Happy Turkey Day!

Bre and I went for a walk yesterday to the cheap grocery store.  It is on the East side of Sapporo, and we live on the west side, so it took about 45 minutes.  Wednesday was a holiday here.  It was a labor thanksgiving day.  According to Japanguide.com:

November 23 (national holiday)
Labour Thanksgiving Day (kinro kansha no hi):
A national holiday for honoring labour. 

I think something may be lost in the translation because I am not sure what that means.  Maybe it is a day to be thankful you have a job, or perhaps a day to be thankful that others have jobs.  Perhaps it is a labor rights day like May Day/International Workers Day in other parts of the world.

Anyway these photos are just things I saw along the walk to the store.

 Here is a neutral zone in the middle of the intersection.  I guess if nobody goes into the shaded area there will not be an accident.  It makes as much sense as all the dashed lines we had in Seattle.

 I don't know who this is supposed to be in the photo below so I made up a story to go with him.  He is Waterdrop, the safety officer for the water utility reminding you to look up at constructions sites and watch for falling objects.  His eyes remind me of beans.  His antennae remind me of a space alien.

I should have a caption contest based on him.  Whoever comes up with the best caption for this photo will get to choose what I discuss for Sunday's blog posting.  All entries for the contest must be posted as comments to this blog posting by 12pm Sat in this timezone (Japan).

I hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving!  I am thankful to have so many readers (as of this posting the blog has been viewed 1481 times), sunshine in winter, and a bicycle.

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)

Night

This photo series was taken this night during the regular walk into school.  I notice that I am photographing the same places over and over.   I will have to go somewhere new soon.  The first photo is the Seico mart, or as they call it here Seicomarto.  It is the closest convenience store to our apartment.  In the old days when I had a car I wouldn't care about which convenience store is closest, but I notice it more now that I am walking.

If you want to learn another Japanese word I learned that the tree we call Elm is called Elmö here in Japan.  In fact there are many words here that I recognize that have a vowel added to the end of them.  You could probably get by just saying the English word and adding an u or ö to the end of each word.

 This photo is from the muddy shortcut to the University through the fields.  The impressive thing is this guy is riding in the dark, snow, and mud, and his bike is not close to being a mountain bike.

 These last two photos are of the pond by Bre's office.  It was freezing over as I was taking the photos.

Tomorrow is a holiday here.  It has been described to me as a national labor thanksgiving day.  I think this is basically a labor day.  There is no American Thanksgiving going on here.  Bre and I will have to do something special for Thursday.  On Friday we have a plan to go with Bre's friends and co-workers to the German Christmas Market in Odori Park.  Roasted chestnuts, Brats, and mulled wine.  Sounds good to me!

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)

The snow came back on Monday!

It started snowing last night and snowed for most of the day.  I went for a walk this afternoon while Bre was at work to get some photos.  The first photo is of the wall of the racetrack near our apartment.  I like how it is mostly out of focus and the snowflakes seem to drift in space.  It is also the only photo I took where you can actually see the snow falling, but believe me it was falling all day!

 The cars that were out on the road were slipping around.  Studded snow tires are banned so nobody has good traction in the snow.  The whole city becomes like an ice-rink.

 

 The snow doesn't stop the city.  Some of the cars seemed to be going slower, but everything else continues as normal.

 This last photo I took at sunset out of my apartment window.

Bre and I have been getting used to Celsius.  The temperature right now is -3, and I have a good understanding of how cold that is.

Tomorrow I have a very exciting meeting with the owner of an English School.  There may be a chance for me to work there.  It is just on the far side of the university.  I am ready to have something to do, all this idle time is not for me.

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)

Weekend in Sapporo

The first photo is from sunset on Saturday.  I got a request to get photos of Japanese cows.  Bre and I tried biking around the farm fields of Hokkaido University where I had seen the cows.  We were not successful in finding cows.  Perhaps they went somewhere else once it started to snow.  Instead of the cows we found this sunset and the drainage ditch at the edge of the field.

 These ducks were swimming in a concrete stream that runs a few blocks from our house.  They found something to eat, most of my photos are of them with their heads underwater.

 These photos are of the lacrosse fields.  I know, lacrosse in Japan?  Apparently lacrosse is very popular here.  I saw people out here practicing in the snow the other day.  They have men's and women's lacrosse.

 Here is Bre waiting for me to take the photos of the lacrosse field. 

 I took a couple more photos of the outside of the building where Bre works.  The last two are interesting in how the wide angle lens changes the angle of the building when I get close.

 The last photos are from my mom's request for photos of the view out of our windows.  The first photos is of the view out Bre's office window.  The other two photos are from the windows of our apartment.

 

 

That's all for now,

-Kyle (and Bre) in Japan

Language Corner on Fridays

Good morning,

It is Saturday morning here.  Yesterday I went to the language corner at the International Student Center here at Hokkaido University.  They have a language practice session most Fridays from 2 to 3:30pm.  I got to practice my Japanese, which consists of Hello, my name is Kyle.  Or Hajememashte, wastashi wa Kyle desu.  And I got to meet with some of the university students while they practiced their English (which is much better than my Japanese.)  Everyone was very friendly and outgoing.  I forgot most of the names after I introduced myself (sorry to you guys if you ever read this blog).  I met Mitsu who is studying Accounting and enjoys rowing.  We talked about rowing.  He rows with the University of Hokkaido.  He showed me a video of his technique rowing on the Erg machine and a video of one of his friends rowing a scull on the river.  I rowed for several months in Seattle at Lake Union Crew and had a great time.  Mistu had the clever idea of bringing a notebook to write down what he learned.  Next time I will bring a notebook.  I also met Rena from Oregon State University who is studying Japanese (her Japanese is clearly much better than mine.)  Some of the other guys I talked to(whose names I have forgotten) said that they enjoy skiing, that they went to watch the salmon run in the streams in the fall, and another guy had plans to go to Denmark to study Environmental Engineering.

I hope to go back to the language corner next week.  Perhaps I will pick up a few more phrases of Japanese by then.

Below is a photo of Adit.  He is a co-worker/office-mate sharing Bre's office.  Adit is Indonesian and has a post-doc through Hokkaido University.  He is a nice guy who has not complained about me hanging around all the time.  He also (like Bre) studies earthquakes and tsunamis and does tsunami modeling.  One of the projects he is working on right now is a tsunami model of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.  The link is to wikipedia, not Adit's tsunami model.

Friday night Bre and I went out to sushi dinner with Olga and friends.  Tanya, Anton, Aiumi (sp?), and Valdez.  The Sushi place was in the JR station on the 10th floor.  It had a great view and the sushi was tasty.  I mostly stuck to the safe (recognizable) foods.  I did branch out and try a Nattō roll.  Nattō is an fermented soybean product that is unique to Japan.  I am told that you know you are Japanese if you like Nattō.  I thought it was a little bit slimy and not that exciting in taste, but not bad.  The texture and flavor of the fish was different than in America.  It seemed more firm and flavorful.  In America the sushi is all frozen and thawed before being served.  In Japan there are no regulations requiring that it be frozen first.   It was amazing how cheap it was.  We had 12 plates (each plate has two items on in) and 3 beers for 1600 yen.  When got home I double checked how it could be so cheap I saw that the beers (beru) were left off the bill.  We'll have to go back to make up for it.  :)

Below are some photos of what we got at our shopping trip to the Aeon store this morning.  The first photo is of the three fresh baked items from the bakery in the store.  One was a bread stuffed with meat and cheese, the one in the middle we have not tried, and the one on the right was a buttery and creamy breakfast pastry.

 There are Hombow and Gyoza on the left, Udon and Soba noodles, 3 Persimmons and an apple.

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)

First Snow in Sapporo

Last night was the first snowfall in Sapporo.  I took these photos walking into work with Bre this morning. The first one is of a side street near our house.  In the distance is a fence that surrounds the racetrack.  There are horse races there, though probably not any more this year now that it has snowed.

 There were a few hardy/foolhardy bikers out.  Biking in the snow looks difficult.

 There was a gust of wind that blew some of the snow off the trees as I took this photo.

 This is looking the other direction down the same lane of poplar trees.  The mountains to the West of the city look very impressive with the telephoto lens.

 The sheep are normally lying down and resting in the morning when we walk by.  Today they were all standing to avoid the snow.  I hope they get some place more sheltered to stay when the snow gets deep.

 Here is another gust of wind blowing the snow off the trees.

 This is my favorite photo of the day, perhaps my favorite photo of the whole time I've been in Sapporo.  The lighting, the composition, the little bit of snow in the air, I think this photo is great.

 All the bikes that were left outside now look like this.  Bre and I left our bikes under the covered bike storage area at our apartment.

 Here is Bre all bundled up for the cold and the snow.

 This is the main city hospital.  It is just to the south of us.  It looks like any big hospital from the outside.

 Looking at the size of that snow plow I would say that Sapporo does prepare for snow.