what do you see?

Sorry, I almost forgot about blogging! Unforgivable I know. But I really don't have much to say...I'll try and do some more pictures soon as they seem popular, and Colin thought it was a good idea too.

Yay, road safety rubbish bags!! The main writing translates roughly as "Traffic safety begins at home".



(compliments of the Sapporo City Traffic Safety Exercise Implementation Committee)

PS: SJT has started the ball rolling, so please leave your comments on the possible meaning of this!!

In order not to end up wasting my time today, I actually Made A List! Here it is:

Well, we'd started to get that Autumnal chilly feeling on odd occasions recently, but then yesterday was actually hot again. We had to abort our planned walk down the river to Makomanai Park, and ended up just hanging around Nakajima Park instead, which was good enough for us in our recent slightly torpid state (a product of too many - unasked for - days off I think). There was a big flea (or is it "free") market on which we browsed cursorily, and people were making the most of the boats for one of the last times perhaps.
Today is a nice day, sunny but with what is almost a chill to the breeze. It feels refreshing to feel the seasons changing. Then again, I'm all for autumn coming but unfortunately tradition has it that it will then be followed by winter, which I don't want to think about really. Memories of the last ones are too fresh!

Nice skies (but bear in mind that these sunsets happened just around 6pm. The planned introduction of Daylight Savings can't come fast enough, I tell you)


Sunset tonight


...and a few days ago

Well, perhaps unwisely I couldn't stop listening to the match last night, and ended up going to bed after 2am having heard the slightly strange end to an amazing match. Although England had definitely won it, the rules said the match couldn't just be ended (as one of the test match special commentators said "It's cricket....you can't just end a match because you want to!") but had to play on until the correct number of overs had been bowled...Hence, they had to go through the ceremony of having to take the 10-minute interval and letting the Aussies come in to bat, before "bad light" was called. Good stuff! To quote another commentator, "that's why cricket is not really The New Football, it's still dear old cricket". Enough to warm the heart of any Englishman, especially one so far from home.

England 177-5 with only a few hours left to go...

I want to say how happy I am to be celebrating 6 years with Christine today!
We went to Nopporo Forest Park (shinrinkoen) for a walk and picnic lunch, then after coming home for a short rest went out to dinner to Yoshimi (in Parco), pegged as "non-genre cuisine". We had their monthly set dinner which was really good, with 8 different mini-courses including stuff like smoked sea-bream, homemade foccaccia with sweet-potato gnocchi, roast duck medallions, california rolls, pumpkin icecream...

And to make things even better, England are actually ahead as they start their second innings...I'm listening live on the BBC at the moment...

Well it really was a damp squib after all. It's windy and rainy today though, but quite warm and humid as always after one of these storms comes through.

The typhoon moved on from Kyushu and is sneaking up the back of Japan as it did last year, ready to hit Hokkaido from behind...it's getting weaker and moving quicker so I'm sure it won't be too bad by the time it gets here. But it's raining a lot already and I have to go out and get soaked very soon...

We're on the downward slope towards winter now. Evenings are definitely cooler, which is nice actually, and days are a few degrees less warm too.
There's a big typhoon hitting Kyushu at the moment, which looks forecast to make its way up here in a couple more days. I'm sure it won't be as bad as the big one last year (see the September 2004 archives and scroll down a bit) or anything as terrible as Katrina in the States, but still it looks quite powerful...

By the way, do you know what happens when capybaras turn bad...?

I played park golf on Wednesday with my dear ladies group (AKA "the Karaoke Group") somewhere out in Ishikari city. Park Golf is a Hokkaido-born summer sport (a bit like pitch-and-putt in England). The holes are anything from 30-100m long, and you use a club with a big head and quite a large heavy plastic ball. It's very popular with older people but it's fun for anyone I reckon.


...something like this