Burning Arrows

Happy 2008 Everyone!

In Japan, the new year celebration is the big annual event and we did our best to take part although we weren't hanging out with Japanese people so we had to improvise. A few nights ago a friend introduced us to a German pub. The pub is ironically run by an American who cooks really authentic German food and serves really great beer. The beer is from a nearby microbrewery (run by the same guy) who boasts their own talented german beer engineer who attends the pub and introduces each handcarfted ale in Japanese to a nearly passed out crowd (seems that the Japanese fake beer is more their style). This pub was having a new year's eve party and since we didn't have plans, we thought we would go there for dinner and a pint before heading to a shrine to ring in the new year - literally.

Dinner was excellent and the beer of choice was a limited edition ice bock (they freeze the bock beer - bock is a strong flavoured 9% alc beer - and skim off the ice to concentrate the beer and alc.). The beer was way too tasty and at 13% it was a good thing that there were only a couple of glasses per person. The owner was short staffed for the night and we were all given glasses and told which taps had which beer and the night was "self-serve". Crazy - the guy beside us was sending his 7 year old up to the kegs to pour his beer! We got a chance to have turkey (well, Shawn did at least as he had the very last order left in the kitchen) so that was a rare treat too.


After dinner we took the subway back in search of a shinto shrine where Japanese people go to greet the new year. They do this in a couple of ways. One thing that some people do (we have learned that the "Japanese traditions" that are supposed to be very strict are actually very plastic and dependant on the region, because Hokkaido is so recently colonized, there is an interesting mix of traditions here dependant on the region of origin) is to "burn an arrow" at the shrine. The arrow was traditionally burned on the new year and replaced with a new one, a symbol of renewal. Our understanding is that some people burn other things now.

My attempts to convince Shawn to burn his slippers that he has loved nearly to complete destruction were futile. He insisted that he can't burn them until he has a replacement and given what we have seen here, we won't find size 13 slippers in Japan anytime soon. Hint hint Auntie M!! Instead, we decided to burn a rolled sheet of paper on which we wrote something about 2007 that we wanted to renew or something that we planned to do differently. On reflection, I think that it was a worthwhile excersise and may become part of our regular new years tradition. In the end, we were in the wrong area of town and didn't find the shrine, so we came back to our apartment, played auld lang syne, popped the cork on a mini champagne and burned our notes.


Another thing that is done at the shrine is the bell is rung 108 times. This is meant to sybolize the 108 earthly desires. I am curious to see the list - 108 is an interesting number. I am not sure what exactly ringing the bell is supposed to do about these desires, but it probably has something to do with getting the attention of the shinto gods. It seems that they have a busier social calendar than most gods and aren't always just sitting above the shrine waiting for a whiny human to come along and say a prayer - you have to make noise before praying to get their attention. We were really hoping to get a chance to ring the bell, but since we didn't this year, we will have to find a place to do it next year.

On the first we took a look at a map and decided to go the "easy" route and go to a temple that was big and easy to find. It seems that we weren't the only people who had this idea. Here is a photo of the crowd lined up to get into the shrine. This was basically how crowded it was right from the subway and along the 6 blocks or so it took to walk to the steps. Once inside we bought our fortune for the coming year (the last place we did this at there was an english version - this time, we had no idea what our fortune was.... I guess that can be a good thing). If your fortune is bad, you are supposed to tie it and leave it at the shrine for the monks to burn. Since we weren't sure what ours was, we thought it would be best (and more fun) to tie it and leave it. Here is Shawn tying his in a tree, and I tied mine on the rack provided.












We also purchased our arrows for next year while we were at the shrine. They were expensive, but it will be fun to burn them one year from now. There were all sorts of trinkets for sale inside the shrine and with the prices that they were going for, it seems that the shrine uses the new year as their annual fundraising event. As we left the shrine we walked past rows and rows of food vendors, hot sake carts and cotton candy. Here is a photo of one of the snack carts - grilled whole squid, steamed snails (big ones) and..... corn? Overall, it was more of a carnival atmosphere than a religious experience, but well worth the cold toes and hour of standing in the crowd to see it.

So goodbye 2007 - Hello 2008. In the coming year, I resolve to learn to speak more Japanese (I imagine that if I don't, it will be a tortuous year).

Flag Football in the Snow

The day before Christmas Eve, Shawn and I went with one of the students from my lab to play in a flag football tourney. The catch, of course, was that it is in the snow. I was a bit cold watching the first game of the day, but once the sun came out it was nice.

The event was fully sponsored by some meat company in town so they put on a bit spread of grilled noodles and marinated lamb BBQ (they call it gengis kahn). So we spent the day standing around in the snow, eating delicious food and in the end Shawn played 5 games and their team (the Gamblers - click to link to the team website) ended up winning the whole event with a narrow win over a high school team. As you could imagine, it was nail-biting good fun! Here is a picture of the lamb BBQ guy. He was cooking practically all day.

The games were essentially what we would see at home. Same rules, high fives on a good pass, teams playing up and allowing the girls to make incredible tape to tape touchdown runs. The only difference (and one that Shawn and I giggled at each time it happened) is that after the game the teams come together and line up at centre facing one another. The referee stands between them and reads out the score and acknoleges the winner. The instead of three cheers, of shaking hands, the teams bow to one another. It definately added a Japanese flavour to an otherwise north american day. Here is a photo of the Gamblers bowing to their opposition after a game.

We were the only white people at the event and there were many high school aged students in attendance. This made us the target of many Hello's followed by uproarious laughter (apparently speaking English to white people shows how tough you are to your friends). It also made Shawn the talk of the event. He played quaterback most of the time and I overheard the words "CFL" and "bery stlong" often when he was out playing. The other teams would set up for defence and play rock paper scissors to see who had to defend the foreign guy. As a side note, rock paper scissors is a common way that Japanese people decide all sorts of things like who has to cook dinner, who gets the last bowl of rice, or who has to read the mail for the annoying foreign researcher who can't even read her own mail.

Christmas in Nihon

For both Shawn and I, this is the first Christmas we will spend outside of the comfy border of Canada. Shawn mentioned that to me the other night over dinner. I hadn't really thought about it I guess, but now that it is on my mind, it feels strange and wrong. Despite being so far away, there is still a festive'ish atmosphere here because the big new year celebration is coming soon.

One thing that happens at the end of the year here is a "year end party". They call it a boonenkai and it usually involves a big night of drinking with workmates. Most office groups head out on a sort of pub crawl in the big nightlife district in Sapporo. Our lab decided to go to an onsen resort on the outskirts of town called Jozankei (this is the place that I went to for a conference and blogged about in Fall Spectacle)

It was nice to return to this hotel without having conference talks to attend and while there are fewer other guests in the hotel (we pretty much had the place to ourselves). It has a great waterpark in the basement and 4 different onsens - all are beautiful. Shawn came with us and he got his first tast of onsen. Here is a photo of him in his yukata. These are provided in the rooms so that the guests can spend the weekend lounging in Japanese wear (and they do - they wear this to and from onsen, to dinner, to breakfast - everything).


After returning from Jozankei, we stopped in at our favorite watering hole for a drink and ran into a bunch of friends there. They were celebrating a birthday and invited us to come along to karaoke with them. It was late, and we had to work the next day, but who can resist karaoke? So here are a couple photos of Shawn and I belting it out in the karaoke box. I have to admit that it is more fun than I anticipated. You don't sing in front of a big room of strangers, you get a small booth for you and your friends, access to any songs you want, all you can eat snacks and drinks and a server who brings it all to you - pretty good for 5 bucks an hour).



This weekend we will go to another boonenkai. This one will be mostly foreigners who are working or studying at the university, so although we are calling it a boonenkai, it will be more of a Christmas party. We will do a gift exchange and maybe sing some Christmas carols so it should be fun. On Christmas eve, we have a reservation for dinner at a pub (OK, yes, our favorite pub, again) where they will serve turkey and homemade eggnog. I can't wait for turkey especially since I missed out on Thanskgiving. Christmas dinner will be spent with a couple of friends that Shawn works with. They are both from New Zealand and are married to Japanese women. They both have young children so we will get our requisite dose of oversugared children at Christmas.

So we have cobbled together a makeshift Christmas here in Japan. It will be fun and keep us busy. We didn't get around to sending Christmas cards this year - so I will take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Japanese Snowmobile Guide

I am sure that from the title of this blog, some of the readers can make an educated guess at what the latest news from us is. Yup - Shawn has a job in Sapporo as a snowmobile guide. He went for an interview today and charmed the pants off the Japanese owner. The company is called Snowmobile Land Sapporo.

I don't think that Shawn anticipated having a job so soon, but this will be more like play time than a job for him. We met a Canadian english teacher at our favorite pub a couple of weeks ago who had been a snowmobile guide last year. We got out our notebooks and squeezed every bit of information that we could from the guy in case we never ran into him again (and so far we haven't). From there Shawn started searching companies online and sending emails. After the last big snowfall, he made the public transit trek across town to Snowmobile Land Sapporo and walked in and told them that he wanted a job and was ready to work. The owner was a bit reluctant to hire another foreigner (there apparently have been problems in the past) but we, like the owner, have all been a victim of Shawn's amazing charisma and there he is now - working in Japan.

We will post more details as they materialize. Anyone interested in a snowmobile excursion to Japan??? I know a really cool English speaking tour guide!

Biking in the Snow

We finally have snow in Sapporo. A few nights ago Shawn and I went for dinner with an American friend who will be finishing up her research (biomedical engineering) next week and heading back to the US. While filling our bellies with delicious kaiten sushi, the snow started to fall and we emerged from the station to a beautiful, fat crunchy blanket of white covering the city. Shawn and I have been waiting patiently for the snow (=yuki) to arrive, we have been told that it is late this year.

Most people, us included, rode bikes to work that morning so were stuck with a bike to ride home on in the snow. This is a fun experience and when the snow is fresh and crunchy (like the kind that is good for making snowballs and snowmen) then the bike has great traction and is no problem to ride. At the top is a photo of our bikes outside a Japanese pub (of course we stopped for a pint on our way home). And here is a photo of Shawn riding in the snow (poor quality - sorry).

The effective traction that fresh snow affords isn't the case the next morning once the snow is hard and icy however. Which reminds me that I have learned a load of new things about riding bikes that I wasn't aware of before. I have been meaning to share them, so this seems like an appropriate time.

1. In Japan, locking your back tire is simply an indication that the bike doesn't have a flat tire or faulty chain and has therefore hasn't been abandoned. Bike theives would have a heyday here!
2. When riding your bike on wet black ice, it is best to avoid any form of turning or stopping (the streets and sidewalks here have been covered with black ice for about 2 weeks now and they don't use salt or gravel).
3. Talking on a cell phone while driving a car in Japan is illegal. Riding your bike with an umbrella in one hand while writing a text message on your cell phone with the other is commonplace. Stay out of the way of these guys, they WILL mow you over.
4. When riding in the winter, never, ever, ever forget your gloves in the morning.

It is nice to have snow now, and it reminds me of home. One thing that I have definately felt the absence of here is breakfast. Japanese breakfast is usually leftover dinner from the night before and includes fish and rice. A common breakfast here is leftover rice with a raw egg on top and a splash of soy sauce. I can hardly bring myself to look at that in the morning let alone eat it. Another small victory this weekend was the discovery of a relatively inexpensive import grocery store where we found.... real salsa!!!

The store was a bit random in the items it had, so we couldn't find everything that we have been craving but here is a photo of a few of the gems that we were able to acquire. TimTam's are a chocolate cookie from Australia (possibly one of the best sotre-bought cookies in the world), salsa, pickles, real cheese and Ferrero Rocher (having this on our shelf helps to make it look like Christmas is around the corner!).

These groceries laid the foundation for a fantastic Sunday brunch (shown here). Shawn and I slept late and then he made me a huge omlette with real salsa on it. I had a nice cup of coffee (coffee from most cafe's here is sour and way too strong - homemade coffee is tolerable - they also drink a LOT of instant coffee here... yuck!) and he had OJ. Then we took the subway (=chikatetsu) out to a "mountain" on the edge of Sapporo where we had a nice, quiet walk to the top. From there we had a great view of the city covered in fresh snow. I could get used to days like that.

The Land of Vending and Conveni's

We have returned from the last field trip of 2007. The field season was extended by a few weeks because we had to return to one of the sites to do work that was prevented because of fowl weather (see previous blog "Posiedon's Trident" for details). Shawn came along and helped out with the work, it was certainly nice to have someone with me who understands me (both in language and personality) and who is easy to be with. It was fun to watch him interact with the students and to see unique ways in which different people manage to communicate through a language barrier.

The work went well again and we were finished a bit earier than expected. Shawn got a chance to practice his rock dentistry skills and the students learned just how big human feet can be. They had to phone all of the outdoor gear shops in Sapporo on Friday before we left to find the biggest pair of chest waders in Sapporo (there turned out to be only one pair), then drive there to get them for Shawn. Even then they were a touch too small, but Shawn tolerated cold toes and cramped feet without complaint.

The road trip there was fun and Shawn got a chance to see some of the Hokkaido countryside. On the way, we stopped to grab a bite at a highway pull out. Inside there was a nice big washroom and a small area to buy snacks. There were about 10 vending machines along the wall of this place and you could buy virtually everything from them. As an aside, this is not unusual in Japan and at any given location you are likely to be only a block or two away from a vending machine. This one in particular gave us a good laugh. It dipenses "casual frozen foods" 24 hours a day (like a vending machines have a union or something). The machine is full of packets of frozen chicken fingers, fries, octopus balls (a common snack here) etc, then when you put the money in it drops the packet into a microwave that nukes it for you. The food comes out hot and ready to eat. Too funny!

Another thing that is all too common here is convenience stores (called "conbini"). There are a number of different types, but they all have relatively the same things for sale. They sell ready to eat foods like balls of rice wrapped in nori, bento, udon, sandwiches etc. Everything I have tried are edible and not nearly the scary event that eating at 7-11 in North America is; although I have steered clear of the "spaghetti" sandwiches. They also sell all kinds of canned drinks (usually about 25 different types of chilled green tea), wine and beer, chips, magazines and other assorted things that you find in regular convenience stores. It took me a couple of weeks of grabbing a coffee (=small can of horrible sweetened milky coffee) at the conbini before I asked someone why they don't sell hot coffee in these places. Ha! The answer is that they do, but it is cleverly disguised as cold coffee! The hot coffee shelf is beside the cold coffee shelf and looks exactly like a fridge, except instead of chilling the contents it heats them. Sneaky! Here's a photo of the "hot coffee and tea" in a conbini.

The conbini's are certainly convenient and there isn't a time of day or night that you can't go there to buy a snack or drink to tide you over. I was also impressed by the integration of these stores into life here in Japan. All new vehicles and rental cars come with a GPS mapping package that is pre-loaded with locations of 7-11's and Mosburger (their version of McDonald's) so that you can find them easily. Even the paper road maps that you can buy have these things integrated into them. And don't forget mapquest, anything that you look up here can be identified relative to the nearest Seicomart, Lawsons or 7-11!

Office Construction

Shawn and I have settled in a bit and are having a more normal life here in Sapporo. Shawn did a great job of hunting down the extra furniture that we needed and planning a fun filled weekend last weekend.

We started off on Friday night with a visit to the German market in a park downtown. Sapporo's sister city is Munich and as a tribute, they host an outdoor German market every December where you can enjoy German sausage and kraut and a glass of mulled wine. It was nice, and very Christmas-y so felt comfortable. The park is lit up with all kinds of Christmas lights (a welcome surprise here in Japan) and we took walk along the park among the lights. Above is a photo of Shawn and Santa at the market and another of the lights in the park.

The next day, we went with some friends to the Sapporo Dome to watch a soccer match. That was fun and the fans were incredible. You would have thought, by the precision and relentlessness of the cheering that we were watching the final of the world cup - not a regular season division 2 match. To be honest, the quality of the play wasn't quite what I expected, but the fans and the Sapporo Dome were something to see. Here is a photo of the fans, who with impressive collective order and accuracy, spelled out words and sung numerous songs through the whole game.

The security at the Dome was also fun. We attended the game with a seasoned vetran (a postdoc from California) who advised us of what to expect at the game. Knowing our Canadian perspective, he advised us to buy a beer at the grocery store on the way to the game. He also told us that cans weren't allowed inside the Dome. I thought that we would smuggle these beers in... but no. The system is that you are provided as many plastic cups as you need at the security check and helpful security gaurds will assist you in pouring your beer into the provided cups, then sort your recycling for you. And of course, the cups are exactly the right size for one extra large can of beer. Funny!

The next day, Shawn bravely helped me to create a new office space. I have been totally disappointed with the "office" that I was provided with (it was small, crowded, dirty and I was beside the door and the food station where about a dozen students would walk in and out all day long and cook rice and re-heat curry). Needless to say, I wasn't getting much work done and didn't like being there. Shawn and I took matters into our own hands on Sunday and re-organized some boxes that were stored in the research labo and cleaned a corner and made a makeshift office. The room is a little drafty, but at least it is quiet and private and I already feel like I will be more productive here. Above is a photo of me at my previous desk (Shawn was sly and took this without me knowing - I didn't actually want memories of the old office space preserved), and another of Shawn standing on my new desk and covering the hold in the window with a piece of tarp.

Overall, he has been far too good to me and has made me dinner, battled with the washer and washed laundry and sat with me over a glass of wine and tolerated my whine-ing. I don't know what I will do once he has work and no longer has the time to be my full-time mental stability engineer and social co-ordinator. Here is a photo of us enjoying some Australian wine in our living room last night.