what do you see?

There are some really good stories on the university blogs at the moment...the bad luck stories on class 6's site are particularly good, but please drop by and have a read of any of them!

By the way, our regular decadent capitalist lunch was at orizzonte this week (a simply wonderful cosy Italian place we went to for our anniversary last year where they do the most divine pasta darlings). No but seriously it's a nice place with a good lunch set. Although it's not ideal if you're on a tight schedule - I had to bolt down my dessert in half a minute.

This afternoon I've mostly been teaching myself PHP of all things. Ha!

Well things have improved a bit on the Wimbledon front, thanks to Gaora who are showing recorded matches at various points of the day - but apparently only doubles matches...or more accurately women's doubles which include Japanese players (e.g. Ai Sugiyama) but it's better than nothing.

The weather has been really nice today and yesterday - warm, sunny and breezy. Hay fever continues to caress my throat and nose with annoying unwanted tickling fingers, but not too often.

Still warm, but it's not the heat I mind so much at night as the fact that it gets light at about 3:00am here, and I'm continually woken up by noises from crows and mopeds. And of course there's the dreaded hay-fever. Nothing worse than teaching a class with tissue in hand. At one point yesterday I was writing on the blackboard and sneezed so suddenly that my chalk slipped and made a completely unreadable letter 'e'.

By the way, whoever got to my page (and ended up reading Colin's witty comment) after searching for "cif cleaner in eye" - in an emergency it's probably best to call the authorities rather than relying on Google...

I met Christine for lunch at Stanley Market today, which was good as always. We haven't been there for a while, come to think of it not since we went to the real Stanley Market a couple of months ago. Then my first lesson at Y.A.G.
A good class, quite lively students as you might expect. They all had name badges which really helped, I wish all my classes did that actually. And some of them had decided to give themselves fake names, such as Nemo, Hige Blue or Jam...

And it was hot today too, but who cares about that. And I lost my first ever battle of the blogs challenge on Blog Explosion. Quite upsetting that was. I suppose this blog doesn't really have wide appeal unless you know me or are in some way interested in this part of the world. And I'm fed up with the design again, aren't you? If only I had more time...

It seems like the whole world's hot at the moment. Hmm I wonder why? It got up to about 28C in Sapporo, not so bad in the sticks (Chitose) though. On the way back to the station, I walked through that city's "Greenbelt", which is not at all green but could be thought of as a belt in a vague widish-strip-of-paved-land-with-pergolas-and-dried-up-water-features sort of way. It was the time for high school students to be out practicing various activities: badminton, dance routines for the girls and jumping-rope/skipping for the boys.

Chitose is really quite a fascinating city. I thin it has something to do with the faded 70s glory pachinko parlor architecture and eclectic mix of bars, English schools, travel agencies, hip-hop shops and elevator music piped into the empty streets.

So, I heard it's really hot in the UK at the moment? Well don't let it get to you everyone, it's a good thing for Wimbledon isn't it? Ah, Wimbledon! You don't know lucky you are (although I really don't envy the Henmania) - I haven't seen a scrap of it on TV here yet, even on the cable sports channels. I'll have to make do with the video clips on the BBC and hunt down some Pimms...

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there, especially mine (sorry to be biased, but...)!

Not a great picture, but just to show you how it looks when a portable shrine cruises through your neighbourood... 

Today is the last day of the Hokkaido festival, and I'm afraid to say we're quite relieved. The craziness around the station is unbelievable, and not so fun when you're dressed in businesswear and trying to get somewhere on time. Oh no, that makes me sound so serious and capitalist :-{
And it seems like a huge percentage of festivalgoers get lost or parted from loved ones judging by the constant announcements from the police tent.

Anyway, I saw a couple of festival related things today - a smallish portable shrine being carried through Tanuki-koji around lunchtime and a bit later a big procession making its way down the streetcar/tram street and then turning towards the park. Imagine a line of a few hundred people dressed in traditional wear (including a few of those straw hats) most walking but some riding in convertibles, accompanied by a portable shrine and various musicians, proceeding down the middle of a main road (traffic still travelling on it too), stopping occasionally for traffic lights. It's fun to watch, but it feels like there's something a little wrong about these things here in Hokkaido. There's not quite the same depth to things, and always something a little bizarre - above the usual background level of bizarreness.

I think the local part of the festival was happening today - people walking through the streets with a large portable shrine, drums and traditional music. It was difficult to see clearly from 11 floors up, but I think the system is that they walk along as described, then someone clicks some sticks (or claves - another word which I'm relishing the chance of using) and stop outside shops that are displaying a large lantern. At this point they raise some large figure/statue from the shrine and play a recorded song. Then they click the sticks again and continue walking.

They also had men with long plastic poles with them, whose job was to raise the power lines for the shrine to pass safely under. I wonder how they discovered this was necessary...?

Ah the internet, great information provider and biggest distracter of all time. Since I joined Blog Explosion, I keep getting sidetracked surfing peoples sites when I should be vacuuming the door frames or emptying the sink trap or something.

On another note, the Hokkaido festival has started (as of today), so the stalls in the park should be open and selling their wares. We'll probably wait until Thursday to visit though. As I speak I can actually hear some kind of rhythmical drumming and piping from somewhere in the streets below...

I've put a couple of audio samples from last night on my Media page, to give you an idea of how yosakoi sounds if you've never heard it yourself!

A couple of pictures from the Susukino yosakoi soran site tonight. We watched a few teams, until it started raining quite a lot. That added a lot to the atmosphere, it was actually very exciting and interesting to watch. Teams always have a few members waving flags, and some teams have huge flags supported on a very thick bamboo pole. I hadn't realised how heavy they were until I saw someone hoisting one up with a huge effort and then running around in circles doing his best to wave it and yelling to keep his energy and adrenalin up. It was pretty impressive.
I've finally found out more about the background too - I knew that the Yosakoi dance comes from Kochi in Shikoku, but the Hokkaido version adds a traditional Hokkaido folk-song called "Soran bushi" which apparently all teams must include in their music, although the music can be almost any style (some purists don't like this part I think). They also all have to use a certain type of castanet like thing.

They're showing the main Odori parts of Yosakoi on TV at the moment, we'll probably slope off down there a bit later just for a look.

After over three years here in Japan, I'm still not sure whether I agree with the idea of a potato salad sandwich. Isn't it just a bit too much of an overkill on the starch and carbohydrates? You can tell the Atkins Diet never caught on here. Still, I suppose it's more valid as a sandwich than strawberries and cream...

It's 'umid. Feels pretty hot, for Hokkaido. Things are hotting up for Yosakoi Soran 2005, I've seen quite a few big groups in costume around the station and in the park. I think their dancing already in preliminary events. There are a lot of signs up ("W.C." "lost children this way" etc.) in the park too, for the upcoming festival. High jinks!

It's good ol' Japan1, bad old North Korea nil after 28 minutes of the world cup qualifier at the moment...

Two emails I got on my phone today, the sender shall remain anonymous:
"Pug's window is cracked!"
"People watering the pavement!"

I don't think my second post yesterday explained at all. Not in the slightest. I forgot to say that the stalls are for the Sapporo matsuri which is going to be the weekend after next. Yuki mentioned it on Lovely Days too. My karaoke group (the group of ladies that I teach at a karaoke box every fortnight) promised me there'll be candy floss, goldfish scooping and lots of yaki- foods so I'm definitely looking forward to it!

Another really nice warm Wednesday, got up to about 22 or 23C today. That's the good thing about living somewhere where you spend half the year sliding over ice, sloshing through slush or trudging through snow - you really appreciate the other half of the year. People say that living somewhere warm all the time gets really boring (I wouldn't mind trying though).

OK nevermind, I think I know. I found something on the JAL guide to Sapporo - this is the bit that gave it away: "while dozens of stalls selling traditional festival time goods and foodstuffs can be found ... throughout Nakajima Park to the south of the city center."
(the rest of the article is at about the middle of this here page)

Something is definitely afoot in Nakajima Park at the moment - there are lots of numbers taped to the ground along the main path from the station, and now they've strung lights on cables between the trees. Either it's some kind of fiendish ruse to keep us all occupied or there's going to be an "event" soon. Maybe connected to the dreaded Yosakoi Soran dance thingy which is happening this coming weekend. I thought that was only around Odori but you never know. Anyone actually do know? (PS - that's decidedly not good English!)

A lot of people have used the following sentence in their blogs and on their sites recently, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and do so too: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.

There, that's it, said it! I haven't seen it and probably won't though. So I don't know what a sith is but it sounds silly anyway.

By the way, I've been wondering recently why recorded announcements in Japan are always on such heavy rotation? It gets to people too - we've seen a quite a few who walk around reciting the subway or station announcements out loud. It's just not right.

More yakitori and other skewered delights last night at the other branch (south 3 west 2 ish) of the shop we usually go to, which is more north. This branch is a bit older and noisier, but the food seemed almost better. We sat at a table near the back, which unfortunately meant running the entire gauntlet of stares on the way in - still at least it gets it out of people's systems early. The people at the next table had sparrow (suzume) I think.
This blog has entered a new phase of food food and more food related entries. I don't know why that happens. Still, it's better than just weather and flower reports I hope. Speaking of which, it's a really nice day today, lilacs are out in force and the Sapporo flower lily-of-the-valley (suzuran) has appeared quite a lot too.

As planned, we went to the uni festival last night (and met Miwako and her friend there too) . It was great, a very underadvertised event I think, as it's rare to be able to get so many different kinds of international food in one place, or at all actually, in Sapporo. There's a really nice atmosphere there too. I tried some Nepalese curry and rice, some vietnamese deep fried spring rolls and an Arabic chicken and rice dish which I've forgotten the name of...
And actually, today I just went there again on my lunch break and had Bangladeshi curry and bread, Jamaican jerk chicken and a Malaysian pudding. Food!

As Miwako mentioned on her blog yesterday, there's a festival on at the university at the moment - it's an annual one called "Hokudai Sai", run by the Hokkaido University International Student's Association. Lots of good food to buy apparently, and some bands playing, that kind of thing, so I think I'm going to stop by there myself after my classes tomorrow. See you there maybe...