Last night of the Susukino festival

Cute dancer

After my magic show at the wedding, I went to the Susukino festival to have some dinner with a magician friend. We also saw some 御神輿 (omikoshi, small portable shrines) being carried around. Later we also saw a DJ and three cute dancers making a whole street of people jump around in the street.

Omihoshi

Omikoshi

Tonjiru (pork soup)

The groom disappearing at the wedding, and it is a good thing!

I did a magic show at a wedding this weekend, and it was a lot of fun.

Whale bacon and yosakoi

On Friday the Susukino festival was still going strong and the weather was nice so it was packed with people. I ran into some customers from our magic bar and ate some whale with them.

Whale bacon

Normal bacon, wrapped around gooey rice (better than whale bacon)

"Whale bacon" was on the menu, but the bacon part of a whale is not that good. Sometimes our university cafeteria serves deep fried whale meat (though not a whole deep fried whale), which is a much better part of the whale. The most common whale meat to see here in Sapporo is the whale bacon, though. While whale is not bad, even the better parts of the whale do not actually taste better than "normal" meat, so why Japan keeps hunting and eating whales when it makes Australia and other countries (from where the whales are taken) angry is a bit of a mystery to me.

There was no oiran procession through the area on Friday, but instead there was a Yosakoi contest. This is a form of team dance where people dance to techno versions of old folk songs, including some traditional folk dance moves and carrying a kind of old Japanese maracas, but other than that the rules seem to be very free. It usually includes some form of clothes change in the middle of the dance, and very colorful makeup.

Oiran

Yesterday our Susukino festival started here in Sapporo. Last year our magic bar participated and had a barbecue stand. It was way too much work, so everyone agreed that "never again!"...

The guy in white, portraying the "husband" was apparently a famous actor (though I know barely any Japanese famous people by sight).

This year I changed into a yukata and walked over to take a look at the other stalls in the streets, and see some of the events going on. I arrived just in time for the "oiran parade". Oiran (花魁) were Japanese high level courtesans. The oiran parade of the festival were two women selected because of their beauty and walking abilities in oiran clothes, if I understood the announces correctly. There were also people portraying "the husband", helper girls, and other roles.

Ladies in waiting, or something like that

The clothes seemed fairly inconvenient. Really high wooden clogs, very many layered kimono, and an enormous kimono belt. The walking style was also very peculiar, with large sweeping leg motions. The procession progressed very very slowly.

Very high clogs, very many layers of kimono, and a huge belt

Lots of people were gather to watch and take photos, so it was difficult to get good pictures.

After they had passed me, I went around looking at the food stalls. One place served Turkish shishkebab, so I sat down there. It turned out to be in the same group of restaurants as an Italian place I often go, so they recognized me there.

Shishkebab

Pork tongue

I also kept running into customers from our magic bar. Some of them told me that our boss in the magic bar was also drinking at some other place, though it took me over an hour before I found him (since he also kept moving around).

One more oiran

Handmade taste

Recently, there has not been that many funny product names in our university coop, so my series of blog posts about weird product names has not been progressing. We still have the "petite bit", though. This week they started selling a juice that is called "Tropicana Handmade Taste". What does handmade mean when it comes to taste? And the phrase is not very informative as to what the juice actually tastes of (presumably lemon, though, judging by the pictures).

Laser range scanners and huge touch screens

Some of the other people in our lab were demoing things that they have done recently and I snapped a few photos of some of the cool things. We have a huge touch screen monitor (that cost us something like 8 million yen; 30% more than my yearly salary) and they were using that for showing things.

The coolest thing they showed was the results of them driving around inside our campus with a laser range scanner strapped to the car. They hooked it up to an Android phone with a GPS and could then click on a map of the campus and show a 3D plot of the surroundings there. The details were very nice, and you could see trees, pedestrians, bicycles, etc.

You could also see where there were holes in the road (some parts of the university ground have bad roads), and the idea is to use this in winter time to find areas where the road conditions are bad. For instance places where there is so much snow on the sides of the roads (after plowing the road; windrows) that the road is too narrow, or places were the road surface is very uneven from tires spinning and digging holes in some places (this is called 算盤道路 "soroban douro", roughly "abacus roads", which is a funny word to use).

Swedes in Sapporo!

I asked the waitress if she had something on the menu that was very Japanese and that she thought was good. She suggested this mayonnaise and cheese covered squid.

On Sunday, at the festival in Otaru, I ran into a Swedish guy visiting Japan to visit his girlfriend's family. On Monday, I met a Swedish researcher who was here in Sapporo for a conference. I went to elementary school with his wife, so this time there was a connection. A few months ago she asked me: "My husband is going to Sapporo around the end of July, do you want to meet him?"

We went out and had okonomiyaki, a Japanese dish that I like and that you rarely see outside Japan. For people visiting Japan, sushi is of course the most famous Japanese dish to try, but since you can try that abroad too (and if you go to a good enough place it might even be like Japanese sushi :-) ), I like to show visitors Japanese food that you cannot find elsewhere.

Ramen salad, a Sapporo specialty

When we were walking back towards his hotel and my bicycle, we stopped at a red light and four other people caught up to us there. They also spoke Swedish! It turned out to be four Swedish ladies travelling around Japan. They had been in Tokyo, and had just visited some small islands in the far north of Japan. They were going to stay a few days in Sapporo and then go south, finishing their trip in Hiroshima. When we met them they were heading for an electronics store to buy a battery charger for one of their cameras.

The next evening, I met up with my former classmate's husband again, and we went to an izakaya, a Japanese type of bar that typically serves Japanese food. When Japanese people go out to drink, this is one of the most common types of places to go too, and they serve a variety of food popular with Japanese people. We also had my Swedish colleague with us, and a Spanish guy from the same conference our Swedish guest was attending.

A very very common way to prepare fish in Japan. This is a "hokke", which I did not know the Swedish name for. Probably there is no Swedish name for it? Hokke is very common (as food) in Hokkaido.

I ordered a lot of different things to show a wide variety of  food, but ended up ordering a bit too much. It was nice, though.

Meeting this many Swedes in one week in Hokkaido is very rare. The only week I have met more Swedes was the week when the Sweden Hills area and Leksand (a small place in Sweden) celebrated the 20 year anniversary of their sister city agreement and 70 or so Swedes came here for midsummer. One time I randomly met a group of 15 Swedes in Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo (where I was taken by an Australian woman showing foreigners around), but Tokyo is not in Hokkaido.