Metabolic Syndrome…? Oh, That’s Fear of Metal!!!

Victory is mine, another awesome trip is now over. Along with Keith, Erica, Victor, Jen, Kelvin, and Kouda, I went to Yuki Matsuri in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Sapporo is famous for its beer, Hokkaido for its crab and dairy products, Hokkaido’s up north so it’s cold and snowy, and Yuki Matsuri = Snow Festival = Snow/ice sculptures and tourists.

After spending the night at Keiths (instead of spending 2+h on the train in rush hour), both of us, along with Erica, headed to KIX airport for our flight on Friday morning. Nothing really exciting right away, flying, landing, train, meeting Jen and Victor outside the lame clock tower, rearranging luggage, then off to the first tourist destination… the Chocolate Factory!

Which was actually quite lame too… it was more of a chocolate museum of weird stuff… teacups, chocolate labels, pictures of Napoleon who, believe it or not, liked chocolate! There was a large room filled with miscellaneous toys, from old metal cars to Where’s Waldo books to Astro Boy. I bought omiyage, and the girls bought lots of chocolate since on Valentine’s day here, the girls give all the guys chocolate. It’s fair though, on March 14 the roles are reversed.

Next we went to look at the Snow Sculptures in Odori Park. Amazing! Pictures are better than words, but a 10 feet high snow Stitch in front of a Disney castle! A whale that could easily swallow a dozen people. And an ice palace with a band playing in front.

Our hotel is at the Gateaux Kingdom Resort… has its own indoor/outdoor onsen and pool, a huge buffet area, palm trees, etc… It’s used a lot for weddings actually. Our room (especially the bathroom) was very nice too! The only complaint… the first floor plays non stop accordion music at all hours of the day.

Oh, turns out, Sapporo is a lot like Calgary… cold… snow… grid layout of streets… so just great, 6 weeks till I go home and now I’m not homesick at all!

We snowboarded twice, the first time just me and Keith, in Teine… the mountain was pretty good, but the view was incredible! You could see the entire city of Sapporo, the ocean, farms, mountains, etc from the ski runs. Niseko was very different… cloudy and grey, with wind and snow, but the best powder I’ve ever been on. Not only did my snowboarding skills improve, but I impressed the others by going the whole day with no goggles or scarf, and gloves that literally froze solid, making me めちゃ macho!

After Teine we went to the Potato Circus for dinner, Westernish isakaya, where you wave a flag if you want service. We had the Colombian national flag. Along with eel, garlic bread, sticks with ketchup, and pasta we had a travesty of a pizza, with no tomato sauce, but with ham, French fries, corn, and tuna o.O. Then we headed to an Aztec themed nightclub, for the Tokyo BigAir snowboarding competition afterparty. Interesting I suppose, a lot of foreigners in attendance of course. 4 bands played… the first was forgettable, the second was wacky (that’s the only word to describe them), the third was supposed to be a hip hop group but reminded me more of a boy band… had the guy in shades and a backwards cap with arms crossed, another in plaid pants, goatee, and funky hat.

The fourth band deserves a paragraph of it’s own… Trouble Andrews… wow… The lead… umm… “singer” (a white guy, think the band’s friends with the boarders) woulda put J-roc to shame (not you J-rock, the one from Trailer Park Boys, nome-sayin?) Let’s go over the dress… red and black plaid shirt covering a tanktop with sleeves that went down to bellybutton level, fake gold bling, a black hat with white cannabis leaf designs on it, and huge sunglasses. Other points of interest… he called the microphone a “mizzike”, his band spilled (as in was throwing around) beer, causing a 10 minute technical difficulty when it got into their computer, and besides the horrible music, they ran out of songs and felt the need to play the last song twice in a row (“What is this, the nome-census?!?”) Aaaah… survived the night, got back to the hotel at 6am, and had a nice relaxing morning of sleep.

What else… TV tower was cool, 100m up observation deck, looking over the city and snow sculptures. Beer museum, slightly better than the chocolate factory, and lunch at the Bier Garten was good. Food for the trip, well, mostly normal stuff (for Japan), but fried lamb (Jinjis Kan (Ghengis Khan) yakiniku) is pretty big in Sapporo. We had it twice, it was my first time eating lamb. Not too bad, I prefer beef of course, and it makes your clothes stink for hours and hours afterwards.

Interesting flavors of ice cream at the beer factory… along with some normal flavors (Green tea, white chocolate, pumpkin, salt), they had lavender, soup curry, cheese, and squid flavors. Jen bought (and finished) the soup curry flavor (“It’s salty… AND sweet…o.O”), and squid, which had real chunks of squid inside, yay!

And now I’m back to work. Not too much interesting. I learned at the gym that certain colors of spandex are more revealing than others. Gray being one of them. I was sitting down doing leg extensions when an old guy wearing short gray spandex started wiggling his hips and shaking his rear right in front of me… There was nothing I could do!!! There was nowhere I could look!

I also applied for another job… they advertised 60” plasma screens and 32 way X-Box matches in their job description, how could I resist!

I also had a dream a few nights ago. It started normally, we inherited an ancient printing press with some valuable original prints from Calvin and Hobbes inside. I wanted to save the prints, but everyone else wanted to sell them. Then Jessica Simpson appeared to me inside a blacksmith's workshop and told me that I must not succumb to the forces of evil. Whatever that means...

Starting to wrap up things in Japan, 6 weeks left… souvenirs to buy, reports to do, luggage to pack, weight to gain… work to get back to! Until my next update, whenever that may be!

Here Be Dragons!

I appear to be blogging today... With 2 months left my motivation for things seems to be slowly diminishing. Well, for certain things, like work, and learning Japanese, and I suppose blogging a bit too, since the small adventures aren't as interesting as many of my previous ones. But alas (a sad lad) I push on! Mostly because my motivation to blog is slightly higher than my motivation to work.

Last last weekend I went snowboarding with some others in my company, Byron, Ono, Yoko (Ono's GF (And bring the joke on, it's been said already)), and another guy who's name I forgot. It was quite fun, we went to Fukui to board, and the mountain was much better than the last one. And I'm getting better too. Though the 4h drive each way was a little long.

Sunday the CJP gang went out for all you can eat dimsum, then the guys went to JJ while the girls went shopping. Afterwards we went to Tin's Hall, a foreigner bar at Tennoji. It was open mic night and Byron was performing...

Notable performances include... the French magician performing to Marvin Gaye, the short Chinese woman belly dancing to Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), and the 250 pound white guy dressed up as Elvis, belly dancing to Burning Love.

There was one guy, Steve, from Chicago, who was really really good, the whole bar went quiet while he was performing. If he ever becomes famous, I can say I saw him live... in a small bar... in Japan!

Oh, and a random old guy started yelling at Byron on the train, completely unprovoked. We only caught a few words, something to do with gaijin, so it was most likely a racist rant. Weird, usually OMLGP brings friendly old guys. The two ladies across from us seemed to be embarassed on his behalf, smiling at us and bowing apologetically.

Last week was a little interesting. On Monday I had a 3.5 hour meeting that consumed half my lunch hour, which irritated me. But during the meeting I received an email from IBM, to schedule a preliminary interview for their internship program out east!

I had the interview on Wednesday night, I think it went ok, except I was nervous, and that they were looking for someone with more software experience, and my background is mostly hardware unfortunately. They said they'd email back if I get a second interview, but nothing yet... Too bad, it would be a great job!

Then this weekend, Keith and I went to JJs... got our groove on with some DDR, played some pool, and most importantly, beat Donkey Kong Country! Got about 2 hours of sleep... next day we went to Yodobashi Camera, Keith needed a hard drive, and then we went to Spa World!

Europe theme this time, which is functionally exactly the same, but still interesting/cool. We also went to the gym area to work out for an hour.

At the baths we see this old guy, rubbing his head against the rocks and kinda sputtering water. We were laughing a bit at first, considering it to be Japanese weirdness, but then he started drifting into the middle of the bath, struggling to stay afloat (<2 feet deep water), someone had to go over and pull him out of the bath, they even got a stretcher for him.

Nothing else too special at Spa World really. We went to Namba to find Keith some snowboarding gloves, and to meet up with Jen and Victor for dinner. We went to an isakaya, which was quite good except Victor forgot to order my second plate of fried cheese, the bumcloud! And the 3 girls right beside me, while nice looking, went into "High Pitch Squeal Mode" whenever they got excited, which was waay too often.

Sunday involved going to Jen's house for Pizza Hut pizza, Poker, and watching Little Miss Sunshine! It was a very good party, but I forgot my hard drive at Jen's and have to go get it tonight.

Also, Bloc Party's new CD, A Weekend in the City, comes out today in Japan... 3 hours till I get to listen to it! I can't wait! And I'm almost done reading I, Robot, amazing book!

And finally... a 4 day work week this week, and a 3 day work week next week, since it's a vacation to Hokkaido this week! Full of ice sculptures, snowboarding, onsen, chocolate factories, and beer factories! Long blog when I get back.

Until my blog next Wednesday-ish!