What to do after five hours of eating? Go and have some Turkish food!

After the five hours or so of unlimited eating and drinking, I met a friend who I had not met in months. She wanted to go to a Turkish restaurant, so I had a surprisingly large dinner considering all the barbecue stuff I had stuffed myself with.

Hanami (cherry blossom viewing and barbecue) in Maruyama Koen

In Japan, "hanami" (花見, "flower watching") cherry blossom viewing is a big thing. In Sapporo the cherry trees usually come into full bloom in the second week of May, but this year they were a week earlier than normal.

During the very short time the cherry trees are in bloom, you go to sit under the trees and barbecue things. You also drink copious amounts of alcohol.

This year I went to the Bottom Cafe hanami-party in Maruyama Koen (the park which draws the most people during the hanami season) and had five hours of unlimited alcohol and unlimited food. Which was too much food, of course. The weather was not great, it kept raining on and off. The people attended where nice, and the food was good, though. The cherry blossoming was pretty much over, and there were not so many petals left on the trees.

Near the shrine there are booths selling candy and food

I also took a walk up towards the Hokkaido Jingu shrine, also so located in/next to the park. There is a cherry and plum tree park there that is very beautiful.

The path leading up to the shrine is also lined with cherry trees

The entrance to the shrine

Fancy French food at Le Baerenthal in Sapporo

The smallest pizza I have ever seen, and some other very nice starters

My workload that had me working from 08:00 to 23:00 most days (including Saturdays and Sundays) for a few weeks here (no overtime pay, of course ...) has lightened and during the four day Golden Week holiday I had time to meet some friend I have not seen in moths.

One friend wanted to try a restaurant that is mentioned in the local Guide Michelin (not sure if they have a star or not) so we went there on Monday. It was a very nice place. The building was beautiful. The staff were very polite and wore tuxedos. The food was great.

I figured the place was probably quite fancy even before we got there, so I wore somewhat respectable clothes (at least for being me), including a black suit style jacket. My friend showed up in jeans and a shirt. All the other guests wore suits, evening gowns, expensive looking jewelry etc. and my friend was a bit embarrassed about being the only one so casually dressed. 

Good cheese is expensive in Japan, and this plate cost 2600 yen

This dessert contained rhubarbs, which is rare in Japan but common in Sweden 

Everyone else seemed to be celebrating something too. The couple at the table next to ours had just gotten married today, and the woman mentioned she was wearing the same clothes as when she was proposed to in New York(!) The other tables had birthday cakes or "happy wedding anniversary" cakes. One young couple suddenly had an extremely large bouquet of large and very red roses, and a small expensive looking present box, so we thought the guy was going to propose then and there. It turned out to be a necklace in the box, though, so it was probably her birthday. We seemed to be the only ones there with a "this place looks fun, let's go" attitude.

The food was nice, but a bit expensive. We ended up eating for over 20,000 yen (which is a lot with Japanese prices) without including drinks, despite there only being two of us. It was a lot of fun though. My friend for instance suggested that the expensive looking present box "probably contains a spring loaded Jack-in-the-box", which made me laugh (though it did not, of course). She also suddenly said: "Oh, I bought a bag of cookies" and reached for her bag. I tried to convince her that eating cookies you brought yourself was probably not proper in this restaurant. She had brought omiyage cookies to give to me to bring home, so she was not crazy enough to actually intend to eat them in the restaurant, but she keeps doing funny things like that. 

The menu had the date printed on it too, so I guess the print new ones every day

Police at the front door again

The other day when I was going out, there were two police cars parked in front of my house. The reason seemed to be a fight between a drunk woman standing outside a car and a not so drunk man sitting in the car.

Huge Gundam models and Gundam chocolate

During the Golden Week, there was a Gundam extravaganza in the Sapporo Factory shopping mall. They had huge Gundam models, and a special bazaar where they sold Gundam shirts, Gundam cookies, Gundam chocolate, Gundam plastic models, etc.

Gundam chocolate and cookies

Cherry blossoms and parakeets in Nakajima Koen

The cherry blossoms were early here in Sapporo this year, and during the Golden Week holidays, I walked around and looked at cherry trees in a park close to my home. There was an old man with two pet parakeets there too. He let them climb the cherry trees or people who wanted to be climbed.

Yogurt aqua and the king of zero

A vending machine at our university sells a type of yogurt called aqua, which is interesting since aqua means water and yogurt is not water. It also sells "NEX King of Zero". It has zero everything. Unlike the "NEX Zero" which has zero Calories, King of Zero also has zero sugar and zero fat... Considering fat and sugar has Calories, you would guess that zero Calories implies zero fat too...

It also has zero artificial flavoring and zero preservatives. Is it an empty can?