculpture seems like a tree nymph flying through her home.

This sculpture is called Portlandia.  It was created by Raymond Kaskey.  It is a replica, or near replica of the Portlandia sculpture in Sapporo's sister city Portland, Oregon.  I like the shape of this sculpture close up where I was able to limit the portion of the sculpture that is in focus.

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre)

Lake Utonai with HIOC

This past sunday we went to the Lake Utonai sanctuary.  It is a sanctuary set by the Wild Bird Society of Japan.  Lake Utonai has a number of birds who live there year round.  There are also a large number of migratory birds that use the lake as a stopover point.  The trip was organized through the Hokkaido International Outdoor Club.  We hired one of the rangers for a guided tour.  Our guide was an expert in the local birds.  She could spot the birds and identify them easily.  I was really impressed watching her set up the spotting scope to view the birds.  I couldn't see the bird with my naked eye, but she could find it and center it in the spotting scope.  We had help from a number of the members of our group who had the translation skills and an English language bird guide book to explain what we were seeing in English.

I like this photo of the group gathered around the guide in the forest of green.

I got this photo of the Kite chick in a nest by the trail.  It was tricky to get a clear shot of him on the nest.  The tree foliage kept getting in the way.  The guide said that he will learn to fly in a week or two.  We were lucky to see him before he left the nest.

These photos are of an adult Black Eared Kite Milvus migrans.  It may have been one of the Kite chick's parents.

The lake has lots of waterfowl that use it as a resting place during their migration.  This is a Little Ringed Plover Charadrius dubius.  If you click on the image you can see a larger version of the image.

Here is our guide (with the tripod and spotting scope) pointing out some of the flora and fauna.

This bird was hard to identify.  It was also hard to photograph because it liked to hide in the grass or the bushes.  I think it may be a Siberian Rubythroat Luscinia calliope.

I am not sure as to the identity of these two birds.  If you can identify them please let me know!

Here is Haidee in full birdwatching gear.  There were several blinds set up with views over the lake and meadows.  We would open up the viewing windows and peer out like we were on safari.

I enjoyed this image of the photographers watching the birdwatchers watching the birds.

Our guide took this group photo.  In this group photo from left to right: Kyle, Dave, Barbara, Haidee, Gavin, Yusuke (sp?), Bre, Linnea, Margo, Robert, Leon, and in the bottom right corner, Rick.  Thanks to Leon for organizing this great trip!

That's all for now,

-Kyle (and Bre)