Public Address

Last night we attended a meeting of the Hokkaido Canada Society (see their website here). Shawn was invited to attend as a guest speaker at the dinner meeting. The society is a group that meets to facilitate exchanges between Canada and Hokkaido and they act as an honorary consulate in Sapporo to provide services for Canadians within Hokkaido.

The evening started with a demonstration by a French-Canadian guy who lives in Sapporo and owns a maple syrup shop and cafe here. He and his wife showed the crowd how to use Canadian maple syrup in a nice salad dressing. His demo was followed by the chef from the hotel who demonstrated making a second type of dressing that also featured maple syrup. Both types were distributed to the tables for us to try on our meal.
Sauce demo #1.
Sauce demo #2.

Dinner was lovely and well presented. We ate delicous Candian Atlantic salmon, pumpkin soup, breaded pork and finished it all off with maple ice cream and coffee.


After dinner the "new members" (this include me, Shawn and another Canadian guy who lives in Sapporo and owns an English school) stood up and introduced themselves. Shawn was the last introduction which led directly into his speech. He had been asked to come and tell the society about Canadian Dragon Boating. Not surprisingly, he did a fantastic job and spoke clearly and slowly enough for everyone to follow. He also passed out hand-outs to the crowd with photos of the sport and a short history. Unfortunately he couldn't use power point and had to do the whole thing talking only - I think that is a much more difficult way to address a crowd, especially a crowd of non-English speakers. Nonetheless, he was a fantastic speaker and the society members were all impressed and ready to join a dragon boat team when he was through!