The Bicycle Orphans of Sapporo

When the first snowfall hit, it seemed that most people stopped riding their bikes. This makes sense because it was icy and slippery through the snowy months, but the boggling part is that people just flat stop riding. They don't bring their bike home, pack it away nicely for the winter and wait for clear streets to ride on again. No, they just leave their bike wherever they were the night of the first big snowfall. The result is hundreds of bikes parked along the sides of sidewalks that get covered by the snowplows as they clean the streets.

I can imagine that more than a few snowblower operators through the winter have the unfortunate experience of munching a hidden bike while trying to clear a massive pile of snow from in front of their building. And it has been strangely sad to watch the snowbanks melt back and lonely bikes emerge from the shrinking mound.

Recently, as more and more bikes have been appearing, notes have been taped to the seats of many of them. Of course, being the illiterate imbecile that I am here, I can't read the kanji that is scrawled on the notes, however it seems that the notes are used to determine if someone is coming back for the bike or if it has become one of the hundreds of orphaned bikes of Sapporo. The city periodically collects these orphaned bikes, I am sure in part to clear the sidewalks to allow pedestrian passage.

Today the city, in partnership with the University Co-Op, hosted a bike redistribution for the foreign students at Hokudai. So it seems, that the orphaned bikes will have a home after all. Shawn and I went down to the bike distribution to adopt a ride for him for the upcoming summer. Here are a couple of pics from the event.



The ironic part of this bike abandonment and redistribution, is that they rigorously track the identification numbers of the bikes. Each bike is liscenced with the police and if you are stopped (an occurance which is unusually common for foreigners - they should maybe check us for cockroaches while they are at it) without your papers or without the records in order with the police, you can be charged with stealing the bike. Yes, that's right, charged with stealing the bike that was recently hauled out of a snowbank and given away to keep it from ending up in a landfill. So I guess the lesson here is, don't go cutting out the middle man and just help yourself to the orphaned bikes. When the snow melts in the spring, wait until you can fill out multiple copies of paperwork to get the bike from the snowbank.

St Patty's Day

We spent St. Patrick's Day with friends listening to live blues. St. Patricks Day doesn't really have the same (or any for that matter) atmosphere here, but we got together with some other foreigners to create our own.

We went to a great spot in Sapporo called Buddy Buddy With the Door. It is the sister pub to our favorite hang out, the Famous Door. Both spots serve good food, have plenty of international beer and are styled in New Orleans fasion.

The stage that the band plays from is on the second floor, on what is designed to look like a small second story balcony that could have been plucked right out of Bourbon street. It is all set in an old building that has loose floorboards that shift your chair when the staff walks behind you, adding to the ambiance. The band was a bunch of local musicians and they lit the place up for 3 long sets before turning in their instruments for a plate of gumbo and settling in at a table with other local folks.

Here is a photo of Shawn chatting with an American friend while the band plays above. It was a nice night with good company and good music. We will definately visit this place again when they have live music again.

Spring Anticipation

The snow is melting fast in Sapporo and people's focus has shifted even faster. Images and displays of sakura (Japanese cherry blossoms) are now everywhere you turn. Grocery stores feature sakura specials, tea shops are selling their seasonal sakura blends and the convenience stores have specially packaged junk food with blossoms on the packages.

The Japanese fascination with the cherry blossom is seated in the short duration of the blossoms (they bloom for only 2 weeks), representing the delicacy of nature and life. The geography of the country dictates that trees in the south begin blooming around now and the blooming continues in a wave that moves northward through the country, finally ending here in Hokkaido some time in May.

Blossom viewing is so culturally important that there is a specific word for the act of cherry-blossom-viewing, "o-hanami". In true Japanese style, even natural phenomena like tree blooming is carefully scheduled and regulated. The Japanese meterological society is tasked with the all important job of making predictions of precicely when the blossoms will emgere (these forecasts are called sakura zensen). Now, I don't mean that this agency makes a guess at whether the blossoms will be early or late in a given year, or make predictions for major centers only - they actually forecast the day that the first blossom will emerge in every city in Japan. They use some kind of complicated system using winter temeratures, precipitation and probably a touch of Japanese intuition. Their predictions are surprisingly accurate and are used by cities to schedule and plan festivals and for families to book holiday time to go to o-hanami. It is taken so seriously that a couple of years ago the meterological agency made an official apology to the entire country when their initial predictions were off by a couple of days because of what they called a "computer error".

The "blossom front" moves northward at a rate of up to 30 km per day in some areas. People in all major cities are employed to observe the blossom status in specially selected locations and on particular "indicator trees". Their job is to go to the tree in the morning and note the status of the tip of the branches so that the "blossom status" of that city can be accurately catalogued.

Although it will still be a while for us to wait for o-hanami in Sapporo, we will soon take a short vacation to see my mom and sister in Kyoto at the end of the month. Based on the 2008 sakura zensen (you can see the website here) we will be there very close to the time that they are forecasting the first blossoms (called kaika). We will definately be there too early to see the full blooming (called mankai), but we hope that we will be lucky enough to see a small show. Kyoto is said to have some of the most beautiful spots to see sakura in all of Japan.





We will be sure to get lots of photos of the sakura once it arrives here in Sapporo - until then, here are a couple of shots that I took with my keitai (cell phone - so Japanese... I know) of the displays in the shops. And to close, Haiku by Masuo Basho.

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!

Honto Bar

Last Saturday night we met some friends at our regular hang out (we are now Norm and Cliffy to this Cheers - maybe not so much of a permanent fixture, but we get welcome hello's from all of the staff when we arrive, even the cook comes out to say hello). We had dinner and some laughs then a few of us decided we wanted to listen to some live music down the street.


I may have mentioned this place in previous posts, as we have been there before. It is a tiny little postage stamp of a place, smaller than most small coffee shops at home. Despite that, they manage to cram a full 10 piece band into one side while customer line the opposite wall. The owner dresses the waitresses (cute young women of course) in all kinds of ridiculous theme outfits. The last time that we were there was around Christmas and there were three waitresses dressed in naughty Mrs. Clause outfits. On top of having to wear these silly get-ups, they were expected to take orders, bartend, serve drinks and food, hand calculate bills, and on top of that, pay close attention to the song that the band was playing and drop everything that they were doing and get to the back up microphone when it was their song to sing back up on! This time the santa outfits were in storage and it was red hot bunny time. This poor girl looked terrified most of the time.


The horrific conditions of the wait staff aside, this place really rocks when the band it playing. You can't beat having to ask the sax player to back up so that you can squeeze by to get to the bathroom. They take requests and play all kinds of rockin' tunes from the 50's and 60's. And even with the cramped conditions, they will shuffle around and make just enough room for us to dance in the aisle if the mood hits. The only downfall is that the owner (same guy who chooses the staff uniforms...) insists on singing lead vocals and seems oblivious to the fact that he doesn't speak enough english to sing Elvis Presley and that most of his hired musical talent all have a better singing voice than him. Nevertheless, it is a fun place so we headed there last weekend after dinner.

This place is only open on Saturdays in the winter and is generally pretty busy. When we arrived, people shuffled around and made room for us in the few empty chairs that were left. Strangely, there was a Japanese man dancing (normally if anyone dances it is the Brazilians, never the Japanese). We ordered a round of g&t and sat back to enjoy the chaos.

We weren't two sips into our drinks when the Japanese dancing man came over to our table. Seems that he had taken a shine to one of our crowd and wanted a dance (no wait... I should say demanded a dance). So he took Shawn by the hand and pulled him up on the dance floor. As you can imagine, the rest of us were falling off our chairs in hysterics. The guy (who was probably no bigger than me) insisted on leading and spun and twirled Shawn around. When Shawn wasn't paying close enough attention, the guy would spin him then tap his own cheeck as if to say "when I spin you, make eye contact with me". Shawn of course, isn't used to someone else leading (let alone dancing hand in hand with a tiny little dude!), and when he missed a couple of cues he got a little slap on the cheek - this is not a joke! The guy actually slapped him on the cheek! Here is some of the evidence I could gather between fits of laughter.



Taking those photos was no easy task. For one thing I could hardly see because I was crying big fat crocodile tears of laughter, but also because the Japanese man beside me kept putting his hand in front of my camera and telling me "dame, dame" (=stop!). When it was all over I asked the guy beside me why he didn't want me to take photos. He told me that the man, who had an obvious crush on Shawn, was very famous and that it is bad for anyone to take photos of him doing such things. Right on! Scandal!

The rest of the evening progressed without quite so much excitement, although the man continually kept coming over to our table and putting his hand on the back of Shawn's chair or pulling a chair up beside him and gazing intently. We finally left the bar and were saying goodnight to our friends on the street when we saw that Shawn's buddy was on the move and following us out. We ran into the street and dove into the back of the nearest cab and giggled the rest of the way home.