The not so extraordinary life of Jonas in Sapporo

Recent magic things

2012-02-25T18:59:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I met a magician friend for the first time in months. He has just come back from a two week vacation in Vietnam, and he brought me a souvenir. We also ended up chatting until 7 in the morning...

Recently I have been extremely busy at work and not had time to practice any new magic. Yesterday I started practicing hammering a nail into my nose, though. It is fun, but I am not sure where I can perform this. Not in front of children, at least... And most people will probably just be grossed out. But I like it!

Italian at Garbanzo again

2012-02-24T04:25:00.000+09:00

Today I had a late (23:30) dinner at the Italian restaurant Garbanzo in Sapporo again. Today I had salad with cheese, and garlic toast. I then ended up doing magic for some customers (gold buddies of the owner) who were so impressed that I ended up drinking and eating with them for a bit too. There was some nice soup with spaghetti.

I also got to see the owner of Garbanzo do magic. Though we have known each other for something like 3 years, this was the first time I ever saw him do magic. He made a tissue turn into Chinese food, and made water disappear from two cups.

Strange pictures

2012-02-24T04:20:00.003+09:00

There were two young students photographing nondescript parts of a wall, some doors, and stuff like that at the university today. I wonder what they want those photos for? I discussed it with a colleague, and we believe the most likely reason is they are planning a big heist. Maybe they need to get in and stamp their "hanko" (stamp used instead of signing your name) after 17:00 some day, or something else almost impossible to achieve like that...

Chocolate from a very cute girl!

2012-02-24T04:17:00.002+09:00

Yesterday I stopped by our magic bar on my way home, and ended up playing the card game from a previous post again. I kept losing based on my name being tied to 47 and had so much tea (including the tea at Ropossa, something like 3 liters of tea starting at around midnight...) I could not fall asleep until after 6 in the morning... Which is not so great when you have to work during the days, like I do.

Anyway, for the first time in many months, I ran into a very cute regular customer of the magic bar (sadly, not in the magic bar I am, the other one in our chain; though we too have cute customers). She had Valentine's chocolate with her, that she gave to the regular staff, and she also had chocolate for me!

It came from a very cute girl, was wrapped in a cute package, and the contents were nice too. So despite being a week after Valentine's Day, it was this years best Valentine's gift I guess. Too bad she is about half my age...

Sapporo's magic "snack pub" Ropossa

2012-02-24T04:06:00.003+09:00

Swallowing a balloon.

Yesterday I went to a magic "snack pub" (in Japan, "snack" means a bar were people, usually flirty waitresses, will talk to you while you drink at a usually fixed but high price) called Ropossa (Sapporo backwards, when written in Japanese).

Having swallowed most of a balloon.

The "mama" of this place does magic and she is very funny. She is for instance very good at swallowing 2 meters long balloons.

Kiritanpo (rice)

Dried fish

There is some light food included when you go to Ropossa, and yesterday it was "kiritanpo", a kind of rice based food. It was quite good. When I finished my (fairly small) serving, I was asked if I was still hungry (which I was) and if I wanted some more. I said yes, but just a little. Mama came out with about twice as much as in my first serving... It was hard getting it all down.

Presents received yesterday.

Whenever I go to Ropossa, there are new interesting games (usually from a German company that specializes in educational games for kids). I also end up walking home with huge amounts of curious items that I receive as presents... Yesterday was no exception.

Even more chocolate

2012-02-22T03:11:00.001+09:00

Yesterday, a male friend of mine got Valentine's chocolate, and it was chocolate filled with whiskey. He gave me a couple of the whiskey filled chocolates since he (like apparently every male in Japan except me) gets more chocolate than he can finish himself. It was pretty good.

New card game

2012-02-22T03:09:00.000+09:00

My friends in the magic bar taught me a new card game yesterday. It seemed a bit complicated at first, but it is not that bad once you get used to it. As all games in our magic bar, it is a drinking game.

You have 2 cards in your hand. There is a pile of cards on the table. When you play a card, the value of that card is added to the accumulated value of the pile. The first person to add a card that makes it 50 or higher has to drink half his glass.

The game continues, and the first person to add a card that makes it 102 or more has to drink all of what is in his glass.

After you play a card from your hand, you take one more card from the stack of unused cards, so you always have two cards in your hand. If you forget to take a card and someone points it out, you have to drink half your glass.

If you do not want to play any of the cards you are holding, you can also chose to play from the stack. You then play the top card of the stack, whatever that may be, instead of one of your own cards.

There are lots of special rules:

Anyone playing a card that makes the pile 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, or 99, has to drink half his glass.

Anyone holding a joker when someone goes over 101 also has to drink the full contents of his glass (if you go over 101 and still have a joker in your hand, you thus have to drink two glasses).

An ace can count as 1 or as 11, your choice.

An 8 can count as 8 or as 0.

A 9 can count as 9, or count as 0. When playing a 9 as 0, the order between players is reversed (e.g. clockwise becomes anti-clockwise).

A 10 can count as either 10 or -10.

Jacks count as 10.
Queens count as 20.
Kings count as 30.
Jokers count as 50 (thus, if you get a joker the best you can hope for is to drink only half your glass, unless people play lots of -10s).

If you play a card with the value 0 (an 8 or 9) when the value on the pile is for instance 99, it counts as you also having played 99 (i.e. you have to drink half your glass if both digits are the same).

If the value of the stack goes down below 50 again (e.g. someone plays a 10 as -10 when the value is 55), the next person to drive it back up to 50 or higher has to drink half his glass, just as before.

If you play several rounds, the loser of the previous round gets three cards (and always has to have three cards in his hand), thus having a better chance of getting useful cards like 8s, 9s, or 10s (but also a higher chance of getting jokers).

A round starts with the top card of the stack of remaining cards being played, and it counts for its face value (i.e. an 8 counts as 8, not 0). The loser of the previous round goes first.

As an extra special rule, anytime a number that corresponds to your name is played, you have to drink half your glass (even if you did not play it yourself). One of my friends is called "Goro", and "go" is 5 in Japanese, and "ro" is 6. So anytime the stack becomes 56, he has to drink. I am "yo-nasu" in Japanese, which since "yo" is 4 and "na" is 7 means that I had to drink whenever the pile turned to 47. One round it became 47, and stayed 47 for 4 plays (no one wants to go over 50, so lots of 8s and 9s were played), which meant I had to drink 2.5 glasses right there.

Those are the rules. Drunk people tend to make more and more mistakes, getting even drunker. A quite fun game.

Fabruary 2012

2012-02-22T02:48:00.002+09:00

The Susukino Tsuushin, a newsletter with coupons for lots of bars etc. in Sapporo, that has a huge number of copies circulated every month has evidently brought out a number for "Fabruary" of 2012.

Smoked cheese, smoked sausages, more Italian, this time in Gabrincho

2012-02-20T21:04:00.000+09:00

On Saturday I got out of be fairly late (18:00) and did not have that much time before the magic bar opened. I decided to have dinner/breakfast at Gabrincho, which is an Italian restaurant located very close to our magic bar. The pizzas are very nice, and the master throws the dough in the air like a Frisbee. I had a pizza with smoked cheese and smoked sausages.

My coworkers

2012-02-20T21:01:00.000+09:00

Sometimes my fellow magicians do strange things with no apparent purpose.

More chocolate

2012-02-20T20:59:00.001+09:00

On Saturday I ran into a girl who did not give me any chocolate on Valentine's Day, but she did have some with her on Saturday.

Magic and sweet beans

2012-02-17T03:38:00.002+09:00

Food boiled in Coca Cola

Today I had a very busy day. I had to work, of course, and I spent my lunch break at the local tax office. There I watched as several people tried to figure out how to fill out various forms for me after having earned some money in Sweden that should be taxed in Japan. They were very helpful, and seemed very happy when I told them that I had done something similar once before, so they could probably see in the system what had happened last time.

I worked some more, and then went off to teach Swedish to a very nice Japanese family in the evening. They lived a few years in Stockholm and speak Swedish quite well. Sometimes we meet so they can practice speaking and hopefully not forget all the Swedish they learned.

After that, I ran off to our magic bar for the monthly magic class. People who know little or no magic can come the third Thursday every month and learn interesting magic tricks. Today there were 6 new people there. After that, the bar got unexpectedly busy too, with groups of 4, 4, 5, and 4 guests showing up more or less at the same time. So I decided to help out and do some magic today too. There were some cute girls that were very impressed (one of them remembered my name from a previous visit) and even wanted to take pictures together with all the magicians, and lots of other nice customers.

At around 00:30, I left to go find something to eat. I had not time for lunch and no time for dinner until that time, which meant I was quite hungry.

Sweet bean paste, in packages with dragons (it is the year of the dragon now)

Some of the new guests of the magic class gave me two packs of sweet bean paste (for unclear reasons) before they left, though. So I ate one pack just to keep up the blood sugar enough to stay standing while doing magic for all the guests that showed up...

When I finally got dinner, a long boiling experiment that they had been doing in Bottom Cafe (where I ate) was just finished (at around 2:00), so I got a bowl of pork/egg/leek boiled in Coca Cola to try too. This was very nice. There were also some cute customers sitting at the counter, one of whom asked to see some magic tricks. She seemed impressed.

Italian food in Sapporo, Garbanzo again

2012-02-17T03:27:00.001+09:00

I went to Garbanzo again yesterday. This little Italian restaurant has moved one block east recently, making it slightly longer for me to walk there, but the new location has an excellent view. The food is of course still very nice too. I had gnocchi and cheese baked chicken this time.

Apparently, I had dropped half a ball pen last time I was there, which I got back this time. They figured if there is half a pen on the floor, not so many customers could have dropped such a strange item...

The power of reverse chocolate?

2012-02-17T03:22:00.001+09:00

On Valentine's Day I ran into the girlfriend of the owner of our magic bar. Since no one else was around to receive it, I had some reverse chocolate in my bag and I gave it to her. She seemed very happy. The next day I ran into the owner himself, and he gave me a box of chocolate that his girlfriend had told him to give to me.

As a side note, the list of ingredients on the package had my name written on it. I am not sure what to make of that.

Perhaps it is a joke relating to the fact that almost every time I meet her (which would be almost exclusively in our magic bar) I am wearing an ironic t-shirt with cannibalistic animals (cows eating steak, pigs eating fried pork, etc.)

Also, I am not sure on the Japanese rules for chocolate received like this. Am I still obliged to return chocolate on White Day if I receive Valentine's chocolate mainly because I handed out reverse chocolate? Cultural differences can be hard to figure out! haha

A fairly chocolate-less Valentine (again)

2012-02-15T04:27:00.001+09:00

Hot cocoa with apples, instead of soup.

Today was Valentine's Day, quite a big thing in Japan. Women are supposed to give chocolate to men they like, giri-chocolate (duty chocolate) to men they work with or who have helped them in some way (or they are just generally duty bound to give chocolate to), and there are some other rules too.

Everyone tells me every year that I will get huge amounts of chocolate because I am a man, and all men get lots of chocolate. A 7 year old kid told me he got chocolate from his mom, his sisters, quite a few class mates, etc., totaling around 10 people. A bartender I spoke to today mentioned getting chocolate from 60 or so women... People tell me I should expect more than Japanese men, because I am a foreigner and Japanese women love foreigners. And I have a job where we have quite a few women in our work place.

Still, since I got 0 pieces of chocolate every one of my 6 previous Valentine's Days in Japan, I was not expecting much. But this year our new secretary gave me three pieces of chocolate as thanks for helping her taking care of and explaining difficult secretary related things (in English) to lots of our foreign guests during the year.

Other than that, there was not much chocolate in sight. I got a cup of hot cocoa with apple slices in it in the restaurant where I had dinner (today's soup was hot cocoa). That was it.

My business card can be read in the middle, the chocolate labels can be read in the mirrors.

I also had a bunch of "gyaku-choco", "reverse chocolate" or chocolate that a man can give to a woman even though it is Valentine's Day, but no women showed up that were interested in getting chocolate from me. I gave one chocolate bar to our secretary, though. She seemed happy enough, though she did say "Ah, this brand is very cheap!"...

My first giri-choco

2012-02-14T14:40:00.002+09:00

Today our secretary had placed a pack of chocolate filled with ume-shu (plum wine) on my keyboard. There was also a thank you note for helping her with explaining difficult things in English to our foreign guests at various times and other things like that.

Despite having been working in Japan seven Valentine's Days so far, this was the first time I received "giri-choco" (duty chocolate, chocolate that women have to give to everyone they work with or who has helped them out in some way, or they are just generally duty bound to give things too etc.). I was beginning to think that the whole concept of giri-choco was just an elaborate hoax (involving everyone I have ever met in Japan, all the convenience stores, all the department stores, etc.) that had been going on for seven years to make me feel sad that I never get any chocolate, haha.

I gave her a pack of reverse chocolate today since she has been very helpful with all the insane paper work people force me to do here.

Chance meetings and more Valentine's sadness

2012-02-14T14:35:00.001+09:00

Yesterday was a busy day and I was stuck at work until late and got home around 22.00. I then went out looking for food, and ended up sitting next to a guy in a bar who was a huge fan of Swedish and Norwegian death metal and black metal. He also took over the bar's DJ system and started playing Swedish death metal while I waited for my food.

Then I went to see a friend who works in a different bar, who said some people from Mie-ken (further south in Japan) were here in Sapporo again. One of them, a cute girl with very low salary, gave me 22,000 yen as a tip for a magic trick last year (though both me and my friend agreed that this was way too much, so I gave most of it back the next day), so I remembered them quite clearly. It was fun meeting them again.

Then I went to discuss a few things with my colleagues in one of our magic bars. There I met one of the celebrities of Team NACS (the people starring in the TV show I appeared on last year). He was in the magic bar with some friends watching magic. He remembered me too. He is a very very nice person.

The girl who makes drinks one day per week in the magic bar I do magic in also showed up (she was partying in a place across the hall). Since it was after midnight, and thus February the 14th, she came to give out Valentine's Day chocolate. (In Japan, women give chocolate to men on Valentine's Day. To men they like, but there is also "giri-choco", "duty chocolate", which women have to give to everyone they work with and other people they are duty bound to.) She gave a very cute little bag of chocolate to our owner, and a very cute little bag of chocolate to the young magician there, and then she looked at me and said: "Oh, Jonas. Sorry..." The (sad) story of my life...

My magician friend told me that he "is too popular with the women" so he had already received so much chocolate that it would be impossible to finish it before the expiration dates (quite impressive at around 1 A.M. on Valentine's Day, or anytime during Valentine's Day actually, haha). So he gave me one of his pieces of chocolate.

The start of my 7th (I have been in Japan for a total of five and a half years, but this is my seventh winter (I always come here in the winter and have moved back to Sweden one summer) Valentine's Day in Japan is thus not very promising.

Indonesian omiyage

2012-02-14T14:21:00.002+09:00

In Japan, you have to give a small present to everyone you know, including colleagues etc., every time you travel somewhere. These presents when you come home from a trip are called "omiyage", which thus roughly translates to souvenirs. For domestic trips, omiyage is usually something edible, but it can be actual things too.

Yesterday I got an omiyage from a friend who has just come back from Indonesia. It is an "o-mamori", a good luck charm or amulet. It is made out of silver and it is a small bell, so it makes a sound when moved.

I attached it to a dream catcher, which is an omiyage from another friend who went to Guam, that I have hanging in my room. It was ringing softly all night, so either this dream catcher is very busy catching bad dreams for me, or it could just be that it is hanging below the ventilation for the kitchen fan, I guess.

No more snow festival

2012-02-14T14:14:00.001+09:00

The Sapporo Snow Festival ended on Sunday, and on Monday they were busy tearing all the sculptures down. Now there is nothing left to see (except large piles of snow).

Valentine's chocolate? Pity chocolate

2012-02-12T20:57:00.002+09:00

In Japan, Valentine's Day is celebrated by women giving chocolate to men they are interested in. They also have to give chocolate to anyone they work with (giri-choco ("duty chocolate")).

Every year, any number of people tell me about this Japanese custom (that I already know of) and they tell me that as a foreigner I can expect to get huge amounts of chocolate since many Japanese women love foreigners.

Every year, I get more or less zero chocolate... I do not even get giri-choco. I get laughed at by 7 year old kids. I get pity from my professor at work who thinks I get sad amounts of chocolate. I almost get mentally scarred, haha. And it does not help that people come every year to tell me how much chocolate foreigners get and how popular foreigners (apparently, everyone except me) are with the women.

This year, I already got some chocolate though! A Japanese and female friend gave me fancy chocolate (or, actually dried fruits dipped in chocolate) today. Today is not Valentine's Day, but she said it was Valentine's chocolate so I guess it still counts. She also said, and I quote: "You being you will certainly get no real Valentine's chocolate, so I felt sorry for you and bought this for you." Which, coincidentally, is almost exactly what a Swedish female friend said when she gave me chocolate 4 years ago, haha.

But the chocolate was very good, so getting chocolate out of pity is still good! Not sure why the ribbon around the package has a skull, or if this is a warning/bad sign of some sort, though, haha.

She also gave me a pastry of some sort that she herself got at a wedding yesterday (in Japan, the bride and groom give gifts to all the guests at their wedding...).

Fashion sense

2012-02-12T20:48:00.002+09:00

Today I saw a man who wore a pair of trousers of a design that I once thought of buying. I liked them, but they had only size M left, which is too skinny for me here in Japan (my calves are too big, which I assume means I am too heavily muscled :-)

My friends tell me that no one would ever wear trousers like that (I showed them pictures and explained that I wanted to buy those trousers if only they had my size), unless they were completely insane. So either they are wrong or this guy was insane. At least he shares my fashion sense, which I am told cannot be good for him...

Korean food

2012-02-12T20:43:00.001+09:00

Another Korean restaurant has opened at Sapporo Station since last time I passed by there. The food was cheap and quite good.

Clipping weird things to your ears

2012-02-12T20:40:00.001+09:00

Today I met up with an old friend who lives in Hakodate. We went to see another friend, who gave birth to her second child not that long ago. My Hakodate friend is considered weird by most people I have met, but not in a bad way. Today, she found something on the kitchen table, assumed it was a toy, and tried to clip it to her ears. She then turned to our other friend and said: "How are you supposed to clip this to your ears? It hurts a lot the way I do it."

It was however not a toy. It is a neckband for making a normal handkerchief or small towel into a bib. You clip this thing to a piece of cloth and you can hang that around the neck of your child, adjust the length of the band, and feed your child messy food.

Everyone else around the table found it quite funny that someone would try to clip it to her ears, and the clips were indeed very powerful so that would hurt quite a lot... So in the year she has lived in Hakodate, she has not changed at all. Still weird.

There were also cookies, baked in Canada and sent here. A very nice afternoon.

Open the spring

2012-02-12T20:30:00.001+09:00

Apparently, it is now time to open the spring. Whatever that means.

More reverse chocolate

2012-02-12T20:27:00.001+09:00

I was looking for more cheap reverse chocolate (chocolate where the package has all the text mirrored, because it is chocolate a man can give to a woman on Valentine's Day, which would be the opposite of the normal Valentine thing here in Japan) for a magic trick. The shop I bought it in before no longer has it (sold out), but a friend found some in a different convenience store so I went there to have a look today. They had a sign indicating they sell the things I want on the shelf, but the shelf was empty...

I did find two other types of reverse chocolate though. I bought one to check if the contents were also reversed, but they were not.

Not so great for cars

2012-02-12T04:34:00.000+09:00

In Sapporo we get a lot of snow. The bigger streets are cleaned quite efficiently, but many smaller streets just have the snow compressed by cars running over it over and over again. The cars lose traction and the wheels spin, making ridges and ice. Man holes are slightly warmer, and melt the ice on top creating deep holes, etc. This makes these roads bad for cars. You can hear the cars lose half the underside or so when scraping against ice ridges...

This hole is near my house, though there are ones that are much deeper than this one. This photo was taken after a few warm days when much of the ice melted, making the hole more shallow too.

Stick your head in the snow

2012-02-12T04:29:00.000+09:00

At the snow festival, there was a lot of signs telling you not to throw garbage in the snow. No tobacco, no PET-bottles etc. There was also a sign telling you that the only things you should stick in the snow are your skis and your face... And the Japanese as well as the illustration also means that they actually do expect you to stick your face in the snow. I think I will pass, though.

Campus

2012-02-11T20:06:00.002+09:00

I used to work in the building in the middle of this photo. Now I work in a building behind the trees on the right.

Since I have a lot of work to do, I went to the university today (even though it was Saturday). Our campus is quite large.

Sapporo Snow Festival again

2012-02-11T20:04:00.000+09:00

Team Sweden got second place in the international competition area this year.

Today I passed the Sapporo Snow Festival again. I saw some nice sculptures.

Taj Mahal

Hatsune Miku!

One Piece!

Presents!

2012-02-11T19:56:00.003+09:00

Presents for me!

A Swedish friend of mine is moving back to Sweden tomorrow, so he was giving away stuff he did not need any more. I got some canned fruits and vegetables!

He also gave me a chocolate bar full of licorice, which was very nice.

Huge crabs crawling around on the counter of the restaurant.

Fish and chicken nabe

Fish spring rolls

Fish

It turned out to be the birthday of the owner, so he got a cake from the staff.

Ice sculpture at the ice festival.

Licorice filled chocolate!

On Thursday evening we went out to eat and drink together, as a farewell party kind of thing. We also checked out the Susukino Ice Festival a bit.

Magic and Italian food in Garbanzo

2012-02-09T03:06:00.003+09:00

Garlic toast, made especially small for me (since I was there and alone and wanted to eat other things too)

Today I stayed at the university working until 22:30. Which means I got home slightly after eleven. There are still lots of restaurants open where I live, even after midnight. I went to an Italian restaurant called Garbanzo today. The owner/chef there is an acquaintance of mine, and he too does some magic.

Pasta American (Amerikeenu), shrimp, cheese, pasta, and a very nice sauce.

I had some very nice food. When I was about to leave, the owner told me that if I had time, I should do magic for a couple who were also dining late. They were friends of his. I had plenty of time, so I did a short magic show for them. They were very impressed, but even more impressed by my proficiency of Japanese. People are usually quite impressed even if you just manage to say "hello" in Japanese, so it does not necessarily mean that one should be proud, though.

Some of the wine I received from some other guests.

After my magic, they asked me to sit down at their table and drink some of their wine. They also asked me about my life in Sapporo (how it is to live here if you have grown up in a very different culture) and where I had learned Japanese etc. The woman gave me her business card. She is the owner of a pair of dance schools, it seems.

A bottle of alcohol shaped like the country of Italy!

Working late

2012-02-08T22:12:00.002+09:00

Recently I keep getting stuck at work until way too late. Yesterday we had a seminar, and for some reason we have all our seminars from 18.00 until whatever time the presenters finish. Sometimes 19.00, sometimes 22:30... Someone told me that the law does not actually allow our university to have classes after 17:00 (or maybe it was 18:00? well, much earlier than we do), but our professor once explained that when he was a student he slept only 4 hours per day, and the rest of the time he was at the university working. He also said he thinks everyone should do just that, or otherwise how would your research make enough progress?

My take is that if you sleep only 4 hours per day, you will probably not work very efficiently during the remaining 20 hours, so there would still be more progress if you led a more normal life but actually could concentrate when working. It is after all work that you have to do a lot of thinking for.

Anyway, most of our students seem to have chosen to work very few hours and compensate by working very slowly and inefficiently during those hours :-) And sleep during the seminars. But most of them have jobs to earn enough money to pay the tuition, so I guess they are busy with that.

So this week I have been stuck at the university until around 10 P.M. every night (and my contract explicitly forbids me from getting paid for overtime). Yesterday I snapped a few pictures of the campus by night.

Ice festival

2012-02-07T16:23:00.000+09:00

Also on my way home, I passed the Susukino Ice Festival, so I snapped a few pictures there too.

A whole bar made of ice.

You could have your picture taken with miss Ice Festival (not the same as miss Sapporo, who is at the Snow Festival). And as most miss something in Japan, there are two miss Ice Festival each year.

The miss Ice Festivals again.

Snow festival

2012-02-07T16:15:00.001+09:00

On my way home from work I passed the snow festival and snapped a few shots of some of the snow sculptures I passed.

Cultural differences

2012-02-07T16:13:00.001+09:00

In Japan, or Asia in general, I guess, the swastika does not have the same connotations as in Europe. It is common to see it in all kinds of places (it is for instance the symbol for temples on many maps), as here on a shot glass in a bar.

Reverse chocolate

2012-02-07T02:40:00.000+09:00

In Japan, Valentine's Day is a fairly big event. Women are expected to give chocolate or home baked chocolate cakes to men they are fond of. On "White Day" (14th of March), men then return the favor, and you have to give (at least three times as much as you received) chocolate to the women that gave you chocolate. Originally, women gave chocolate to men they liked to say "I like you, let's become a couple!", and if the man returned chocolate on White Day, it meant "OK!".

The custom has evolved, and women are now also expected to give "giri choco" (giri means "duty" or something you have to do) to all the men at their work place etc. It seems like quite a lot, and most women I have talked to say it is a pain and can cost quite a lot of money.

There is also something called "gyaku choco", gyaku meaning "opposite". This is chocolate that a man gives to a woman on Valentine's Day. So even though you are a man and should just be receiving piles of chocolate, you are giving something, to a woman no less, so it is the opposite of how things should be. Today, I found "gyaku choco" being sold in one of the 12 convenience stores located within a few minutes walking distance from my home. It is so opposite that all the text on the package is mirrored! I might be able to use this for some magic trick or something, and it was cheap, so I bought four of them... Sadly, it is only the box that is mirrored. All the text on the chocolate inside is like the normal boxes.

By the way, I usually get zero pieces of chocolate on Valentine's Day. This means that no one likes me, and no friend or colleague things I am worth chocolate either. In fact, even those years that someone took pity on me and I got something, I got so little that my professor said "That is really really sad" when he heard how little chocolate I got (he is married and still gets huge amounts, apparently), and I get ridiculed by 10 year old boys that also get much more than I do! In a zoo I was asked by small boys how much chocolate I got, and said "nothing". They asked if I did not have any female friends at all?! I said, these two women sitting next to me here are friends enough that we took the bus all the way to this zoo (2 hour trip) together. The kids thought they were very cold hearted towards me, but my friends did not seem to take the hint...

This year will be my seventh Valentine in Japan (though I have only been here five and a half years). It looks like it will be one more traumatizing Valentine this year too...

Snow festival

2012-02-06T19:16:00.001+09:00

Today the snow festival started. This means there are lots of people in the way when I try to get to work, since the festival runs across my road to work. I have no time to go see the sculptures now, but maybe later in the week.

New t-shirt, new magic trick: a chicken eating fried eggs

2012-02-05T06:37:00.003+09:00

Yesterday I uploaded a magic trick based on a t-shirt showing a sad salmon eating salmon sushi. Today I wore a t-shirt with an equally sad chicken staring at two fried eggs. There is of course a magic trick to go with this t-shirt too, and just as yesterday, it is a very silly trick. I like silly tricks...

A famous zombie!

2012-02-04T04:49:00.002+09:00

Me at the zombie walk

Today a group of eight fairly young men came to our magic bar when I was there performing. One of them asked me: "Didn't you participate in the Sapporo Zombie Walk three months ago?" Indeed I did. He even had a photo of himself posing with me when I was in my zombie make-up, in his cell phone. Small world. And quite impressive of him to see that it was me, and to remember me.

Me today

I also asked a colleague to take a movie of me doing a silly trick using my t-shirt. I have bought a fair number of t-shirts with animals being cannibals, pigs eating pork, chickens eating fried eggs, cows eating beef steak, etc. Today I wore a shirt with a salmon eating salmon sushi with a sad face. Recently I have started using these t-shirts for magic tricks. These are not very sophisticated tricks, more of a silly gag kind of magic, but they are kind of cute I think. People seem to like them too. Here is the salmon version.

And here is the salmon:

Susukino Ice Festival, preparations

2012-02-04T04:44:00.001+09:00

On my way home from my university, I passed by the main street of Susukino (our entertainment district). Next week there will be the Susukino Ice Festival, and the street will be full of ice sculptures and tourists. Right now they are cutting the sculptures and piling up ice to build the Ice Bars and Ice Karaoke Rooms.

Wireless keyboard

2012-02-03T16:08:00.000+09:00

One of my colleagues seems to want a wireless keyboard. I think he is taking it too far, but who am I to judge?

Calligraphy

2012-02-03T16:06:00.001+09:00

Food

I went to eat at Bottom Cafe, which has very good food at surprisingly low prices. They are open until 5 A.M. too, which helps when you have to work late.

Calligraphy

The owner, who normally does not work in the bar (he owns several other places too), was there working behind the counter. He also does calligraphy, and he wrote this for me to give to my parents. It is his imagination of a message I should send to my parents. This time, I can even read what it says. A year or so ago, he wrote me something that was his image of me or my personality. It was very difficult to read, even for Japanese people.

Soon Sapporo Snow Festival

2012-02-03T16:01:00.002+09:00

Now it is only 3 days left until this years Sapporo Snow Festival starts, so they have started working even on the "small" sculptures.

Snow and bicycles

2012-02-03T15:57:00.002+09:00

I used to ride my bicycle to work the first 5 winters in Sapporo, but since I broke my 12th bike two years ago I have not bothered to get a new one. Now I walk instead. Which takes 45 minutes instead of 20, but I guess it is good exercise. And you do not have to deal with things such as trying to find your bicycle after a day of heavy snow, like this day (we get quite a lot of snow in January and February).

Swedish waffles

2012-02-03T15:54:00.001+09:00

When I had the flu I did not want to go out to eat, since I might spread the flu to innocent people. So I made waffles at home instead, with some of the waffle mix a Swedish friend brought to Sapporo.

Getting the flu, and your apartment on fire

2012-01-31T04:08:00.002+09:00

I had the flu last week and have not had time or energy enough to do anything blog worthy. It was the first time in many years I got influenza, and it was a long time since I shivered this much. I was shaking like crazy for two or three days. But I was busy at work (had presentations to do etc.), so I spent my days there (at least it is warm), taking extreme care to not infect anyone else, and slept the rest of the time. Now I am fine, though I still cough quite a lot.

Tonight, at 3:16 A.M., I was woken by a Japanese voice screaming: "There is a fire on the first floor! Please calmly run away!" So I calmly put on some clothes, grabbed my passport and my external USB hard drive, and escaped out into the very cold and dark night (minus 9 Celsius). Apparently my neighbors were less enthusiastic, and most took the elevator downstairs (I, following the proper procedure, took the stairs from the 9th floor).

After a few minutes, a fire truck arrived. After a few minutes more, a police patrol car and lots of police men also arrived. A fireman said that it looked like a false alarm, they could not find any fire or smoke. After about 30 minutes, they managed to turn off the alarm, and everyone returned home.

I guess it was a good chance to see my neighbors without makeup, though it was too dark to see much. Two people had animal pajamas (tails, ears; pajamas shaped like animals or cartoon characters are popular here though I thought they were for kids) so perhaps they work for some karaoke place? Since it was 3 in the morning, most people in our building were probably at work, and not so many neighbors were around to be looked at.

Anyway, good thing the place did not burn down.

Busy Sundays

2012-01-23T14:31:00.000+09:00

My expectation

On my way home, I walked passed our magic bar (the one I am usually not in when I do magic). I had heard from our owner that he would be there and the place would be open even on Sunday (usually it is closed on Sundays). I was expecting almost no one to be there, and to be able to sit down, relax, talk some magic, and then go home early.

Reality

Instead, the place was almost full when I got there, with two fairly large groups of customers. And just as I walked in, someone had called my boss and said they were coming too. In total, another seven people where on their way. Which would be very difficult to handle alone. So I ended up doing magic until sometime past midnight, with no rest. But our part time bartender Aya, who works in a cake shop during the days, was also there with her friends. She left early and did not help out, but she had brought cake!

Cake

My boss was very happy that I had showed up. When I was leaving, he said: "By the way, just so you know, I will be here next Sunday too, hint hint...", haha.

O2

2012-01-23T14:21:00.001+09:00

On our way back from the nabe party, we saw an oxygen capsule. It said that it was good for people who were tired from doing a lot of sports, and for people with bad hang-overs.

Swedish culture and Japanese food

2012-01-23T14:18:00.002+09:00

On Sunday I was invited to some friends who live near "Sweden Hills", a place where all houses have to be built and painted like Swedish houses. They also apparently have a lot of snow already (most snow falls in February, so it is reasonable to expect at least double what they have now towards the middle of February). The snow is higher than a grown person standing.

Nabe

Rice and egg poured into the broth that is left after eating the nabe.

I was invited to a "nabe-party". Nabe is a Japanese type of food often eaten in winter, and you do not cook it when you are alone, so I rarely eat it. It is quite good. I brought along another Swede, who also lives alone and thus does not eat nabe very often.

Swedish saffron buns, chocolate balls, and alcohol.

He brought lots of Swedish stuff with him, like strong alcohol, and saffron buns that he had flown to Osaka to bake and bring back to Sapporo (he does not have an oven, but his friend in Osaka does).

Rice porrige, considered weird by Japanese people

He also brought "rice porridge" (日本語) which combines rice and milk. This is very weird to Japanese people. They were polite enough to say that "This is not something I would like to eat, but if someone says I have to eat it I could do it without too much trouble".

Mochi, gooey rice "cakes", wrapped in seaweed.

There was also large amounts of other food available. Like mochi.

Strong liquor and a cake.

One of my presents, chop sticks that can double as a spoon and a fork. Below is a box of chocolate covered marshmallows.

When we arrived, we were told that in fact this was a birthday party. More specifically, it was my birthday party. Since my birthday is in the end of October, and it is the end of January now, this was something of a surprise. There was cake and presents, though, so this was a pleasant surprise.

Transcribing the Swedish name "Kalle" to Japanese and then back again resulted in something else... No one I know is named Karre.

This is how you spell Kalle, and there are also lots of books by a Swedish author on the table.

There was also a large collection of Swedish books (translated into Japanese) brought forth. In a magazine reporting on books by this author, they had misspelled a very common Swedish name into something strange, which we thought was funny.

More snow festival preparations

2012-01-23T14:00:00.002+09:00

The soldiers building the snow festival giant displays are busy every day. On Sunday it was raining, which is not so good for the snow sculptures...

Samurai Pizza

2012-01-23T13:58:00.002+09:00

On Saturday I went to a restaurant called "Cheese Cheese". They have good pizzas (they have participated in pizza baking contests in Italy and won prizes). I ordered their "Samurai Pizza", which has miso sauce, cheese, leek, and mushrooms.

Woodpecker

2012-01-23T13:56:00.000+09:00

When walking to work, some people stopped and suddenly reached for their cameras. They started taking pictures of this bird, so possibly it is a rare bird to see here. I took a picture too.

"Nau!" (Now!)

2012-01-23T13:54:00.001+09:00

Kashikiri nau

In Japan, people like to use English words and expressions. Sometimes it becomes a bit strange, such as the "Let's"-craze. There are very large numbers of posters all over the country urging you to "Let's [some noun]". This sounds a bit strange, e.g. "Let's ice cream" or "Let's country fare!".

Our very loyal customer, the owner of our magic bars, and the boss in my bar trying to block them both out when he saw me using the camera.

With Twitter and other similar short status update services (Facebook and Twitter have recently become popular here, and everyone uses the Japanese Facebook-clone Mixi), "nau!" (meaning "now") is very popular. Like "Pizza nau!" (I am eating pizza now), or "Tokyo now" (I am in Tokyo now).

Two magicians performing magic

On Thursday when I went to visit my colleagues in the magic bar, they had put a sign on the door that said "kashikiri nau" ("reserved now", i.e. the whole place is booked for an event and no one else can get a table). I figured I count as staff, so I went inside anyway. It turned out to be a friend who had booked the place for a "Everyone who makes curry in Sapporo"-event.

Blog tip: how to batch resize all photos in a Picasa web album

2012-01-19T16:46:00.001+09:00

Recently I wanted to resize all the pictures I have uploaded to my blog and Google+ etc. They end up in a Picasa web album, and in the web interface I did not find a "resize" option that you could use on a lot of pictures at once. My Google skills also did not give anything useful (only people talking about how inconvenient it is that there is not batch processing option).

Anyway, I found out how to do it, at least for the size I wanted to resize my photos to, and since no one else seemed to have written anything on how to do it, here goes...

To resize all the photos in a Picasa web album without much effort do this (only works when resizing to sizes you can select as "Default upload size"):

1) Install Picasa.

2) Import your web album in your local installation of Picasa.

3) Click the option "Sync to web" to set it to "On". (Can be found in the upper right corner of the part showing your album in Picasa, and in other places too I think).

4) Edit your default upload options and set them to what you want to rescale your photos to. Tools->Options->Google+ photos->Default upload size

5) If you do not have time to wait for it to automatically sync, you can force syncing by right clicking on the Picasa folder, Online Actions->Refresh Online Status.

All your pictures downloaded from the web album will be re-uploaded with the new size.

Swedish ice cream

2012-01-19T16:26:00.000+09:00

Not ice cream (cheese covered bacon wrapped rice lumps)

Yesterday I went out to eat with my Swedish and Greek colleagues again. They like cheap places, so we had unlimited drinking for 800 yen. There was also unlimited ice cream for 290 yen including 18 types of ice cream from many different countries.

Swedish ice cream! Number two in popularity!

There was "Swedish" ice cream, which was quite blue and had the label "mint chocolate". It was pretty good, and it was number two on their popularity ranking list (number one was Belgian chocolate ice cream). Other memorable types included:

Potato ice cream

Potato ice cream (OK, so it is sweet potato, but it is still ice cream that tastes like potatoes...)

Tea ice cream, both green tea (maccha) and Japanese brown tea (houjicha).

Grey ice cream (label was missing, probably sesame seed ice cream).

Grey ice cream with uncertain taste.

Half of the ice cream stock they had.

Internet Coffee?

2012-01-19T16:11:00.000+09:00

We have something called "Internet Coffee" in our lab. It looks like some kind of instant coffee.

Woman eaten alive by Angry Birds in Sapporo?!

2012-01-19T16:09:00.002+09:00

On my way to work, I saw a woman with birds sitting in her hair. They left her head before I got my camera out, though. I am guessing she was feeding them, but it still looked funny.

Vaguely suggestive titles, and pictures of naked women: My job

2012-01-19T16:06:00.000+09:00

We had a conference here that I had to send a two page paper to, and present a poster at. It does not count as a publication (so the motivation to put in large amounts of effort is very low), starts obscenely early in the morning, requires you to be there even though almost all presentations are completely unrelated to anything you do (it spans lots of research areas), etc. etc. So it is a waste of time, but in a positive sense I guess you can see it as "I got paid for playing Angry Birds and WordFeud on an Android tablet for three days", which is not bad.

You have to stand at least three hours by your poster, in case anyone is interested in what you do. I had a total of 1 visitor during those three hours. He gave me lots of feedback on things he though I should do instead of the research I am doing, most of them being similar to "Why do you do visualization of medical data when you can do theoretical data mining on synthetic data from completely different fields?", so not so practically applicable in our project on visualizing medical data.

My poster is pictured above, and has a suggestive title (that still correctly describes the contents of the research) and a picture of a naked woman (at least I think it is a woman, it is hard to tell without skin).

Engagement party

2012-01-16T19:57:00.002+09:00

Food

Yesterday I went to an engagement party, since an acquaintance got engaged. There was a lot of really good food, quite a lot of fun and interesting conversation, and generally very nice.

A huge knife used to cut a small cake.

Cake

There was also a game of "anyone who loses this round will have to eat Death Sauce (very very spicy thing)". I ended up with quite a lot of Death Sauce, and it hurt. It did not hurt as much as I remember it doing the last few times I had Death Sauce, though.

Two guys ended up dressed almost exactly the same by chance. Checkered shirts, both had hats, same color pants. And when they left, they turned out to have similar coats, and identical shoulder bags! People thought they were dating...

Sushi and alcohol

2012-01-16T19:47:00.001+09:00

On Saturday, someone brought children with them to our magic bar. This happens sometimes, but it is not very common. It was nice to do magic for children again. Towards the end of their time in our magic bar, one of the children, about 8 years old perhaps, told me: "Excuse me, but this is not ginger ale [what he ordered]. It tastes very bitter." It turned out that my colleague had mixed something up and poured the ginger ale into a glass with lots of gin in it... Very cute reaction from the kid when tasting gin for (presumably) the first time.

We also had another customer who ordered sushi for 5 people (he came with one friend). He asked for 4 pieces of "Russian roulette", which means super strong wasabi is hidden in 4 random pieces of sushi. We magicians got lots of sushi too, but in the end the guy ended up eating two of the super spicy ones himself... while watching me do magic. It was quite funny to see his face suddenly change color.

I ended up getting only normal wasabi, and this sushi place makes very nice sushi, so for me it was a good day.

Sapporo Snow Festival, preparations

2012-01-16T19:40:00.004+09:00

In the beginning of February we have the Sapporo Snow Festival here. The preparations start already in the beginning of January, and I saw the army building huge snow piles on my way to work.

The snow festival contains huge snow monuments built by Japanese soldiers (Japan does not really engage in war anymore, so the soldiers have time to do other things), and it contains smaller (2x2x2 cubic meters) sculptures that normal citizens can apply to make.

Izakaya

2012-01-16T19:34:00.001+09:00

The complimentary starter, here boiled horse radish, and an egg from a small bird.

In Japan there is a type of restaurant or bar called "izakaya". They serve (usually) cheap Japanese food and very cheap alcohol. My colleages like cheap things, so last time we went out to eat and drink, we went to an izakaya. You get 90 minutes of unlimited drinks for 800 yen (8 Euro), which is cheap. But then again, you get only cheap beer or cheap alcohol.

This place is known for good "grilled pork on a stick", which we had.

We also had bacon wrapped mochi (sticky rice thingies).

The list on the wall said that this shops most ordered dish was fried shrimp with some form of mayo sauce.

The food was nice, and fairly cheap. We had lots of different food, but here are some of the highlights.

Spice mix

2012-01-16T19:27:00.004+09:00

One of my friends gave me a bag with some sort of Indian spice mix. I bought some vegetables and chicken and made some form of soup curry thing with that. I also baked some Swedish bread to go with it, and everything turned out very well.

Cat ears when grocery shopping

2012-01-10T19:36:00.002+09:00

I ran into this Japanese person who was wearing cat ears, a tail, and a skirt that was very very short from behind but very long from the front. He or she was grocery shopping in my local super market.

More snow

2012-01-10T19:32:00.001+09:00

After plowing the few roads inside the university campus, they have to put the snow somewhere so we have lots of small snow hills. This one is high enough to block the second story windows.

The snow piled up between the cars and the pedestrians is almost high enough to block the cars from view (despite the sidewalk being raised about 40 cm by packed snow too). This makes crossing the roads exciting.

The really snowy part of the Sapporo winter has not really started yet, but we do have some snow already.

Collon and School of lock

2012-01-10T19:29:00.000+09:00

Today I found the product "Collon", which is only one "l" from being an inappropriate name or something you want people to eat. Not only I, but also one of my friends, immediately noticed that it also looks quite a lot like a colon, it is a whitish tube filled with brown chocolate...

Our coop also sells "School of Lock". I am not sure that they really mean "lock". The "Tokyo FM 38 stations" part sounds to me like the might mean "rock". Which is written the same way as "lock" when transcribed using the Japanese alphabets. Even if they did mean "lock", I still think "School of lock" is strange enough to mention.

Kind of Indian curry

2012-01-10T19:24:00.003+09:00

I was bored yesterday since it was "Coming of age"-day, thus we did not have to work. I ended up cooking to pass time. I had received a big bag of "Indian spice mix" from one of our regulars in the magic bar, and I decided to use that. I went out and bought some vegetables and chicken and boiled all of it into something resembling Indian curry.

I also baked some bread, which turned out nice too. Bread fresh from the oven combined with spicy boiled chicken with onion, spinach, and carrots was good to pass time, but not so good for dieting. I need to cook food that tastes bad instead...

Beer for children...

2012-01-10T19:20:00.001+09:00

This looks like a beer bottle, and the contents behave quite a lot like beer. The product name is "a drink for children", though... At first I thought that it might be a little bit inappropriate to sell drinks that look and foam like beer aimed at small children. After trying it myself, I suspect it may be an anti-drinking campaign, though. The taste is horrible, and if you traumatize young children into thinking that anything that looks like beer tastes like that, they will likely never drink.

Drinking TBC and eating Creaps

2012-01-06T15:50:00.000+09:00

Today the university coop sells a drink called TBC which apparently is a "great supplement drink endorsed by Aesthetic TBC". TBC in Swedish means tuberculosis.

We can also buy "creap".

Snow

2012-01-06T15:45:00.000+09:00

We have some snow in Sapporo, but it is still too hot during the days, so most of it melts away. By the middle of January or at least by February, the heavy snowfalls will start, though. We get about 6 meters of snow per year (and the ski resorts in the mountains nearby get aroun 14 meters!)

A glassful of drops

2012-01-06T02:46:00.003+09:00

This is our ice bucket in our magic bar. I have not noticed until today, but it has lots of English written on it.

A glassful of drops
Each drop is tomorrow's dream
Sip your dreams by drops

A magical surprise

2012-01-06T02:44:00.004+09:00

Some of the food at our faculty party.

Today we had the university staff "start of the new year"-party, with 90 minutes of all you can eat and drink. Not good if you are trying to get rid of all the extra kilos from the New Year food orgies...

Fruit is expensive in Japan (strangely enough, since it is hot here), so I concentrated on this corner.

I was talking to an old friend when he introduced me to a Japanese professor he knows. My friend said I was a magician, and it turned out that the Japanese guy has recently started practicing magic too. So he wanted me to show him something. I said I had not brought any things with me, but he said "No problem" and took out a deck of Bicycle cards from his own bag! I was quite surprised to find a fellow magician (in training) at the faculty party, and surprised that anyone had brought cards...

My fellow magician doing some card trick.

Raw fish is always popular.

I did a short trick for him and he showed some things too. Later he asked me to show him more magic several times, and I ended up doing quite a lot of magic. I also ran out of business cards, since a lot of people watching said they wanted to come to our magic bar to see more.

My first plate, of several.

New camera!

2012-01-04T20:48:00.001+09:00

Since my old camera broke, I bought a new camera today. It is a Canon Powershot S100. I have not had time to use it yet, but it seems like a nice camera.

Funny t-shirts

2012-01-04T20:14:00.001+09:00

I bought some more t-shirts in Tokyo on my way home from Saitama. I already have t-shirts with pigs eating a Japanese pork dish, cows eating beef steak, and a hen eating eggs. I bought one more with the hen, since my old one is a yellow shirt and the black looks better. I also found a salmon eating salmon sushi, bears eating bear paws (a Japanese dish), and rabbits looking at a rabbit fur coat.

I also wanted to buy a t-shirt that said "aho gaijin" ("idiot foreigner") in Japanese, but they only came in the size "large as a tent". There was also a nice t-shirt that said "Starwars coffe" and had a picture of a storm trooper instead of the Starbucks woman, but again they only had tent sized shirts left.

One more bag

2012-01-04T20:10:00.000+09:00

I have a big suitcase in leather that I use when travelling to Sweden (so I can put lots of Swedish food for my Swedish colleague in it on the way back to Japan). I also have some smaller leather bags that I use for my magic props, and for shorter trips (and one of them I use as a set with the suitcase when travelling longer periods of time too, as a carry-on bag).

I have recently bought one more bag, even smaller. It is a camera bag, though I currently have a deck of cards in it. That is about all it can fit.

Japanese New Year: Hatsumode at Meiji Jingu

2012-01-04T20:06:00.001+09:00

Me outside the Meiji Jingu grounds.

When the new year starts, you go to the Shinto shrines for "hatsumode" ("first visit"). If you go right after midnight when the new year has just started, there is usually a huge line and you have to wait for hours (if you go to one of the larger shrines). I once went to the Hokkaido Jingu in Sapporo, but the line was kilometers long, with 30 people abreast... and it is fairly cold here in the winter nights, so I gave up.

If you manage to reach the actual shrine, you throw some money in a basket, pull a rope connected to some bells (causing noise so the Gods know to listen to you), and pray for something (like passing the entrance exam to your favorite university). You also usually buy a form of written prediction of how your new year will turn out. You get things like "very lucky" or "not so lucky", and details about love life, money, etc. If you get some bad prediction, you can tie it to a tree in the shrine to have the bad effects canceled.

There are usually also tents selling alcohol, hot dogs, and general festival food. Having this kind of commerce on the shrine or temple grounds is very common in Japan, but was a bit strange to me at first. But the religions here seem fairly relaxed, and many shrines and temples put up Christmas decorations on the Buddhas or shrines and other things like that.

My brother and his girlfriend eating crepes outside the temple. The tents in the background is for getting people to donate blood.

People ahead of me in the line to the shrine. And the line turns around the corned and goes on for much longer.

This year I went to Meiji Jingu, which is possibly the most heavily visited shrine in Japan. I went there on January 3 in the hope that most people would have already done their hatsumode by now, so the line would not be that long. Compared to peak times, it was not long, but it still would take more than an hour of standing in line, so I once again gave up. I went to a nearby store selling funny t-shirts instead. As I understand, Meiji Jingu gets more than 3 million visitors during the first three days of the year. If you go there during the summer when nothing special is going on, there are around 10 other people or so.

Magic in Saitama

2012-01-04T19:52:00.002+09:00

I was asked to do some magic when I was in Saitama. I did one show when my brother's girlfriend's younger brother was home from work. He only had one day off, so there was a special show mainly for him (though 6 other people where also watching).

The next day he was away working, but some other people showed up and I was asked to do two magic shows, one before the main meal and one after (one guest could not show up until quite late). There were 10 people watching these shows.

The encore rabbits.

I was also asked to do the trick they liked the most again, though everyone had seen it several times by then.... Usually I would not, but they were VERY insistent on an encore, so in the end I relented and it seemed most people did still not see how it was done.

The mini-FRISK that was not even mine!

The most popular trick was using a bunch of sponge rabbits. This was pretty good since last year was the year of the rabbit (now it has become the year of the dragon) so the tie in was good. I also did a trick with some FRISK breath mints changing size and the text changing etc. Later the guest that showed up last turned out to have a tiny FRISK box strapped to her phone, which was funny.

Japanese New Year: Endless amounts of food

2012-01-04T19:45:00.003+09:00

My brother's girlfriend made some excellent "futo maki" (sushi rolls).

I had a fairly traditional Japanese New Year this year. In Japan, New Year is a big deal, and most people have several days off from work. You celebrate the new year with your family, so this is the time of year where it is most expensive and difficult to get plane tickets, and there used to be lines of cars standing still for 80 km when everyone was going back home to gather with their relatives or when everyone was going back to the cities to work after the holidays.

Some octopus, sushi, ham, and other things.

The main activity is doing nothing, and eating. Traditionally, not even housewives where supposed to work during the New Year celebration and they had to work lots before instead, making enough food to feed the whole extended family for three days.

Toshi koshi soba

There are some foods that you are supposed to eat. On the 31st, you eat "toshi koshi soba" ("bringing in the new year soba"), which means soba noodles, with no additions (i.e. no meat etc.) but in extreme amounts. You also eat "osechi ryouri", lots of small dishes of traditional food. Most are based on some kind of word-play system, so you eat beans to have a year where you are serious in studies or work because the word for bean is "mame" but "mame" is also the word for serious. There is also a lot of other food that you eat, and you drink a lot of alcohol.

Crabs are not particularly New Year but they are very Hokkaido, where I am from, so I am usually asked to bring crabs with me.

Sukiyaki

Swedish cheese is not normally available at Japanese New Year tables, but my brother had brought some with him which was nice for me. Also, cheese slicers like the one in this picture are almost unheard of in Japan (they get pre-sliced cheese here).

New Year Holiday

2012-01-03T23:19:00.001+09:00

I went to Saitama (near Tokyo) to visit my brother's girlfriend's parents, who live there. My brother and his girlfriend also came to Japan, so we met up in Saitama.

I ate way too much food (all of it delicious), did 3 magic shows, saw mount Fuji (you can see it from their living room), bought some weird t-shirts, and generally had a good time.

I will update the blog more when I have time, now that I am back and actually have a computer at hand. First out is just a picture of my luggage for my 4 day stay in Saitama. In the "big" bag I just about managed to fit 3 t-shirts and the same amount of underwear. The small bag is much much heavier, and is full of magic props.

Whiteout

2011-12-30T17:32:00.001+09:00

My first day of the six day university winter holiday turned out to be full of snow. When I woke up and looked out, I could not see very much because there was so much snow in the air that visibility was close to zero. When I got dressed (quite a while later) and went out on my balcony to take a picture it had cleared up quite a bit, but visibility was still bad. There should be lots more buildings visible from my balcony than the ones in the photo above.

Presents from Sweden

2011-12-30T17:29:00.003+09:00

Wednesday was the last day of work at my university, then we have 6 days off for New Years, which is a big holiday in Japan.

In the morning I woke up and got into the shower and with fairly good timing, the mailman called from downstairs to tell me that there was a packet for me that was too big to fit in my tiny mailbox right as I got out of the shower. So I buzzed him in and managed to wrap a towel around myself before he got up to my floor. He brought me a package from my parents, full of chocolate and other things that will make me even fatter (but delicious :-) and some cooking books with Swedish Christmas food.

Later when I was having lunch at the university, I got another present from Sweden. Two Swedish friends who are currently visiting our university gave me more chocolate (filled with salty licorice, which is nice both because it tastes good but also because no one else in the whole country can even eat it, so I do not have to share :-) There was also Swedish waffle mix. So I will likely swell up like a balloon, especially since I cannot get rid of this very tiresome cold I have had since I played with all the kids at the Christmas party, so I cannot even exercise.

After work, I went with two colleagues to a Mexican restaurant and had some (well, a lot) nice food. We then continued on to a bar where one of my friends work. When the three of go out at night, it always turns into a heated discussion of politics/ethics/economics. And we have very differing views, so discussion never ends, but it is a lot of fun.

End of the year-party

2011-12-28T01:45:00.000+09:00

Fried chicken cartilage

On Monday I was working hard trying to finish writing a research paper for my professor. He had to submit a 6 page paper by Tuesday, and since he had other things to do and we were working on a paper together since some time back, he told me to write it for him. He sent me 7 pages of text to add to what we already had, though, so he contributed quite a lot too.

He sent me this on Christmas Eve, since why would you not be working on Christmas, right? Well, in Japan Christmas is just a normal day, so that thinking may be reasonable some years, but this year Christmas Eve was a Saturday... Also, it was a little unclear if we really needed 7 new pages to fill out our already long paper when the page limit was 6 pages...

Anyway, at 17:09 I got an e-mail to my cellphone from a girl who is in the lab at my university where I used to work. She said: "I know this is short notice, but our lab has the end-of-year-party (忘年会) today, and many would be happy if you came. It starts at 18:00, near Sapporo station. Can you come?" Yes, short notice indeed. I said I'd try, but would not make it by 18:00.

I managed to finish the paper, or at least my part in the process, by 18:15 and reached the restaurant at 18:35 or so. I got to talk to my old boss, my Bulgarian friend, a Japanese guy I did some experiments and ate insects together with, some Swedish people I know, lots of Polish friends, and much more. I also got to see Miss Sapporo for the first time (she is in my old lab, but I have never managed to appear at a party where she attended, though I have been to several of their parties).

I also got to speak a little to two former students in our lab who are now working at universities in Yokohama and Fukuoka. They were back in Sapporo for New Years (I guess). They said that the most surprising thing about being back in Sapporo was that I was wearing a shirt with longs sleeves. Apparently, every other winter (and summer) party that we had when we were all in the same lab, I attended in a t-shirt... I thought it was only two or three times I went that lightly dressed in the winter, but still.

In my current lab, they keep putting all parties of Fridays, i.e. on days when I work in the magic bar. So I almost never participate. My old lab had the good sense to know that people have other things to do on Fridays than to hang out with their colleagues from work, so I could participate almost every time when I was in their lab (and often participate now too, though they rarely remember to invite me despite me begging them to not forget me...)

The photo shows fried chicken cartilage. This is very popular in Japan (all kinds of ways of preparing cartilage are). In Sweden we do not generally eat the cartilage, so this qualifies as slightly strange food for me. The first or second time I was in Japan, I was travelling with my brother. We went to a restaurant with two of his Japanese friends, and neither of us knew much Japanese back then. My brother decided to try to use what little Japanese he knew and tried to order something himself from the menu without asking the Japanese girls for help. He could read "chicken" and "fried", but ended up ordering fried chicken cartilage and the girls asked if he really meant that, if he knew what he just ordered, etc. He asked if he had ordered something weird, but they said no no, no problem. It was a bit weird for us, when it showed up.

Package from Sweden

2011-12-28T01:31:00.001+09:00

A Swedish friend I met in Sapporo but who now lives in Sweden again sent me an envelope full of Swedish candy for Christmas. It arrived with impeccable timing, on the 24th. Salty licorice...

Japanese Christmas

2011-12-28T01:29:00.000+09:00

Roast beef and salad.

In Japan, people do not really celebrate Christmas. The celebration that Japanese people do are mainly: 1) stand in line at Kentucky Fried Chicken and buy fried chicken (everyone knows that in the West, people eat turkey for Christmas (not in Sweden, though...) and KFC is close enough, and it is American, so it must be Christmas food); and 2) buy strawberry sponge cakes (because that is also Western, and very Christmasy (in Sweden we do not eat that for Christmas either...)).

Home baked bread!

Christmas is also a night were you have to go on a romantic dinner date if you have a girlfriend, so there are lots of couples out that night. Luckily (?) I do not have anyone who would date me, so I spent both Christmas Eve (when Japanese people date) and the 25th in our magic bar, working. In fact, I worked every night from Thursday to Sunday, since Friday (23rd) was a holiday (the emperor's birthday) and we were open on Sunday because it was Christmas.

Christmas cake

On the 24th, I was invited to a friend's house and four of us spent a few hours there eating Christmas party food. It included a cake with strawberries, of course, and also had roast beef, avocado salad, octopus carpaccio, various stick vegetables, and home baked bread. Everything was very good (it always is when my friend is cooking). Especially the bread!

My friend is great at cooking, but less great at cooking proper amounts of food. There is always way way way too much. But delicious, so everyone ends up eating too much. Everything was of course home made. My friend even has a proper oven, so she roasted the roast beef herself, and baked the sponge for the cake etc.

Free wine

2011-12-28T01:19:00.000+09:00

In Japan it is not uncommon to find stores giving you free wine (free sake is also common). In Sweden I have never seen that happen. In the Sapporo Beer museum it used to be the case that if you took the free tour (entrance is also free) you got one beer for free. This was apparently abused by lots of Americans that took the tour over and over again, so now you have to pay 100 yen for a beer.

Masks

2011-12-21T14:38:00.000+09:00

I have caught a cold. My colds are very strongly correlated with going to childrens' parties, doing magic, and playing with children. On Sunday I was playing with over 100 kids for over 2 hours, and like clockwork I had a bad cold on Tuesday.

When you have a cold (or influenza, or anything that spreads when you cough or sneeze) you wear a mask in Japan. Many foreigners seem to think that Asian people wear masks because they are afraid of getting sick, but it is actually the other way around. They are afraid of making you sick when they are already sick. When you see someone with a mask you know they have a cold and you can keep your distance if you are worried, so it works as an easy to spot signal. It also helps a little bit that they cough out all their viruses into the mask too, I guess.

You can also wear a mask to help against pollen. I have an allergy to pollen that makes my nose run like crazy and my eyes itch so much I may consider sticking a fork in my eye to relieve the itching sometimes. Taking allergy meds helps quite a lot but it makes me very sleepy. Just putting on a mask helps even more, and the main problems are only that your suntan looks weird and that your sunglasses fog up. With a mask and no allergy meds, I have gotten rid of my allergy problems almost 100% the last seasons. My mother forbade me from putting on a mask when I was in Sweden, though (apparently it "looks weird"), so I had to take meds again. That did not help as much as the mask does.

Another great thing with masks that I have found out is that in the winter when you have a woolly muffler covering your face, the mask keeps wool out of your mouth.

Gus station

2011-12-19T18:05:00.001+09:00

When trying to figure out how to get to the Toyohira Kumin Center from the subway station, I noticed that there are quite a few "gus stations" in Toyohira.

Nabe party

2011-12-19T17:59:00.000+09:00

Nabe

On Sunday I was invited to a nabe party. Nabe is the Japanese word for "pot" and this type of food is a broth in which you boil lots of vegetables and meat, and then scoop up into small bowls and eat together.

The friend who invited me has moved recently and when I asked where he lives now it turns out that he lives about 2 minutes walk from the Toyohira Kumin Center where I did a magic show until 16:30 the same day. Since the party was to start at 17:00 this was good timing indeed.

As with most of the Japanese people I know, everyone was late to the party though. I showed up at 17:00 sharp (I waited in a nearby convenience store not to show up too early) and one girl showed up about 20 minutes later. The rest came at around 18:30 and the last three showed up slightly after eight... My experience is that no one I met in Japan ever shows up on time so for me this was normal, but everyone else I know say all Japanese people they have ever met are always on time and that the 300 people or so I know must be the only 300 people in Japan to ever be late...

In the traditional Japanese way, everyone also brought lots of food with them even though the host had declared that they had prepared all the food necessary. So as usual, there was a huge amount of food to eat. This is great in all ways except that you grow fat from doing this :-) There were for instance four different people who came with cake. Each bringing enough cake for everyone. All the food was great.

My friend has not only recently moved, he has also recently got married. They did not actually have the wedding yet (it will be in March they said), but they have been to the city office to register the marriage officially. Apparently in Japan you tend to not have the wedding and party on the actual day that you get married but at some random unrelated day instead. Anyway, I introduced him and his wife, since she was a friend of one of my other friends and she asked me: "I want to meet a nice man. You are a man... so you must know other men, right? Can you introduce someone to me?" I figured the one most suitable for her of all the people I know was this guy, and since they married in under a year I guess I was more or less right.

It is interesting though that all my female friends tend to ask me things like "I want to meet a nice man. You are a man. So you must have some friends who are men. Introduce some nice man to me." No one has yet said "You are a nice man". But I guess I must at least be funny enough to be around

The English native speaker Dr. Hato

2011-12-19T17:11:00.001+09:00

On Sunday I did a volunteer magic show for over 100 kids (and over 40 grownups). The English conversation school ECC had a Christmas party at the Toyohira Kumin Center. There is a huge stage there that was quite nice to use.

I showed up early to the party (my show was the final point in the programme) and played with the kids for two hours before doing the magic show. I was introduced as a native speaker of English (which was a surprise to me, haha) and as "Dr Hato". That is my user ID and mail address for many of my digital accounts, since I am a doctor (Ph.D. in computer science) and since Jonas comes from the Hebrew word for dove (as in the symbol of peace) and that would be "hato" in Japanese. It is not really a name I use when talking to people though, but they asked if they could introduce me like that and I said fine.

I did a 15 minute show for the kids and despite the angles being quite severe (people where mainly in front, but there were people behind, and to both sides as well, and some were looking more or less from underneath...) everything went well. The kids seemed very happy.

After the show, a girl of about five years came up to me and scolded me though. She said, "So you can speak Japanese! If you can speak Japanese, why didn't you talk to me in Japanese from the start?!"... :-) Well, I had been asked to speak English to all the kids since it was an English conversation practice thingy that held the party. Doing magic in English is difficult for me since I am not used to it, and impossible for the kids to follow along with anyway, so the magic show I did all in Japanese. The girl thought that for communication purposes it would be better to chose a language where we both are fluent enough to understand each other :-)

Magical party and lightly dressed people

2011-12-19T17:06:00.002+09:00

Me in the Sapporo winter.

After our big stage show, the university magic club had a party too. In the club, you can only be a member for three years. This was my third year, so me and the other people who entered at the same time got flowers and a present at the party.

My flowers.

Every year it used to be a tradition that you had to make a promise about your stage performance ("I will not drop any thing during my juggling performance") and if you could not fulfil that you had to take the responsibility by being punished in some way that you decided yourself ("I will cut off all my hair"). This year, it seems there was no such system, but I figured I had not really lived up to my own expectations (and traditionally, all the third year students have to promise that they will be the most highly ranked performer of the year, meaning most will fail to live up to their promises :-) so I took it upon myself to do last years punishment (last year everything went fine, so I did not have to do it then).

The party place. Notice people wearing down jackets and coats...

So I went to the party in shorts and a t-shirt, which was a bit cold (minus 5 degrees Celsius outside). As a bonus, it turned out that the party was held on top of the Norubesa building. As in "not inside the Norubesa building" but actually on top. There were plastic sheets used as walls/windows, so there was no wind but it was still cold. I found the chair closest to the one lonely gas burner used to keep the staff vaguely warm, and sat there :-)

My friend, the stove.

Many of the others came up to me when we were waiting outside and asked what was up with my clothes. Funnily enough, the first one to ask was touching his own muffler when he asked it, and since I thought it was cold outside I also had a muffler, so I took his question to mean "Why are you wearing a muffler?" and I answered "I think it is cold outside today, so I wore a muffler". Another guy standing nearby thought that was funny, and every time someone would ask what was up with my clothes he would jump in and say "Jonas thinks it is cold today so he is wearing a muffler". I guess there is a first time for irony to be understood in Japan too :-)

Stage Magic Show

2011-12-19T16:56:00.002+09:00

On Saturday, December 17, our university magic club had its yearly big stage magic show. This year it was the 40th Magic Festival ・ 2011年12月17日「第40回Magic Festival」. About 30 magicians did all kinds of magic for about two hours. Since my camera broke that morning, I do not really have any good pictures from the event, but it was a lot of fun.

Me producing lots of balls from a flower pot.

My performance did not go as well as it could have, but the audience seemed happy enough. I could not see anything since the seats of the audience were in the dark and I had a strong spotlight in my eyes (I could just barely see the things I was using during my performance) but people came up to me afterwards and said they liked my performance. Pretty much everyone said they thought it was too short though. Which I guess is good praise in some sense, since they apparently wanted to see more.

The death of a camera

2011-12-19T16:20:00.001+09:00

Now my camera takes pictures that look like this.

On Saturday we (as in the university magic club) had our yearly big stage magic show. My camera chose that morning to die. So instead of having a lot of funny pictures from back stage, I have a broken camera and one picture from the short one minute period when the camera started to work again (and then nothing interesting was going on).

The last picture my camera took properly. When nothing special was happening.

After the show, I picked up my very old camera from home and took some pictures with that but the quality is not so good. I have too much to do, so I do not really have time to out and buy a new camera either. Maybe tomorrow.

Strange Swedish

2011-12-13T15:53:00.001+09:00

At the Swedish-Japanese party in the previous blog post, I learned that the couple organizing the party had been to Sweden this summer. They also had a guide book for Japanese tourists going to Scandinavia. It had a short list of useful phrases in the back. They turned out to contain a surprising number of errors for such a short list. And strangely enough, all the pronunciation hints with Japanese phonetics were completely fine, so someone who knows quite a lot of Swedish must have been involved somewhere...

Things I noticed that should be corrected included some minor typographic and spelling errors:
"Tac så mycket" -> "Tack så mycket"
"God Morgon" -> "God morgon"
"Kandu packa in dem separat?" -> "Kan du packa in dem separat?"
"Notan,tack" -> "Notan, tack"

Grammatical errors:
"Det var jättegod" -> "Det var jättegott" (or possibly "Den var jättegod")

Forgetting to replace the English word with the Swedish one:
"Var ligger toilet?" -> "Var ligger toaletten?"

Semantic strangeness:
"Får jag ha en karta?" -> "Kan jag få en karta?"
(the first version is correct Swedish, but means something like "Is it still OK if I come here and have a map with me?" instead of "Could you give me a map?" that they wanted to write).

So out of 15 phrases, 7 contained errors. Maybe they should proofread better.

Incredible amounts of food (Swedish-Japanese party)

2011-12-13T15:41:00.001+09:00

On Sunday I was invited to a "home party". When I was invited I was told that the person inviting me mainly wanted to introduce me to a Swedish girl that is "incredibly cute". And also married, but still...

The person organizing the party held it in her own home, and everyone was supposed to bring some food to share with everyone else. Participants were the organizer, her husband, the Japanese woman who invited me, me, a Swedish friend of mine, and the cute girl.

Swedish Christmas sweets made in Osaka.

Other Swedish sweets, made in Sapporo.

My Swedish friend impressed everyone by bringing traditional Swedish Christmas sweets that he baked in Osaka. His oven here in Sapporo is too small to be useful, so he travelled down to Osaka to use his friend's oven there.

Swedish Christmas food.

Close up of the Christmas food.

The Swedish girl made a traditional Swedish Christmas dish which is kind of an anchovy casserole, described in English and Japanese at Wikipedia. Quite impressive, and very good.

My contribution.

I brought some Dutch waffles that I bought at the airport in Amsterdam... not so impressive. But still tasty.

There were of course enormous amounts of Japanese food too. And when you could finally see the end of the food orgy, the husband decided that since food was running low he would go out and buy sushi and yakitori too... A lot of good food, but as usual way too much food.

There was also a lot of fun and interesting conversation. I for instance learned that the Swedish girl who is married to a Japanese man does not speak Swedish at home. Nor Japanese. Nor English, which might have been a reasonable guess. In fact, they speak Chinese at home. Which makes very little sense, but there was a perfectly logical explanation.

When urine research

2011-12-09T17:41:00.001+09:00

We have a whiteboard where someone has defined URIs. Lots of URIs. From URI 1 to URI N. So in the middle of lots of incomprehensible stuff, someone spelled out URINE with large letters.

This reminds me that the Germans that picked the name for the huge EU project we are (possibly) part of decided that "P-medicine" would be a good name. Our professor showed up and started telling us that we were now working for the "pee medicine" project. It took some time to figure out what he was talking about. And telling the people in charge that they might consider picking a different name had no effect. It would have been a good and funny name if the project had anything to do with pee, but it has not.

Possibly a pun

2011-12-09T17:37:00.001+09:00

Today I found "Freba" in our coop shop. This comes from "fureba" in Japanese, which means something like "if you shake". So it is a form of snack where you are supposed to shake the bag before opening it, to make the flavoring stick to the snacks. I think it is also a pun, since it is quite common to use the English word for "flavor" in Japanese, and that then becomes "fureebaa".

I also like that there is lots of English text that seems to make sense, but where the main part is hidden by a picture of a glass of beer. It makes me curious. What were they trying to say? And why did they cover the text with beer?

Japanese Christmas food

2011-12-09T17:24:00.001+09:00

This month our university coop run cafeteria has a Christmas fair. This means food they believe is Christmasy. Which means it contains the colors green and red, and preferable also yellow. So we have such Christmas like things as "hashed beef in curry sauce with omelet (yellow), broccoli (green), and ketchup (red), on rice"; Christmas chicken: chicken, potatoes (yellow), broccoli (green), and tomato sauce (red); fish egg salad (reddish fish eggs), corn (yellow) and broccoli (green)...

Speaking of Japanese Christmas food, the whole concept is a bit weird. In Japan, traditionally people do not celebrate Christmas (with no one being Christian, this is not surprising). The American influence is strong in Japan, and now there are slightly strange Japanese versions of Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine's Day.

Christmas is celebrated in two ways. If you have a girlfriend, you celebrate by going to an expensive restaurant serving European style food (like pasta) and have a romantic dinner. Christmas is the night for dating couples.

Christmas is also celebrated by standing in line in front of Kentucky fried chicken. This sounds like a joke, but people actually form lines of several hundred meters just to get into KFC on Christmas. For real. People also book fried chicken in advance from KFC to take home and eat as a Christmas dinner with the whole family. Booking well in advance is your only reasonable chance of getting KFC on Christmas.

Not only do they do weird things like stand in line for KFC for hours, they also think that "this is what you do in the West, right?" Um, no? We do not even have KFC in Sweden. Apparently, the thinking is something like "Americans eat turkey at Christmas" -> "turkey is a bird" -> "KFC serves chicken, which is also a bird" -> "KFC serves traditional Christmas food" -> "everyone in Europe and America eats at KFC during Christmas" -> "we should do that too".

Valentine's Day is also weird here, but that is a story for another day.

Hot soup

2011-12-09T17:22:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I tried the new item on Bottom Cafe's food menu. It is a spicy soup with thinly sliced lamb, turnip, garlic, and some other healthy looking things. I think they said the soup had lots of tequila in it too, which is perhaps not quite as healthy. It was very good, and came with a plate of very spicy peppers on the side, that you could add to make the soup as spicy as you wanted.

Do not lick the birds

2011-12-07T16:53:00.001+09:00

Here is another poster from our office at the university. I saw it from such a distance that reading it was still difficult. Did the picture of the girl with her toungue sticking out and hugging a chicken mean that we are not allowed to lick birds anymore? No, it turns out to be a notice that there will be some talks about new and evovled flue strains.

Nintendogs + cats

2011-12-07T16:11:00.001+09:00

Today you get "Nintendogs + cats", straps for you cell phone looking like dogs or cats if you buy tea.