Strangest graveyard I've ever seen and other weird things.

So, weather has been horrible here in Sapporo. Horrible to me anyway. ;)

Fairly steady 30 degrees every day and with surprisingly humid air. This is not the kind of summer weather I like. Pretty much get sweaty by just sitting in a room.

As for what I've been doing... Quite a bit actually.

Friday I was in a little barbeque party and met some new people from one of the english seminars. I ate takoyaki (fried octopus), okonomiyaki and yakisoba.


This is takoyaki. Small dumpling is filled with piece of octopus and laced with sauces and spices.


Okoniyaki is fried on a large pan by yourself (even on restaurants) and can be filled with just about anything. Kind of like crossbreed between pizza and pancakes if you ask me.


Yakisoba looks like this. "Soba" is the name of those thin noodles. Noodles and other incredient are fried on a flat iron skillet and served right after that.

Saturday I went to see percussion (mostly drumming) show and after that we went to that graveyard mentioned in the title. It is very bizarre place, but let me just insert some pictures here:


One of the teams performing with various drumming instruments.




Graveyard with huge row of Moai statues which come equipped with prayer wheels? In a way one could interpret this as a clever way of throwing a little jab at ancient people of Easter Island. After all, buddhism teaches us that we should stop craving for things we don't need. Apparently these people literally worshipped themselves to extinction with excessive production of statues in hopes of gaining status. They destroyed their living envinroment and died out.

Actually that reminds me of modern societies. Although many of us are aware of the consequences of unchecked consumption we can't stop it due to societal inertia and monetary system set up to produce maximum amount of "wealth". Maybe one day we too will serve as examples of short-sighted foolishness to some other people.


On the other side of the road we have Stonehenge replica and huge statue of Buddha. Roadsides are littered with statues from various cultures, including totems of indigenous people of Hokkaido, egyptian statues, chinese temple guardian statues and more.





There was also huge stone bell that I rang (pretty darned loud sound by the way) and enormous temple drum. Unfortunately drum playing was forbidden. :)





Monday I met Robotics laboratory people in HIT and afterwards visited materials laboratory in Hokkaido university and participated in "nomikai" aka drinking party in local barbeque restaurant. My god that was a HOT day... I was so beat after that I just couldn't get to school on tuesday before 12.00.

We ate local barbecue food called "Genghis Khan". Here is one picture grabbed from internet. Basically big pot with vegetables and meat with lots of sauce. After you have eaten the contents you dump pile of udon noodles and simmer them in the sauce. Udon soaks it up and I have to say it's really good.



And tuesday we went into Moerenuma to see strangest park in Sapporo. It was planned wholly by one guy called Isamu Noguchi. This artist put some fountains in the park, couple large hills and some strange pyramid-like structures. We climbed one of the hills (close to 200 stairsteps by the way).







Here is the central piece of this park, The Glass Pyramid. It has restaurant, souvenier shop and resting rooms inside it. And great view from the roof.







I also almost managed to injure myself at one stairway when I stumbled down but luckily Mr. Tsuchida, english seminar teacher caught me. Many thanks to him for that. I was so tired and had a loose shoe on so when I stepped little bit too close to the edge of the stair I was suddenly going down much faster than I had planned! ^^

"Echo room" inside the pyramid. Aqustics were deliberately set up to produce alot of reflections.


Seminar students watching down, looking at "Echo room" from upper floors.

We also watched a fountain show in the evening when it was getting darker which was quite nice, just maybe little too long in that mid part. Total running time was about 30 minutes.




On wednesday there was another barbeque thing, this time outside. I ate some local fishes, including "Tai", which is apparently where word "Omedetai" originates. Omedetai means "happy occasion" or "happy event". Like birthday or some other fortunate thing. This fish is often served on such parties.

And finally today, Thursday, I went to meet people from schools Shogi and Go club. I just barely had time to play one quick match of Shogi and one match of tower game before I had to head to cafeteria to meet some Korean students and teachers. Cafeteria food was quite interesting today, they offered seaweed rolls with various free choice toppings (chicken, fish, vegetables, strawberries, rice etc). I really liked it, I just think nori (seaweed) paper is little bit too tough so you have to chew on it pretty hard. Also met a student from Korea who studies eastern pharmacology (natural medicines and such).

Well, pretty gigantic update. I hope it was ok read for you anyway. Oh, and outside temperatures are finally coming down. Such a relief to me personally...

Good night. o/

Proper update

Phew, it sure is busy here on some days. Bit annoyingly, daily activities have been spread around on all days meaning I haven't had much time to actually rest. And on same time there are still fairly large waiting times, like coming to school on morning and doing something for couple hours and then having to wait till 4 pm for another thing. Before you know, it's evening again and time to hit the sack.

But anyway, let me just unwind this little backlog I developed...

First off, weekend trip to Tomari area on 15th day:

Tomari is area in southern part of Hokkaido, next to sea at west. It has the only nuclear plant in Hokkaido, so I was naturally interested about it.

It turned out there are some other interesting things in there as well. We went to a small local space exploration museum first. Mamoru Mohri is famous astronaut from town of Yoichi where this museum is located.

Best thing we did there was attending little planetarium show, was quite enchanting really. And for some reason I was able to understand quite a bit of that japanese narration. Maybe because I already know quite a bit about astronomy? :) I also bought myself a hat (finally!) and I took few pictures. They even had a 3/4 sized model of Hubble telescope but picture I took from it failed. Oh well, it was still pretty cool.


Me and Mr. Horuichis' seminar group as fake astronauts...


Part of a big memorial stamp collection, there was tons of different kinds. ^^

After that we went for a lunch. On a hunch we selected restaurant that sounded like a modern chicken place but it turned out it was a barbecue place with wood/coal self-service frying. Local area produces alot of vegetables so they served lots of onions, potatoes, pumpkins and more as well. It was good but since day was pretty hot is was bit hard to sit inside for a whole hour. ;)


One of the barbecue tables inside this old building. And yes, there is a lot of smoke but building is well ventilated so no problem.

We also stopped at "road station" to get a stamp for Mr. Horuichis collection book. There is some kind of reward if you collect enough of them but I don't remember what it was.

From there we continued to Tomari and specifically to building called "Tomarinkan". It is a large museum/performance hall hybrid building. Inside there are some archeological exhibitions about the original settlers of this area, educational area for children and adults about nuclear power plants and concert hall and meeting rooms.

Before the concert we went to local seafood restaurant. I ate steamed fish, bamboo stalks and rice. It was delicious, steamed macarel was especially good.

Live concert performer was artist called EPO. She has been performing for about 30 years already. Her music style is japanese pop music, I suppose she reminded me a little about our local artists like Paula Koivuniemi. Her voice is strong and beautiful on live, unlike many modern performers... So it was a good show to watch. Obviously it was not allowed to take pictures, and this restriction is taken quite seriously by guards. ;)

After the show it was already pretty late. Sun was down and nighttime view was very nice. You could hear frogs croaking everywhere from the surrounding mountains and air was cool and bit moist. We drank some coffee in small restaurant and headed home finally.

This week I've done quite a few short trips.

I've visited tea seremony house and tasted chinese green tea (it's really good by the way).

Few days ago I went Hokkaido university agricultural research department and today I also went to another institute researching envinromental and agricultural issues. I've seen quite a few interesting measurement instruments in these laboratories that I haven't ran into yet in Finland.


Yes, that is Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer (NMR). Resolution of this one is 500 MHZ if I remember correctly.

Other instruments I saw included TGAs (Thermographic Analyzer), ICP-OESes, lots of different kinds of electron microscopes and even one laser microscope. And, I also visited sound and vibration isolation chamber, which was pretty cool. Given how rare true silence is these days, it felt really weird.

And finally this afternoon I visited this really nice small cafeteria,:



It is called "Monte Rosa" and they serve excellent coffee and sweet cakes. Strawberry cake was yummy! Building is what we call "Hirsitalo" back in Finland.

And finally I decided to try what pizza is like here in japan. There is this nice little place next to Sapporo railway station which server italian food. Pastas, pizzas, you name it. Also they seemed to have very nice selection of wines.


View from outside, restaurant is on second floor.


Crispy vegetable pizza I ordered. It was good, although it definitely is bit smaller than what I'm used to. :)

This week and next week are fairly booked so I will just try to keep up my strength and rest when I can. Cya soon!

Back at school

Finally feeling better and sunburn is healing at decent rate. This weeks weather is thankfully cloudy and bit rainy so I can move outside quite freely.

So today I went to meet Professor Kishi and his seminar group. Boys had quite interesting little research projects going on, but are just starting to learn how to use measurement instruments. Projects are about water purification methods and battery material regeneration processes. Did you that if you grind scarab shells and zeolite and mix them up you can use it as a water purification material? Antibacterial effect seemed to be quite impressive from what I could gather from the test figures. Kind of surprising.

Weekend and monday/tuesday I killed time by playing Telltale Games "Tales from the Monkey Island" point and click adventure games. I managed to get to the fourth part out of five. I kind of like it, some really funny things happening. Few annoyances in these games too, though. Sometimes puzzles can be should I say, bit unclear.

Nothing much else going on, on saturday is that trip to Tomari area. Also in 10. of July there is a recreation day for teachers and I'll be a guest there. I'll go and play some board games, and participate in a party later on that day too.

Oh, and I'm right at half-way through the trip already. Time goes by pretty fast.

See you later, everyone!

Yosakoi Soran

Just a very quick update: I went to Yosakoi Soran today. Weather was superb, if you like sunbathing. However, for me this wasn't ideal. Anyway I survived... ;)

I even took couple video samples of stage performances since this little camera can capture pretty good quality HD video. I was surprised when I checked what it looked like after I came back on my laptop.

First, couple things about this event. Yosakoi Soran is dancing festival. Dance style is energetic team dancing with lots of shouting (each team has a team leader who shouts encouragements and sings). Word "soran" is connected to successful fishing trip, when you pull lots of fish in your ship. Some of the movements of these dances have pulling and lifting motions due to that.

There are lots of teams and huge crowds of people come to see this event every year. Teams also do street performances on city streets that have been cordoned off for this purpose. I will let these pictures and video at the end speak for themselves. I enjoyed this event, but unfortunately I suffered quite a sunburn on my face and hands since I didn't have a hat on such a bright and sunny day. So this means I will not go to Kitara concert tomorrow, and probably skip couple days from the school as well. ^^





Dancing competition teams in middle of their performances


TV studio mascots mingling in the park



Couple pictures to demonstrate just how many people were in Odori park. People with fear of crowds should really avoid coming here. :)

And here is my favorite performance of those I saw captured in video. Tell me what you think. I suggest you zoom to full screen and switch to 480/720HD, resolution is good enough for that. It just might load slowly on high quality.



Nothing else to say about today really. Now it is time to recuperate and rest.

Bye

Botanical garden and few other random things

This entry is mostly about wednesday when we visited Hokkaido Universitys' famous Botanical Garden. It is the second oldest botanical garden in Japan.

Pictures can mostly talk for themselves. Entrance fee is 400 yen for adults and inside you will find lots of huge old trees of different species, rose garden, greenhouse of tropical and subtropical plants and museum building. It was unfortunate that rose garden wasn't blooming yet, that will happen somewhere around July. So no pictures of that.




Three example pictures of large trees that are all over the place


These are ridiculously large, literally man-sized. o_O



Two nice random pictures from inside


After the garden trip we passed by the old government building, which is aptly named "red brick building" in japanese. Here is a picture of this magnificent mansion and its front yard. It is near the city center and no admittance fee, so definitely worth a visit if you are in Sapporo. Inside there are some historical documents on display but not much more, so not that exciting if you aren't historian. Front yard is very beautiful too and many people were enjoying a short snack break here outside.


The we went to Odori park and I tried Soup Curry Ramen. As you can see from the name, it's traditional ramen but in spicy curry sauce. Good but maybe I should have ordered something else since weather was quite hot so eating hot soup just made it worse.


After I headed back to my apartment I decided to take a couple more pictures on my way. First here is just a small slice of underground mall called Aurora that is at the same place as Odori underground station. One could spend hours here at various shops and restaurants. By the way, at Sapporo station there is another mall... Even I have difficulties when I am trying to avoid impulse buys. If you like shopping, Sapporo is a great place. ;)



And finally here is the famous Sapporo Clock Tower. I decided not to go closer since NHK camera crew was squrrying close to it and interviewing people who went inside. It looks bit funny because it is surrounded by huge skyscrapers from all sides.

If you are wondering what else I've been doing, mostly been in school at my seminar room doing this and that. Today we did have special meeting with bunch of students from India which was interesting. Couple of them spoke english very well, and most everyone was at least decent in it. They are on a 10 day trip in Japan, so they will be travelling most of the time from place to place.

Tomorrow Yosakoi and on sunday, Kitara concert hall. So maybe next entry will be on sunday.

Will be continued...