Sapporo bicycle parking

This is the designated bicycle parking area, and if you put your bicycle in some other place, people will get angry with you. The convenience of bicycle parking at our university this time of the year is debatable...

Eccentric bicycle parking

This style of bicycle parking is a bit strange. But it beats having your bicycle buried inside the snow, which is also common here.

Not bicycle friendly, and no mail

On Friday, I found a note from the post office saying that they tried to deliver something to "湖山鳩", at my address. Since the name on my post box is not written like that, it said that since they could not confirm that such a person lived there, they took whatever they wanted to deliver back with them to the post office and said to get in touch with them.

Those three Kanjis are "lake", "mountain", and "pigeon". My last name is Sjöbergh, which is made up from the Swedish words for "lake" and "mountain". "Jonas" comes from the Bible and means dove, as in a symbol of peace, in Hebrew. So if you were to write the meanings of my name with Kanji, that would be how you would write it.

Presumably, one of my friends had sent me something and decided it would be funny to write the name in Kanji.

I went to the post office and explained all of this to them, that basically that strange name was actually me. They asked me to show them some ID, and said: "The name on your ID is different". They then checked rules and regulations for 15 minutes or so and came back and said that since the name was different, they could not give me whatever it was that they had tried to deliver. They would send it back to the sender.

I asked if they could tell me who the sender was, so I could get in touch with them and tell them that unless they write my name with Latin letters, post will not reach me. (Sometimes things come through with my name in Katakana too.) They disappeared for another 10 minutes or so and came back and said that since the problem was that they could not confirm that this was meant to reach me, they were also not allowed to tell me who the sender was.

I asked if I could write a message that they could stick to the thing before they sent it back to the sender, to explain how they should get this thing to me. Again, after some more checking, the answer was no. They said that they would explain that "this name is wrong" when they returned it, though.

So I left empty handed, with no idea what they had tried to deliver or who might have sent it. Or, I had some ideas of who might have sent it, since not that many of my friends know my address, and not many of them think that the Kanji thing is funny.

The post office that takes care of these matters is pretty far from where I live. It is open 24/7 though, which is convenient. But since it is so far away,  I took the bicycle there. Parts of the way is not great for bicycles in winter. The photo for instance shows that the bicycle lane (center of the photo) is very much blocked on the other side of the street.

Meeting people on the road

I went to Bic Camera with yet another broken camera a while ago. On my way back home, someone shouted "Jonas" from a car that was passing me on the road. It was one of my magician friends and two people we know who work at Bic Camera. They had bought a big TV to use in the magic bar. After they passed me and waved to me, I pedaled on and caught up to them with my bicycle. When we got a red light we talked a bit, and they took this photo of me. Then the light turned green and I set off at high speed and left them behind, haha.

My camera broke during the Halloween parties, which was bad timing. The flash no longer fires. So far I had two Sony cameras that broke soon after the warranty expired. One is completely dead and does not react to anything, one has got stuck in some reverse stabilization mode where it shakes the lens like crazy all the time and all photos of course end up super blurry. You can tell the color in the general scene but you cannot tell if you are photographing a house or a dog, for instance. One camera died after I already bought a new camera, so it was not so much of a problem, while the other died during the last big magic show I participated in for the university club, so I have no photos from that time...

I also have a Canon camera. It got a "lens error" that was a manufacturing problem of this series. I got the lens error with about one week left of a trip abroad, so I have only a few pictures from the start of that trip, but when I got back to Japan I got a replacement camera for free, which was at least convenient. This replacement camera then broke half a year later. It is still usable, but if you use it outdoors in the winter, a large part of the pixels on the display stop working. When you use the camera in warmer places, they work again, though.

My most recent camera is a Ricoh GR 5, which is a very nice camera with only the problem that it does not really fit in my pocket. Three months after I bought it I had to hand in for repair, and the problem was not covered by warranty. The camera is very expensive, so the repair was pretty expensive too. Now it has been another four months, and the flash on this camera now died during a Halloween party. Apart from the flash not firing, the camera works perfectly fine, though.

I handed the camera in for repair, and since it was not my fault this time and the camera is still under warranty both from the maker and from the extra warranty from the store I bought it at (since all my cameras break, I usually add the extra warranty), I was hoping they would fix it for free. They called me two weeks later and said that the problem will not be covered by the warranty. I was thinking that at least it is just the flash, so it should be cheap, but they said it will cost 40,000 yen (the camera costs 60,000 yen to buy new), which is three times more than it cost to replace the whole LCD display (which they did last time I had the camera repaired).

So I am now leaning towards not having it repaired and just keep using the camera without the flash. Most days I never use the flash. The most interesting photos I have are from very dark places (like Halloween parties), though, and there the flash is necessary. In the near future I will be at several events (doing magic) in very dark locations.

I could also just give up on this camera and just buy a new camera. If I were to buy a new camera right now, the best model to buy would be exactly this model, though... and then it would be cheaper to just repair the one I have. But that one has broken twice already, so it may be likely to break soon again (and the warranty never helps me, it seems), so buying a new camera of the same model may be better.

I could wait until the next wave of new cameras are released, since the advances in digital camera area are many and quick. But if I buy a completely unrelated camera in January I have all these extra batteries and battery charger (the GR comes without a battery charger; you can charge the battery in the camera using the USB port) that I bought that I will not have much use for anymore.

I could walk around with my Canon camera that has a flash but does not work when it is cold and with the Ricoh GR to use when I do not need flash. Then I end up with so much luggage that I might as well buy a big system camera instead.

None of these options are that great. I am leaning towards not having the GR repaired, keep using it without flash, and just cry whenever there are great photo opportunities that I miss because the flash is not working. And then buy a new camera next autumn. Since I have now had Sony, Canon, and Ricoh break on me at numerous times, I guess I might try Nikon next...

French food and Japanese bicycles at Moere-Numa Koen

Previously a garbage dump, now art

In Sapporo we have a park called Moere Numa Koen. This used to be a garbage dump, but at one time the city hired an artist to make this into a beautiful park instead. There are huge sculptures and pyramid shaped hills to climb, and it looks quite nice.

My friend wanted me to "look like a foreigner taking up lots of space" while we waited for our table to be prepared.

The park also has a French restaurant called Les enfants qui reve. I have been there once before, and went there again recently. Both times with the same friend. The restaurant is a bit expensive, but they serve very nice food. The dishes have many original ideas without feeling forced or becoming worse than the original dish.

After doing silly things while waiting around in the waiting room, we were led to our table by a young man. While we were walking to our table, my friend suddenly stopped and looked at the chairs of a table for 8 which had no cutlery or glasses and which some other waiter was wiping bread crumbs from. The guy leading us continued on towards a table set for two over by the window, but my friend started looking at the chairs with a confused face and a "Which chair should I sit on?"-expression. Since I was behind her in line, I had to stop too, so I pointed out the our table was probably the one the guy helping us was standing next to and pointing to over by the window, not this table. Despite being very clever, my friend has a knack for strange things like this (and it is not on purpose, she says), so it is always highly entertaining to hang out with her.

After eating, we also rented bicycles and took a ride around the park (which is huge). My friend is short and she was worried that she would not be able to ride the grownup sized bicycles. Apparently that was the case with rental bicycles when she lived in France. We asked if it was possible to rent a kid sized bicycle instead, but the woman handling the bicycles said that there was a weight limit too. When looking at the sign it said "Less than 40kg", which is not problem at all for my friend, though...

We rented two bicycles for grownups and they turned out to be tiny, so there was no problem.

The menu had something called "Raisin juice". How much juice can you get out of raisins?

A glass of raisin juice

Asparagus with edamame cream

Raw fish on mashed potatoes, served on a rock. Extremely good.

Four types of tomatoes, with frozen basil

Frozen corn soup (corn soup ice cream)

Hot corn soup poured on frozen corn soup, a great idea!

Two types of pork

In Sweden we eat a lot of "dill". This is dill ice cream, which I have never seen before. Good, though. The white stuff is chocolate.

The creme brulee was herb flavored (thyme?), which was also surprisingly good.

The bicycle renting ticket included a map of the park.

The restaurant is in the glass pyramid.

There are lots of weirdly shaped play grounds in the park.

My friend wanted to try the play ground, but since she is about half my weight, this swing did not work that well.

New bicycle

My new bicycle

I break about 1.5 bicycles per year since coming to Sapporo, and last month I broke another one. Yesterday I finally had time to buy myself a new bicycle. Let's hope this one lasts longer than average.

Bicycle accident

On my way to work I noticed that one of the biggest and most heavily trafficked roads in Sapporo was blocked and there were lots of police swarming around. Looking closer, there was a fairly mangled bicycle on the road, and people were checking the underside of a car. So presumably a car had hit a bicycle.

I go to work by bicycle on most days, but I have never had an accident. One of my colleagues has had 4 accidents resulting in broken bones during the 7 years he has lived here... He broke his jaw, his collar bone, his leg, and possibly his arm. Nowadays he does not ride a bicycle any more, and says he never will again. Then again, he said so after the previous accidents too, so sometimes we worry that he will start biking again, haha.

When I got to work, I looked for my colleague but even though he lately almost always arrives before me, he was not to be found at his desk... This was a somewhat worrying sign, but later it turned out that he had just gone to the toilet at the time I arrived.

Bought a bicycle

Soup curry at "Chutta"

This week they are selling used bicycles in the south part of the university campus. Since I have recently become slightly bored with student cafeteria food, I bought a bicycle so I can get outside the campus area during my very short lunch break. Our campus is the largest in Japan, and it takes me 15 to 20 minutes to get outside from our lab. Around the university there are many good restaurants though, so if you go by bike, there is a good selection of food available.

My new bicycle

Yesterday I went to have the Sapporo specialty "soup curry" with another foreigner in our lab. We tried a soup curry place recommended by yet another foreigner in our lab (there are lots of soup curry restaurants around the university, and lots of foreigners in our lab) and it was good.

In Japan, 90% of all bicycles are silver colored, so finding your own bicycle inside the university is sometimes challenging. There are about a hundred other bicycles looking more or less the same heaped around your own bicycle. I usually search for the color of the lock, which is often the most distinguishing detail. The type of bicycle I bought (pictured above) is called a "mama chari", where "chari" is Japanese for bicycle and "mama" means mother. It is a type of uncool bicycles used by housewives when they go shopping etc. It is also the most common and most practical bicycle to have.