Smoke and fire

Friday turned out to be a little more busy than I first expected. Early morning I made a quick dip at supermarket at Miyanosawa station and picked up another shirt and a wristwatch. I grew tired of fishing out my cellphone out of my backpack all the time so it should come in handy. I also took a picture inside of the bus to show you what kind of contraption they have for fare charging inside. It can handle subway cards, coins and even bank notes.



I briefly met with president Nishi just to say goodbye to him. He told me he was going to Switzerland on his next trip with his wife and wished me a safe flight back.

Then after that I just remembered I had promised Tsuyoshi that I'd find Mr. Kudo before I leave so I did just that. He was just talking with his seminar so I introduced myself and we had a nice chat. Turns out he had lived in states for a few years so his english was good. He had met some of the students who came here earlier too from Oulu. We ended up going for a lunch in a ramen restaurant (finally tried miso ramen) and then his students took me to see nearby Ishikari Beach.




This was first time I saw this much litter on ground in Sapporo area. Some people had left plastic and metal items on the beach so I was instantlty reminded of my wednesdays speech. Smell of the sea is bit different than back home too, don't know why.




After returning from the beach I went to say hello to Mr. Horuichis seminar. It was awfully hot in there because boys were running some calibration checks on their electrical owens so I went to cool down in library instead. Daily Yomuri had interesting article about solar powered compressed air power plants and I ended up thinking if these kind of things end up being deployed in northern sahara for example. Idea is to make plants simpler and easier to operate as getting water just isn't practical at some areas.

In evening after 17.00 we had big get-together mostly from mechanical engineering department. Total of about 40 people came to eat and drink. And there was smoke, lots of smoke. This event lasted until 20.00 clock, and it was pretty dark by then. This is why group picture looks like it does. :)





I also recieved small gift from seminar people and four memorial cards where everyone had written little something for me. Thank you very much to everyone if someone from the party happens to read this.

Mr. Horuichi took me back with his car and since I had mentioned him that I was looking at buing new pair of shoes. He quickly looked for a large shoe shop that would be open at this late hour from his nav-computer. So maybe 10 minutes before they closed up we barged in and I managed to find very nice pair of walking shoes from "Large size" department. Turns out my feet are just over the normal size treshold in Japan (27cm) so I was bit lucky here. Shoes were bit expensive but since I had plenty of saved money so it was ok to splurge a little here.

So here is a picture of yesterdays haul:



Today in evening I will probably go see that Nakajima park. Weather is very promising, half-cloudy but still reasonably warm and comfortable. Next week looks little bit rainy.

Vi ses senare!