想い出は遠くの日々

Hi,

Had my first taste of Japanese milk this morning. Much less to say, I will not make that purchase again. The taste is still lingering in my mouth as we speak.

That’s it for now. I will update tonight.

Taihen Situation #6 – Self-declarations are confusing

One might say that the Japanese are modest. I will now offer a counterexample to prove that statement false. Here comes Taihen Situation 6…

So, last Thursday, once again, I followed my boss, Okamoto-san, and coworker, Suzuki-san, off to flower arrangement at NTT. This time around, I decided to just watch cause the arrangement consisted of expensive flowers and the difficulty was quite high. So, Suzuki-san arranged his flowers, which went sorta wrong cause I gave advice but I inadvertently caused him to arrange the flowers to tilt towards me. The teacher ended up rearranging his entire arrangement… I think I attributed to the problem cause I was giving advice but I was unaware that it was advice from my perspective. Anyway, while the teacher was busy dismantling Suzuki-san’s work, I wandered around the room to see how the other arrangers fared. Now, most people in the flower arrangement club knows that I’m the foreigner kid with a kindergarten grade Japanese. As I walked around, I noticed an distinctive arrangement by one of the club members, Hareda-san, a friendly lady who works for the showcase exhibition at the lab… mind you, that lady could speak and understand English quite well cause she does tours often…

(from what I recall, or what I thought I heard)

Hareda-san: Kono ikebana kirei desu ne. (This arrangement is pretty isn’t it?)

Now, since I was running under the assumption that the Japanese are modest people, so I thought she was asking about MY flower arrangement whether it was pretty or not… unfortunately, that was not the case…

Of course, I have to feign modesty too, cause I was not about to self-declare that my arrangement was pretty, cause it doesn’t exist.

Me: Eto… kirei ja nai! (no, it’s not pretty!)

Just watching her face, I knew I must have misinterpreted that question and gave the stupidest answer ever. She then retorted:

Hareda-san: Kono ikebana wa motto subarashii o dekimasu ka?!? Could you do better?!? [sic]

That confirmed everything that went wrong… and I’ve just realized a Japanese person just self-declared that her arrangement was pretty. I was screwed eight ways from Sunday… I immediately broke into my English in a last ditch attempt to save face…

Me: I thought you’re talking about MY arrangement. Your arrangement is really pretty. And if I was to arrange these flowers, it would never look as good as yours…

BS engine on full throttle…

Me: I don’t often hear people self-declare that their products are pretty… in Canada, we often ask, ‘what do you think of my arrangement?’ So I was a bit surprised… forgive my insolence.

Hareda-san: I see…

So after that, I told Okamoto-san and Suzuki-san about what just happened… they laughed all the way back up to the office. Once again, my lack of cultural understanding has whooped my ass.

And you know what’s the biting thing? I really wanted to take a tour of the showcase exhibition at the lab… and guess who we have to ask? Please wish me luck.

Here is my scheduling for the Winter 07 semester. Compared to Winter 06, this one is a cake walk. Mind you, it’s annoying that my registration appointment was 5 pm EDT, which means 6 am JST. Curses!

CS348 – intro to databases
CS370 – numerical analysis
ACTSC231 – mathematics of finance
SPCOM223 – public speaking
AFM102 – intro to management accounting

No algorithms, no theory of computing, and especially no operating systems this term!

First off, special thanks to my cousin Sam who stumbled on a long sought after Chinese restaurent in Shinjuku mentioned below.

After 5 months without familiar Chinese food, this weekend, I was once again able to taste Chinese food that I frequently get back in Canada. The highlight of this weekend was paying the Shinjuku ‘Din Tai Fung’ restaurant a visit. For those that don’t know what this restaurant is (and probably most of the people from Vancouver), Din Tai Fung is a Chinese restaurant that specializes in Taiwan style Shanghai dim sum, namely dumplings. I recall that I frequently go to the same restaurent back in Toronto (called ‘Ding Tai Fung’), and having food here makes me feel closer to home despite being 12 time zones away. Unfortunately, once again, due to Japanese influence, there wasn’t the full menu that I came to expect from Toronto… many things were put into sets… this was probably expected cause the Japanese would be horribly confused if individual portions were not served. Nonetheless, I was able to get some classic stuff like various pork dumplings, shrimp fried rice, and red bean paste dumplings. The bill came out close to 20 bucks per person for lunch but certainly I will pay that kind of price to get good Chinese food. Some of you might not believe the glee I had from eating this stuff… but seriously speaking, something like this is astronomically better than the bastardized Japanized Chinese food that they normally sell around here in Tokyo.

I better get to bed… I have to sign up for courses 6 am tomorrow morning. Curses!

Looks like Clement and Ros(!) beat me to the punch with regards to blogging about Hokkaido. I’ll follow suit but I’ll put a different spin on this trip (in a good way regardless).

I have to remind myself to burn CDs with the collected photos on it.

Okay, the trip itself started on Friday morning where me, Ros, and Clement flew off to Hokkaido around lunchtime. Mirroring the Okinawa trip, our day of departure was pouring rain… horizontal rain. So by the time I got to the airport, my pants were thoroughly soaked… certainly that was not pleasent.

Little known fact about Japan #59: Convenience Stores are truly convenient. One could pay and get airplane tickets once the flight booking is done on the internet.

After exchanging my convenience store bought plane ticket voucher for real boarding passes, we all got through security then proceeded to board our flight. The flight was pretty uneventful… Clement listening to music, Ros falling asleep, and I’m punching away at my laptop. An hour and a half later, we arrived at Shin-Chitose airport (a nearby city of Sapporo). Since Vincent and Anton were arriving from the Kansai area at a later time, us three Kanto peeps had some time to kill… so we ate lunch at Mos Burger at the airport. Quite comparable to Harvey’s back in Canada but the fries (or should I say Potato ポタト) was rather lacking in substance. So, once Anton and Vincent arrived, we headed off to Sapporo 札幌 where we will be staying for the duration of the Hokkaido trip.

Once we checked into our Japanese inn, we headed out to hunt for food… we ended up eating miso ramen (famous in Hokkaido or so I hear). Then afterwards, we ended up at the base of some mountain where we hoped to catch a tram ride up to see the Sapporo night view. Unfortunately, we got there a little late so we weren’t able to pull the off… instead, we opted to set things on fire. I think some explanation is in order. I recall that it’s Chinese mid-autumn festival so my friends and I decided to celebrate it… since we didn’t have a mooncake, we opted to do the next tradition thing during this festival: setting candles on fire… a lot of them… So at the base of the hill, we broke open a beer can and began to fill it with lit candles… similar to the tradition of ‘boiling wax’. We ended up with a half a beer can worth of melted wax which I might add, is quite flammable. After having our pyromaniac tendencies satisfied, we headed off to an izakaya where we burnt off the rest of the night… then back to the inn for some sleep.

The second day was fully of rain and wind… which was caused by remnants of a typhoon coming up from Japan’s main island. Also, Hokkaido temperature is similar to Canada right now, mainly around the low 10s… so it’s like having a cold rainy day in southern Ontario. However, that didn’t stop us from having fun. In the morning, surprisingly, we went off to the same ramen place from the night before… ramen for breakfast, ramen for lunch, and ramen for dinner… Japan’s all-purpose food. The main event for the afternoon was visiting Hokkaido’s number one famous chocolate, Shiroi Koibito 白い恋人, factory. For the most part, I enjoyed watching delicious sweets moving through conveyor belts and into boxes; boxes which I end up spending a fortune as gifts. 4000 yen later, I left the factory with 5 boxes of uber delicious chocolates.

Later on in the afternoon, we went off to the small town of Otaru 小樽 where we visited a music box museum… Anton, Vincent, and Ros all made music boxes… I felt the urge to do the same but I was reminded that I spent 40 bucks on sweets earlier that day.

Since Otaru is near the coast, obviously it was neccesary to eat seafood there （食べなければいけません）. So off we went hunting for a seafood place and eventually we settled into a sushi restaurant. My socks were unconfortably wet at this moment due to the nasty rain storm… I ended up getting the expensive chirashi (raw fish on rice) filled with various things that swam… I say, if it swims, it’s probably edible. Then back to the hotel… cause we’re excessively wet.

Third day was the day to travel out of Sapporo and explore some nearby towns. We settled on visiting the onsen 温泉 (hot spring) town of Noboribetsu 登別 famous for the ‘Hell Valley’, more on that later. Oh, again, ramen for breakfast ^^;;; Then we picked up some limited express train tickets at Sapporo station and headed off to this quant little town. It requires a bit of explaining I think… basically, the valley is called Hell Valley because it contains many sulfur springs… recall that hell smells like sulfur… to me, it smelled like rotten eggs (and should I encounter this smell in other than Hell Valley, I’ll be actively searching for spoiled food). After going around Hell Valley a bit, exploring the various steaming pools of smelly water, we all headed off to the onsen for some relaxation.

Little known fact about Japan #87: Good friends are friends who are willing to onsens together… naked.

The onsen we went to was very sophisticated… it had various pools for different purposes… beauty, relaxation were among the few that were offered. I agree with Clement that the outdoor spring was the best cause the contrast between the outside cold air and the heated water gave the best feeling of Hokkaido. Oh, among the various tubs we ended up in was on that was uber cold… Anton went into it, which I followed suit cause the skinny Chinese can’t lose face. Vincent tried coming into our freezing pool but the look on his face basically said ‘I ain’t fucking doing this’ once he touched the water (wise move in hindsight). Then there was the uber hot one… which was the other extreme… I think one could cook shrimp in there :p No pictures here obviously.

Then we headed back to Sapporo for more seafood… it’s always fun to ride trains with friends… especially when mischief is involved. Ros and Vincent were sleeping in the seats ahead of us.

Me: *whisper* Hey Anton, I’ll dare you to steal Ros’ hat and wear it.
Anton: Okay…

Unfortunately for Anton, we were too loud and it got Ros’ attention. However, Anton was able to swipe Ros’ toque… for a brief moment, we had victory… however… Ros’ began to viciously poke Anton to oblivion which he has no defense against (neither did I). Then we surrendered and Ros got back her hat.

Back in Sapporo, we ate hairy crab and sashimi in some izakaya… followed by McDonalds… then followed by all-you-can-drink and karaoke. That brought a perfect to the trip. The next day, Anton and Vincent left early in the morning, so just it’s me, Ros, and Clement for the 4th day.

On the 4th day, we really didn’t have any plans so we sorta wandered around downtown Sapporo. The damning thing was that day was the only sunny day in the entire trip. The morning consisted of going up the Sapporo TV tower where we saw the city from above. The afternoon was more interesting with a visit to Hokkaido university. One neat site we found was the student life centre called クラーク house. If you could read this katakana, you’ll read it as KU-RAA-KU. I was like… o.O Crack house? And imaging the scenario of some unfortunate exchange student looking for such a building… I mean, it would probably go like this:

International Student: Hi, I’m looking for the student life centre… the crack house.
Local Student: o.O Aiya…

Later, I found out it wasn’t the crack house, it’s the Clark house… but imagine the hilarity of looking for the crack house on campus.

Then even later on that afternoon, we visited the Sapporo beer factory. Best part of all is sampling beer… at 400 yen for a sample of 3 beers. A sampler later, yours truly was buzzed cause fatigue and booze don’t mix well. But dinner fixed that problem as we had lamb and beef yakiniku. Then we headed off to the airport to say goodbye to Hokkaido.

Nonetheless, I had a great time with my dear friends… I have yet another memory to treasure. So, thank you Anton, Clement, Ros, and Vincent… couldn’t have pulled this trip together without you guys.