Kids - Factory - Kids

On Wednesday morning I went with my host mom back to the Children's Hall to help put on a little Christmas show with music and a flannel board. Impressively, the characters and pictures for the board were all hand made by my mom and a friend and they looked professionally made, some with a front and back and others that had movable parts for dancing. Mostly I just took things on and off the board and made Santa dance.


After that, we were going to go to this Christmas event in Odori Park but on the way decided to stop at Sapporo Factory since I hadn't been there yet. As far as I could tell, it didn't seem to be a factory at all (though maybe there was one somewhere), but a huge multi-building shopping mall. I was really amazed by the niceness of it too. While there, we ate at a pasta restaurant and I checked out what a Japanese Toys R Us looked like (it was almost exactly the same).



After that we walked to Odori Park for that Christmas thing. From what I could tell, it was like a sort of German culture festival with shops set up that were selling various handmade Christmas items and food. In fact after googleing it just now, I found that it is in fact called Munich Christmas Market. So there you go.



In the evening, I joined in for the last cram school class I'll be here for. We played this old Japanese game where one person (my host mom) read chant sort of things from cards and then the rest of us had to try to be the first to grab one of 100 tiles that had the words from the last part of that section of the chant. It was especially challenging because the words on the tiles were written in very stylized old-fashioned writing, but even still I managed to get 3 or 4.



Afterwards, they surprised me with a really nice, hand-drawn, giant card with pictures and notes from everyone in the class. It was a really pleasant surprise. ^_^

Last Sunday in Sapporo

Last Sunday was my last Sunday in Sapporo and was quite eventful. In the morning, I went to the church at the end of the street one last time. We sang familiar Christmas songs in Japanese and I got a translated summary of the message from one of the people there. After the service, I had some good udon with most of the rest of the congregation and talked about stuff.

After that, I went out with my host mom to a children's puppet theater that she had just found out about that morning. Apparently she used to do puppet shows herself so it was rather nostalgic. I even thought it was pretty neat because it was really old fashioned style, with a crank powered record player thing, an accordion, and old marionettes as well as hand puppets. Afterwards I got a picture with the woman who seemed to be in charge who was 79 years old.

From there, we made our way to Susukino to ride the giant Ferris wheel in the middle of the city. It lights up at night and is probably pretty popular, but since we went during the day we were the only ones there. Having checked that off our list, we still had some time to kill before doing what we really came there for so we stopped somewhere to get something to eat. That took up enough time for it to get dark out so that when we went back outside the Christmas lights and illuminations were all turned on throughout Odori Park. I was definitely impressed by the bright colors and large scale of some of the displays. It was hard to get a good picture of it though.

From there we made our way to...

...the concert hall to see Hakase Taro!

Now there's a man whose hair people would pay to touch. He's a famous violinist in Japan and was backed up by seven others playing on piano, cello, guitar, drums, and sometimes flute and saxophone. I had only heard his music previously from my host mom's CD that she plays sometimes in the morning, but after seeing him in concert, I can definitely say I'm a fan. The instrumental music was right up my alley and only got better as the concert went on. The last five songs in a row were all fantastic and I wish I could find more of them on youtube to share here. I couldn't get any pictures in the concert hall or at the puppet show, so you'll just have to watch these videos that I did find instead:

Making Soba

If you wish to make soba from scratch, you must first invent the universe. I didn't go quite that far, but I did make soba noodles with my host parents from powder and water on Saturday. We had a big shiny bowl and mixed up the powder/flour/whatever by hand and added water until it got doughy.



Then split it into two chunks,


kneaded it a bunch,


flattened it out,


folded it, and cut it into noodles that ended up being shorter and more brittle than they were supposed to be.


Then it was just a matter of cooking them up, throwing them in cold water, and then eating them by dipping them in a cup of some sort of flavorful liquid. They were definitely shorter than they were supposed to be, but they still tasted good. And that's about all there is to it!

Natural Curls

The semester is winding down. All I have left are tests and preparation for the end of the semester speech which everyone is doing in front of all the other students and host families next Thursday. If you've been keeping up with my Picasa Web Album pictures, you could probably follow the progression of time by observing the length of my hair, which is now a good deal longer than I usually have it before cutting it. My mom from home wishes I would cut it or at least do something with it, and I'll admit, it probably could use a comb once in a while. My host mom on the other hand has been watching it grow with interest throughout the semester and frequently comments on its thick and curly nature while tossing out theories about how it would grow if I let it get really long.

So with her interest in mind and the boost of energy from being almost done with classes, I had a brilliant idea: stand outside the cafeteria building and charge people 100 yen to touch my hair. I wrote up a sign on the back of a paper and headed over.



It isn't abnormal for people to stand there advertising club events or to hand out packs of tissues with advertisements on them, but paying money to touch someone's hair seemed to be a first. There were quite a lot of double takes as people gave a polite glance only to realize what exactly I was advertising, laugh, and then tap their friends on the shoulder to show them too. Some people asked me why I was doing it, to which I replied "Because it's funny" or "It's a part time job". Others took pictures, which I graciously offered for free. Every laugh and smile was almost as good as getting money. Almost. I wasn't sure if I'd get any money for a while but then it started to trickle in. Four people did it in the 50 minutes or so that I was out there, but the 400 yen and laughs were completely worth it (and I got another 100 yen from Mr. Nagashima when I got back to Kirari).


(thanks to Shutaro for this pic)



On Friday, I fixed up a new sign and was joined by Maggie and Hollande to try it again in Odori. Unfortunately, the majority of people walking around Odori were serious-faced adults who were not amused. We still got a few laughs, but significantly less than at the college and didn't earn any money at all. Perhaps I'll hang onto the sign and try again when we take the trip around Honshu starting at the end of next week.

Scotty Diagus (Concerning Bus Drivers)

I haven't really ridden enough buses in America to know how to compare them, but the Japanese bus drivers are a daily source of amusement for Nick and I on the commute to class. Actually, I think they are probably pretty similar to American bus drivers... But getting to the point, they say (or are supposed to say) "arigatou gozaimasu" ("Thank you very much") to each person as they get off the bus, but more often than not they mumble it beyond recognition. Usually they end up just dropping most of it and catching the end so it sounds like "moss" or "[mumble mumble] masu". Most people would ignore this or think "What did he say?" and then move on with their life, but not us. We make a game out of interpreting the bus drivers' garbled speech. From "getoffmybus" and "arollingstonegathersno-masu" to a duck's quack and things that sound nothing like the original phrase, as was the case the day our driver seemed to say "scotty diagus". There is quite a variety in our daily greetings from the bus drivers. Of course there are a few bus drivers who still enthusiastically and clearly thank everyone but I can only assume they're still new to the job. I also have to wonder how a bus driver's life at home is and whether their wife would grow accustomed to interpreting bus-driver-ese.



Well, at least the bus drivers aren't mean. They just seem very bored and dissatisfied with their jobs, but it's more amusing for us that way.

Maruyama Zoo

Yesterday and during the night it snowed quite a bit, but we still managed to go to Maruyama Zoo (but not Asahiyama Zoo). There's not a whole lot to say about it except that the paths were very slushy and there were a lot of animals there as you would expect. So with that being the case, here are some of the best pictures from the album of 87 that I took today.

The paths were slushy

 

This bird could say "Ohayo" (Good morning), but only that.

  

Be sure to check out the full album for lots more!

Also as a technical note, I tried adding Google AdSense to the blog, even though it's a bit late for it. I just have the ads below each post and as of now they're just empty placeholders until my account gets confirmed. If you want to disable your ad blockers on this site, I'll wave my arms for you. Otherwise I don't really blame you.

いいね！(ii ne!)

My host mom (and Japanese people in general) always says "ii ne!" which basically means "how nice!" and is also the "Like" button on Japanese Facebook. So, often when my host mom says it, she says "ii ne, like on facebook which I don't understand." So a couple weeks ago I made her an "ii ne!" sign that looks like the button on Facebook.



She seemed to like it and since then has been using it in her cram school when someone does something particularly good. Or holding it backwards so it's just a blank blue paper and not saying anything when someone does something bad.

So on that note, here are some things in Japan that deserve an "ii ne!"


Toilets! They have heated seats, large and small flushes, automatic flushing, a butt washing jet (oshiri and bidet), and ours at home even has a faucet above it that runs for a bit after it flushes.


Geo! It's a super cheap rental shop chain and there's a ton of them. If I'm not mistaken, you can rent a DVD for a week for only 100 yen (a bit over $1) as well as CDs, video games, and even manga. There's always a wide selection of movies, including American ones, and CDs, including foreign music and soundtracks from movies, games, and anime.


Driveway and front walkway heating (left)! And a bath monitor (right)! Although most people don't use it because of the power costs, some houses like ours has the ability to heat the driveway and front stairs in order to melt snow. Also there's a thing next to it (this is in the kitchen) that monitors the temperature and level of the bathwater so you can let it fill up and then go turn it off when the alarm beeps.


Video intercom doorbells! These are pretty standard in Japanese houses and allow you to see and talk to whoever rings your doorbell, though they can't see you. This allows you to peek at who it is and decide whether or not you really want to answer the door or not. Most of the time it lets you tell them "I'm here, give me a second," without needing to yell it from the other side of the house.


Vending machines! They're everywhere and often have hot coffee and hot chocolate in addition to the usual cold drinks. Instant noodle vending machines are also quite common. Some places even have cigarette and alcohol vending machines actually and rumor has it that if you go to some places (Akihabara) there are even more interesting vending machines.