what do you see?

On Saturday we "climbed" Maruyama - it's only a small mountain, well perhaps it should officially be called a hill if you use the 1000-foot rule...but anyway, we climbed it.

This is another place with a reconstruction in miniature of the 88-temple pilgrimage on Shikoku. Each of the 88 temples is represented by a small group of jizo statues, adorned with the usual red caps and bibs. This made it feel a little more like the older parts of Japan we used to explore.

There was still quite a bit of snow on the path in places, which made things interesting too.







From the top there's a very good view of almost the whole of Sapporo city:

Sorry if this post sounds a little ranty, but I've had another run in with the law...well kind of. Let me explain - the police have really been out in force recently, doing extra cyclist monitoring ...and checking up on foreigners it seems. So once again I was made to feel like a criminal on my way home from an honest day's work. A police cruiser (a normal one fortunately, not some kind of jalopy as shown in the picture to the right) slid by as I was waiting at the traffic light around 8pm the other night, and pulled in to the curb a few yards up the road. I got paranoid that they were watching me, so was careful not to jaywalk, and waited for the light to change. Then I cut down some back streets and emerged a block from our building - only to see the same car turn the corner and head for me. I knew exactly what was coming next, as they slowed down, rolled down the windows and asked me to stop.

After a little bit of usual small-talk (what country are you from? etc.), and wanting to get home for dinner, I decided to pre-empt them and ask if they wanted to see my foreigner registration card, before they got round to asking for it. They looked at it and wrote down some details as usual.

Anyway, this irks me - how can they just stop someone for no reason on the street? Well, according to the law, they can't - if you're a Japanese citizen. A foreigner on the other hand, is subject to different laws (as Debito says here)

So (once I had the card back!) I asked them why they were doing this:
Friendly policeman who had been to London once: Oh this is usual, we often patrol around to see if there are any suspicious people [implying I'm suspicious...because....?] after dark, and ask them some questions.
Me: Just foreigners?
F.P. [hurriedly] : Oh no no! Many Japanese people too.
Me [not believing this, due to the law I mentioned above] : Oh I see
F.P. [undoing his argument]: Yes - and there are more and more Chinese people overstaying their visas recently...

I should stop there! Sorry if this is too controversial.

Keep reloading the page to see a list of totally random but plausible band names. First time I tried I got:

On a slightly different note, I need to extend my apologies to the customs guy at New Chitose airport, for inadvertantly trapping his fingers in our suitcase. It was an accident, really! You see, in order to get the case to open, it helps to push down on the lid after unlatching it. I didn't notice he was helpfully trying to open it himself and already had his fingertips in...

Well, once again I can say "we're back"! From where? Hong Kong! Again.
This time we stayed in Kowloon for the first time, which was good. The view from the waterfront looking at Hong Kong island is really, but apart from that I think I still prefer to be on the island.
We spent a lot of time walking around looking at stuff, getting very hot and drinking lots of water (how's that for a detailed description!); a very welcome change from the screamingly harsh conditions here (which by the way are no better yet it's -5C tonight and we had fresh snow yesterday). And eating of course! I think we're starting to get a reputation for basing our travel around food...oh well, if anyone ever needs any restaurant recommendations, feel free to ask!

One thing we hadn't seen before was the Avenue of Stars, where you can see handprints of famous Hong Kong actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-Fat etc.) On April 1st, there was a big event held there to commemorate the death of Leslie Cheung, three years ago.

(if you want to know more about him, you could do worse than to ask Miwako!)

That's all for now, I might post some more pics later.