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!
