Entries this day: AM_about_yesterday AM_bath AM_before_breakfast Festival_pics Going_to_Noboribetsu In_Noboribetsu Noboribetsu_aquarium Noboribetsu_hotel fart_TV hot_springs

AM about yesterday

6:58am JST Sunday 06 February 2005

The morning hasn't brought genkiness to my life; I don't really want to get out of bed, even to go pee. There is a hint of a problem with my left tonsil slash left ear, and I don't know if it's just due to the dry weather or cold or what.

- - - -

There was a tall western girl yesterday, with light complexion and long curly auburn dyed redish locks, who spoke apparently awesome Japanese. She seemed really into the fun; chatting with everyone and all that. She spoke a few words of English to me, and her accent sounded Australian at first, and then English.

I felt simultaneously envious of her Japanese speaking ability, as I have this overall loathing of speaking Japanese myself. I don't know that I like the way the language forces everyone to be indirect and indecisive.

The first thing that upset me yesterday was tied in to this.

I wanted to ask Hitomi "do you want to go outside?" but I don't know the word for outside, so I used English: "outside に行きたい？" and she didn't understand so I asked, "雪のばしょに行きたい？"

And she goes, "you don't want to go?"

(blink) What? I never said that I don't want to go; I asked if you want to go.

Because in speaking Japanese, people are indirect, Hitomi took my "do you want to go to the snow area?" question as a possibility that I *don't* want to go.

This is so completely opposite what I learned with the Mankind Project, where we speak directly and truthfully and don't hold back anything at the sake of our integrity.

"Do you want to go to the snow area?"

"Yes I do."

That's what I wanted. I'm just practicing Japanese language; I don't want to *be* Japanese.

AM bath

7:16am JST Sunday 06 February 2005

Okay, let's start a new day.

I'm going to go pee and take a shower/bath. Probably just shower; I'm not in the mood for basking in the bath.

That probably means I should relax. Maybe take a bath or something.

AM before breakfast

8:15am JST Sunday 06 February 2005

It's snowing.

Snow in meter deep drifts covers (everything shorter than a meter and) tree supports and trees and everything.

There's a mesmerizing quality to the fractal paths taken by the snowflakes. The paths are not quite predictable, but hardly random.

If I kknew (a lot) more about describing fractals, I could assign a number that describes the level of rqndomness in their patterns. I'll just imagine it's 1.5.

- - - -

Not that I've seen the snow festival (really) yet, I'll say that it's not what I expected. I thought there were structures made of solid ice, into which we could venture. What I see is forms of packed snow.

Festival pics

10:25am JST Saturday 02 April 2005

I'm finally putting together pics from the festival.

Most of what I've got were taken in Sapporo. Most were all along the street that has the TV tower on it.

First, all the big ones. I don't know much/anything about these: who designed them who made them who likes them who knows what? I don't know. But they were pretty neat to see.

This one was close to the TV tower, and close to where I met Miss Hong Kong 2004.

We saw some musicians on stage here. Flute and violin maybe.

Here the magic was kinda taken away: I can clearly see the lines where layers of ice were put together. Seems like there could be a way to blend these more seemlessly. Like allowing water to freeze between the chunks. Ah well.

A bunch of kids all in line waiting to slide down this hill reminded me of sledding down hills with Fred back in the day. I couldn't imagine having to wait in line for such a short little hill as this one was. But still I guess it could be cool to little kids.

This one was my second favorite. It had neat 3D curves and shapes not present in the others.

This one was my favorite. I liked how it wasn't a stage. It didn't have any way to generate money. No indication of who made it or who would profit. Just art. A beautiful rendition that reminds me of the architecture around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Except a lot smaller. And made of snow.

Here is the back.

3:25pm JST Saturday 02 April 2005

Now, all the medium sized ones. These were made by teams representing different countries. They had a certain number of days to work, starting with a rather large block of packed snow, and finishing in time for a panel of judges to select a winner.

We didn't get to see m/any of them finished, but.

Canada and their model.

Malaysia

Eagle by the US team

There were many others, but they didn't make the cut.

- - - -

And then there were the little random projects, not in competition. I think these were all done by local groups. But, some of them were definitely cooler than others.

Doraemon

R2D2 for Charyl

We're number 1

Ice Ice Kitty

I love you. I love you, too. Or "eexxcccelllent."

Hitomi with Pekochan

Phat Pat!

Snoopy!

Going to Noboribetsu

11:11am JST Sunday 06 February 2005

We're headed to Noboribetsu now. Things seem to be emotionally stable; we're having fun, even.

We're on a diesel powered train, my first such experience in Japan; I wonder why this train is that. Maybe electric trains aren't able to go to Hakodate. Maybe it's cause of the cold. But there are electric trains running today. Right now we are on tracks with an overhead electric power supply.

We're on a super express train, and have only stopped once so far (shin Sapporo)

We're headed to Noboribetsu and will be stopping at Minami Chitose next, the station at the airport.

11:35am

Holy cats. I just saw a weird tube looking thing that went out of a building, up and curved back in, much like a roller coaster arc might look. The building is called Nagasakiya, and the station is Tomakomai.

In Noboribetsu

4:16pm JST Sunday 06 February 2005

Noboribetsu station is pretty small. We bought some ice cream across the street after posing with the demon looking statue. When the bus arrived that could take us to our hotel, we decided to go to the aquarium 700 meters distant, built in an old English village + castle motif.

Noboribetsu aquarium

2300 yen to enter; a tad high considering the limited number of exhibits, but it wasn't too crowded, so we had a generally decent experience. Into the main castle where we were greeted with a large vertical aquarium with several varieties of fish milling around.

Riding two escalators to the third level, we overlook two large tanks with ray looking things in one and shark looking things in the other. Third floor features tanks with starfish, rays, those round crabs that look prehistoric and some others, all of which we were allowed to touch.

(( In the Houston zoo, there is an exhibit where we can touch the starfish. Before introducing our hand and stinky human oils in the water, we are asked by the docent carefully monitoring the animals to wash (rinse) our hands. I never really thought a quick rinse would do much good, but perhaps it does a lot, and probably it is better than nothing. ))

There is a sink available for us to wash our hands, after we touch the animals. My sensibilities were offended by this seeming backwardness.

Only one animal looked suprising to me: flat underwater frogs. They truly looked like squashed flat toads (no protruding guts), except they were living underwater. Not that they were moving, but I guess they were alive. I forgot to get a picture of them, though.

We scoped the dolphin show and I thought a lot of Erika in Connecticut; I wonder if she leads shows; I think she'd be great at it: tall, genki, and beautiful.

Zipped through the reptile house and I photographed some of the turtles.

Then we scoped the sea lion show, which was far more entertaining than the dolphins. The dolphins are stronger and can jump way higher, but the sea lions are way way more dexterious.

The sea lions played basketball and volleyball, walked on their front flippers, did flips and did awesome spins while balancing a ball on their noses.

One of the funniest thing was after they walked across stage on their front flippers. The girl had them balance up on their flippers and then follow her as she walked backwards to the other side of the stage. She was obviously watching them during their performance. We all clapped wildly cause oh my god their flippers must be strong. They rested for a moment as we clapped and then she was talking to the seals, [oh, they liked it! Let's show them again.] The seals nodded in agreement. So she was like, [okay, UP!] and they balanced on their flippers again. She turned around and led them to the other side of the stage. As she turned around, they immediately dropped onto their bodies (no flipper balancing) and slid behind her.

She turned around and discovered they hadn't walked, and they all dramatically folded their necks over sideways and hid their faces behind their flippers. So funny!!

I'm really happy that I got some of their coolest tricks on video.

sea lions flip 2.2M

sea lions tossing a ball and spinning 17M

sea lion barks and final bow 5.8M

Noboribetsu hotel

5:22pm JST Sunday 06 February 2005

Wow. This is Japanese style. Bellhops are women in kimonos. Their job title is "nakai" = なかい = 仲居. They bow for all incoming visitors and grab our bags and ask our name and run to the desk to announce our arrival so the desk clerk knows who we are.

Our nakai made tea for us in our room as we arrived (water in the thing was already hot) and brought me large size robe and indoor shoes. They asked what time we want dinner served in our room. Wow.

The room is floored in tatami, so I can easily see just how big it is and how my small room compares. My room is 6 tatami. This room has 10 tatami mats, plus a carpeted "living room" area (which is actually just an extension of this room but with different flooring), and a large alcove thing for TV and a shelf.

Hitomi is down at the baths now.

There's a part of me that is hesitant to exit this room; I don't know how to respond to any attention paid to me by kimono clad bellhops.

8:29pm

A tip for couples at a ryokan (Japanese style hotel): don't try to have sex before they put the futons out. We've been interrupted by nakai like every 30 minutes or so to fuss with dinner and clearing the table and bringing more food and clearing the table and serving dessert and clearing dessert and bringing new water since they started serving dinner at 6:30.

fart TV

11:16pm JST Sunday 06 February 2005

Japanese TV has some strange shows.

I don't know if I'd classify this as a game show, and I'm not sure what market they're trying to reach, but... here is the setup:

Five male comedians, two pairs and a solo act, go to a sushi bar. Not cheap kaiten sushi, but an expensive place. They'd like to eat sushi, right?

Here's the rule: a sushi serving is served to a guy if he can fart.

Each time one of them farts, the farter gets a serving of sushi.

Cut a fart, get sushi.

They've got microphones behind each man's stool (no pun intended) and a camera watching from the ceiling and one or two guys walking around with cameras.

Each time one of them feels a fart coming, they signal so the cameras can watch his ass while the TV subtitle says "屁コミング" [fart coming].

A guy in the background does a celebratory drum roll each time a fart is achieved.

hot springs

12:33am JST Monday 07 February 2005

I don't know that they were actually springs, but I'm sure at one time the water has emerged from a spring.

We went down to the public baths, where gender separate we all get naked and walk around in a big steamy room with knee deep warm to hot water in various pools. I spent most of my time under a falling stream of water that was similar to Fred's shower head in his previous apartment in Austin, except a larger volume of water and a higher altitude spigot. It was definitely nice, but not as nice as the huge volume gushing water thing at Tabacon near Arenal, Costa Rica.

I ventured to the pools outside cause Hitomi said I should, but was quickly shooed out by a woman who seems to have spotted me going in. Or rather, out. I felt bad cause there were three other guys already out there, and maybe she hadn't seen them except when she went out to chase me back in. Ah well.

I sat in a realllly hot tub for a bit - not all the way in, but just my legs. I got used to the heat and then considered sitting all the way in. I lowered myself down and was like, nevamind and got back out.

Wandered around a bit and then came back to the room cause Hitomi had apparently already snagged the door key. But she wasn't there (here) so I went back down and one of the guys with a pile of keys let me in.

Turns out she had gone back up to meet me there, but we must have passed each other along the way. I went down the steps while she went up the elevator.