what do you see?

Just to report what I think is the first snow of the season in Sapporo - the top of one of the ski-slopes visible from our place had quite a dusting this morning.

Well nothing so controversial today. Just that I now have a great definition for a dragon, thanks to one of my students' t-shirts today:

I don't want to make any accusations, but we're starting to get a little annoyed at the *ahem* random customs checking on re-entering Japan...it's just a little strange that out of the hundreds of (mostly Japanese) people coming off a flight, we always seem to be singled out for luggage checks, all our careful practiced packing getting messed up in the process.

Actually, there is an amusing side to the checks in Japan - the Scrapbook. Every Japanese customs officer's best friend, this is an amazingly extensive but slightly homemade-looking directory of prohibited items that is invariably reached for after the usual small talk about jobs, how long we've stayed in Japan and so on. A typical exchange is something like:

officer: "Do you have any....swords?!" (flicks to swords page)
us: "Nope"
officer:"Mushrooms?!" (turns to pages of quite fascinating mushrooms, most of which we never knew existed).
us: "Of course not"
officer (getting desperate): "Pornography?!!" (whips open page of photocopied, censored naughty magazine covers)
us (suppressing sniggers): "None"

Yesterday, the officer in question seemed convinced we had either LSD or crystal-meth, as he lingered for a while over these pages, stabbing the pictures with a chubby finger and looking us with a wry, questioning smile.

I'm always tempted to play dumb and say loudly "No thanks, we're not interested!" but haven't summoned the nerve yet...

Well we're back. And after a few days of tropical warmth, Sapporo has it's coldest day of the season so far...it's not even 9 degrees C yet and something tells me it's not even going to make it :-(

By the way, we're going away from tomorrow 'til next Monday, so there'll most likely be a gap in the posting. I'm sure you'll miss me!

Ah, the sour stench of corruption in the afternoon, it's almost enough to put me off my fizzy cola bottles but I thought I'd share something that my attention was drawn to today: this year's "Corruption Perceptions" report, showing how corrupt various countries are regarded as being.
I'm (fairly) proud to see the UK in joint 11th, ahead of the USA at 17 and Japan at 21 (!). Hong Kong is doing well at 15, which is nice.

We went to a new international food shop called "Jupiter" today (in Esta B1F) - recommended by Miwako I should add. It has some good stuff, including a decent amount of pasta (not only spaghetti as many shops here tend to).

There are some pictures from the E-Square Niseko trip on the E-Square site now - follow this link.
More will be added during the coming few days, so please check back!

And with those two banal pieces of information I'll sign off.

Separated at birth...? Paul Daniels and Iwakura Tomomi, a Japanese statesman who played an important part in the Meiji Restoration.

Well I spent an interesting Sunday/Monday in the Niseko area with E-Square - our first school trip. We ate some famous mushroom soup, visited some famous toilets (<-Japanese link, but basically these toilets cost 100 million yen to build in the late 80s when there was a lot of money being thrown around in Japan. They include a 3 million yen automatic grand piano, marble walls etc. Now they look a little dated and no better than average roadside toilets really. The taps are not even automatic!), filled our bottles with natural mineral water from a spring, saw some beautiful autumn leaves and spectacular scenery, went to a nice onsen and enjoyed a lot of food, drink and conversation (not to mention the trampoline!).
A view from the look out point at Shinsennuma.

Mysterious. A large ferris wheel has appeared in the city, and is clearly visible from our balcony. It seems to be somewhere near Mitsukoshi, must be in Odori Park. What are they up to now...?

OK, now that I've collected the dry cleaning and settled down with a cup of tea, I've thought of something that happened the other day. Maybe not that witty but I'm getting desperate here.
I went into a convenience store on the way home, wanting to send a fax. I couldn't see the required machine so I asked the girl behind the counter if they had a fax machine (in what I'd hope was adequate Japanese). She looked at me blankly for a second, then reached behind her, produced a pack of cigarettes and showed it to me with a quizzical expression on her face. Fax machine -> cigarettes? It left me wondering if perhaps Japan has adopted the British-English slang as the casual word for tobacco...

I've been getting a lot of proofreading work recently, which has kept me very busy on top of my other stuff. So there honestly is nothing much else to say. I wish I could think of some kind of witty anecdotes but alas.... Anyway, it's got a lot colder recently which is something. The leaves are subtly starting to change on a few trees and occassionally the smell of kerosene asails my nostrils in narrow back streets in the evenings as people start to fire up their stoves for the first time. We're not at that stage yet, but I think in the next couple of weeks perhaps.

Well failing anything else, here's a picture of my lunch today, courtesy of Lawson: