Japanese society and all these puns...

Who wouldn't put a life sized giraffe doll in the lobby?

In Japan, puns as jokes have very low standing. No one thinks they are funny (not true, but officially no one would ever admit to finding puns funny).

On the other hand, lots of things are pun based in daily life. The New Year celebration has a big pun based component in the "osechi ryouri", traditional New Year food. You have beans that make you a serious person because bean is called "mame" and being serious is also called "mame", though the Chinese character used are different. All the dishes are like that.

A giraffe doll to increase the likelihood of long relationships with customers.

We had a work related dinner with a guest professor last week, and the hotel lobby for some reason had a life sized giraffe doll. When asking the lobby staff why they had a giraffe in the lobby, they said (roughly translated) that they wanted long relationships with their customers so a giraffe, who's main attribute is [to have a] long [neck], is like praying for that.

Birthday celebrations

A special birthday movie had been made.

A special 3D model had also been made.

Unlike my birthday which no one except me celebrated, the birthday of my professor saw a lot of cool stuff. Someone had made a 20th Century Fox spoof for his birthday and someone else had made a lot of Google Earth 3D models. There was also cake.

And there was cake!

Not green thumbs

My colleagues in another part of the room have plants near their desks. They are not very good at taking care of them. The plants seem to be dying and parts are falling off. Which is impressive since these are fake (plastic) plants. How unfit for taking care of plants do you have to be to have plastic plants dying on you?

"Får jag använda din telefon?"

Yesterday when I was buying some vegetable juice in a convenience store, the girl ahead of me in the line had a bag with Swedish text written on it. That is not common in Japan.

The bag said: "Får jag använda din telefon?" which means "Can I use your telephone?" A somewhat strange choice of text to put on your clothes or bags.

I wanted to take a picture of this bag but just as I got my camera out of my pocket, one of the people working in the store opened another register and called out: "The next person in line, please come here" so I had to go there and pay for my juice. The girl with the interesting bag paid quickly and left while my transaction took a lot of time (how long should it take to get my change!! haha). I got my change and jumped out and saw the girl disappearing around a corner. I managed to go to that corner and get close enough to get one blurry picture. Stalker points for me!

More snow

There is very little going on in Sapporo know (that I know about, at least) but it is snowing a lot. So here is another picture of snow outside my place.

Magic at the Fruits Cake Factory

Yesterday I did some magic at the Fruits Cake Factory near Odori in Sapporo. It was some anniversary for the shop, if I understood correctly, so they had a party for their regular customers. There were around 30 or 40 guests at 5 different tables, and me and another magician went around to each table and did magic for about 10 minutes per table (so everyone got to see 20 minutes of magic).

My coffee cup was decorated with pears, which is funny since my name is a homonym with the  word for pears in Japanese.

There were all kinds of people there, some young people (around 20 years old), families with small children, retired people, the boss of the Fruits Cake Factory, etc. Everyone seemed happy with the magic, and they had some sort of cake meal plan too.

There was also a bingo game after our magic finished

When we were introduced, the manager of the place said: "Welcome everyone. Today we have two magicians from a magic bar in Sapporo who will perform magic for you!" and there was a polite silence (people looked happy but said nothing). Then she went on to say: "After the magic, we will also have a bingo game!", and one kid sitting right in front of her screamed "Yeay!!!" very loudly. Apparently we were much less impressive than the chance of a bingo game, haha. Everyone else thought that was funny and laughed a lot. That kid did seem to enjoy the magic later, though.

The reward

After we were finished we got some cake too, and then we even got a present bag that contained even more sweets! A very nice afternoon.

Sayonara

My colleague still wearing his rather worn slippers

My Greek colleague is moving back to Greece so he can finally throw away his very worn down slippers. In Japan you take off your shoes when entering a building and change into slippers. In Sweden we also take off the shoes but slippers is not as common. In Japan I am told it is partly because of all the earthquakes. The likelihood that glass will fall on the floor and shatter is high on any day in Japan (there are on average four larger earthquakes per day in the country) so wearing something to protect your feet is the way to live your life.

Anyway, my friend is leaving the country and an appropriate phrase in Japanese for such occasions is "sayonara". This means "good bye" and is used when you do not know when or if ever you will next meet (so it is not like "see you soon", which would me "mata ne" or something similar).

Sayonara

Strangely enough, the phrase sayonara is used in Greece too. Despite this word coming to Greece from Japanese, it is not used to mean "good bye". Instead, it means something like beach sandals... My Greek friend explained it to me that sayonara are anything sandal-like that has a thing between your toes (as in the photo above). This type of sandal was unheard of in Greece before Greece and Japan had relations, and such sandals first came to Greece from Japan. The Greek traders that brought them from Japan did not know any Japanese, but when they left the port, the Japanese women stood on the quays and shouted "sayonara" (since the Green ships were leaving) so they figured lets call these Japanese sandals by a Japanese word and the only word we have heard enough times to remember it is sayonara, so let's use that. At least that is how my friend explained it.