Amazing things from Canada

While I was in Germany working, the owner of our magic bar was in Canada with his mother. When I met him after we both came back to Sapporo, he had several amazing things that he had bought in Canada. One was a stuffed tiger toy that turns into an elephant! Now I want to make something similar myself.

He also had some maple fudge that he gave me. That was pretty good too.

Foreign friends

When I first came to Sapporo, I lived in a student dorm for six months. When I came to Sapporo the second time, I still had some friends in that dorm, though I lived in a different part of the city then. I sometimes visited my friends, and also became friends with some of their friends. One of my new friends there was a girl from Taiwan, who after graduating from my university here in Sapporo moved back to Taiwan. She invited me to her wedding in Taiwan, and we even did a magical illusion together at her wedding.

She visited Sapporo in October and we met up one afternoon. She had her very young daughter with her too. It was nice to catch up on old times.

While waiting around outside the library where we planned to meet, I also ran into our lab's previous secretary. She is very funny. We were pretty good friends, but for some reason she thinks I am an evil person or at least some form of criminal. She still believes that, it seems... I asked her why she believes me to be evil a few times, but I am still not entirely sure. It seems to be the fact that I live on the outskirts of the entertainment district, and that I "dress like a criminal". She also for some reason believes I drink lots of alcohol every night, and obviously only bad people would do that, which is a bit surprising since I do not actually drink alcohol.

My friend from Greece had also been away from Sapporo, but only for two weeks. He had brought back some very nice chocolate from Greece.

Okinawa omiyage

A friend of mine went to Okinawa with his wife and brought back a wallet that looks like a Japanese bill as a souvenir for me.

Korean omiyage

Our French exchange student went to Korea and brought back a cell phone stand as a present. It can be used in several different ways and is pretty cool.

Meeting yet another man named Julia

When we left the place where we got 29 chicken wings, we immediately walked to another restaurant where two more friends were waiting, with more food. On the way, we also ran into another friend of the people in this group. She was standing at an intersection with a TV announcer (if I understood correctly). The TV guy started talking to me a lot, because I am blond and stand out, and both of us were only vaguely connected to the rest of the group (who are all tightly connected). After we left, everyone asked me how come I knew that guy from TV, and they were surprised when I said I had never met him before (nor seen him on TV, since I don't have a TV). They said it was a bit weird that I spoke so much to him then, but I just replied to his questions, which is not weird, right?

Anyway, at the place where they ordered even more food, I got three packs of dried seaweed from Korea. The girl that had been waiting for us there had been on a three day trip to Korea and had omiyage gifts for all of us.

I also got to meet her boyfriend for the first time. I had heard of him before, because he is "not Japanese", just like me. So they once asked me if I knew him. I said that I am sure there are many people who are not Japanese but that I still do not know, but if they told me some more details about him than that he has a Japanese girlfriend, maybe I could tell them if it is someone I know.

They said he is French. I know a guy in Sapporo who is French and has a Japanese girlfriend. But I have met his girlfriend and she is not the same girl that they talked about. They said he is a student at Hokudai. So is my friend. The said his last name is Julia. Same as my friend's. The boyfriend is from the south of France. So is my friend. Then they showed me a photo, and it was a different guy.

I later spoke to the Julia I know about this, and he said that Julia is not a very common last name in France. In fact, the only people with that last name that he has met are his relatives. My friend is from Montpellier. When I met this other Julia guy, I asked him where he was from but he is not from Montpellier. His mother is from Montpellier, though, he said.

A few cases of Indian curry and omiyage

My sister-in-law became friends with one of my Sapporo friends when we visited Sweden a few years back. This time when my sister-in-law was back in Japan and I met her, she had omiyage (Japanese souvenirs you are expected to give to everyone when you have traveled somewhere) from Sweden. She handed them to me and said: "Can you bring these to Sapporo and give them to your friend?" No souvenirs for me...

So I met up with my friend over lunch for the first time in many months, and we had some really nice Indian food. She liked the Swedish souvenirs too.

A few days later another Sapporo friend wanted to meet up, and suggested another Indian place. He had brought souvenirs for me, because he had been to Tokyo. More specifically to the Tokyo Disney Land.

We went to another place across the street from the Indian place and ordered "Oeufs à la neige" and talked about new magic tricks for a few more hours.

Tokyo Disney Land souvenir rubber bands

Drift Ice curry again

Back in Sapporo, one day I decided to make a new attempt at making "drift ice curry". They sell something that is blue curry and something that is white curry in a set, and you can heat it and create "drift ice" at home. The northeast part of Hokkaido has lots of tourism where people come to see the drift ice in spring, and this is some sort of souvenir style food that you can buy here. Last time I tried, it did not end up looking very much like drift ice, or like the photo on the package. Since I learned from some mistakes from last time, this time it went much better.

Off to Saitama

After having spent too much time working, I had a bunch of vacation days left that they told me I had to use in March or they would just be lost. I convinced my professor that they could get by without me for a few days and went to Saitama. There is not much interesting going on in Saitama, but my brother and his wife were in Saitama on vacation (she was born and raised there) so I went down to meet them.

I brought a lot of cookies and things like that, because that is what you do in Japan. I sometimes bring LeTao cheese cake, which is from Otaru, our neighboring city. LeTao is Otaru read backwards in Japanese (O-Ta-Ru, Ru-Ta-O). They make great cheese cake. Now they had matcha flavored cheese cake too, which I wanted to try. Carrying around a cheese cake for hours and hours in the rush hour trains in Tokyo is not that pleasant, and eating a whole cheese cake in the airport is not that great either. I noticed that they sold ice cream cups with small pieces of cheese cake stuck in them and that you could select the new matcha type too, so I tried one of those. The original cheese cake is best, followed by the chocolate and cheese cake. The matcha is a distant third.

One of my friends recently mentioned that the "Genghis Khan caramel" (Genghis Khan is a Sapporo specialty: barbecued lamb with garlic; a strange flavor to use for candy) that is famous for being horribly disgusting had recently been slightly changed to taste better. I had never heard this before, so I bought a pack and brought it to Saitama. No one wanted to touch them since everyone knows they are horrible. I tried a few and they tasted exactly the same as before... But the friend that told me this was the same friend who ensured me that the Ice Hotel was still open even though the whole hotel melted away a week before, so she may not be the most reliable information source in the world.

Once in Saitama, I had excellent dinner cooked by my sister-in-law. Saitama is very far south compared to Sapporo (and Sapporo is very far south compared to Sweden), so winter is not very cold in Saitama. Indoor temperatures are however extremely cold in Saitama. It is usually slightly colder indoors than outside...

Cute omiyage

One of my friends in Sapporo had explicitly requested omiyage, so I spent some time looking around the Haneda airport for something for my friend. I found some macaron decorated to look like cute frogs or pandas. The same brand also sold something that looked like animals stuffed in ice cream cones. Very cute.

More penis proverbs, and a strange die

I stopped by Ropossa a few days ago, and it was a lot of fun. I saw a very strangely shaped die, and someone had brought more Chinkosuko omiyage (penis shaped souvenir cookies from Okinawa; from the words "chinsuko" (an Okinawan cookie) and "chinko", penis) that come with Japanese proverbs with one word replaces with a word for penis ("chinko"). The mama at Ropossa collects these cards.

Christmas party

One of my friends is a great cook. She always cooks very large amounts of food, though. She usually makes Christmas food and invites a bunch of people to help her eat it. I was invited this year too, and had a great meal.

For some reason, most people I know serve raw octopus at Christmas

My friend bakes excellent bread!

I was asked to cut the roast beef, since no one else knew how to cut meat (you take the knife and cute, I guess?)

Japanese Christmas cakes often look like this

People complain when I wear trousers like this, but then they wear similar things themselves...

Someone brought "bean flavored mochi"-flavored Pretz sticks.

There was a very sweet and very red whine available

This was supposed to be a German cake of some sort, but no one there had seen one in original form, so no one knew if this was a successful attempt of recreating that German cake or not.

Ramen from all over the world

My friend is using an ancient cell phone, so it requires a lot of concentration when taking photos.

In Japan, you have to give presents to everyone you know or work with after every trip you ever go on. Usually you give them small cakes. One of my Japanese friends hates sweets, so he has asked me to bring cup noodles from different countries instead. I have not had time to meet him much recently, but last week I had an evening with nothing planned, so I went to the bar where my friend works and gave him noodles from my trip to Oxford and from my trip to Sweden.

This thing that I was served was great. A cracker with something that tasted of crab.

He tried the "Kabuto" brand from Oxford first. Kabuto is a Japanese samurai helmet, but the noodles were "beef flavored pho", which implies Vietnamese noodles. Everyone that tried them agreed that the soup part was not bad, but the noodles were bad.

There was also curry noodles from Britain, and two types of soba noodles from Sweden. One was "classic yakisoba", and the other was chili flavored soba. My friend has not mentioned trying any of the others yet, but then again I have not had time to meet him so we have not talked.

Tiny and not tiny whiskey

I also mentioned that I had bought a bunch of tiny bottles of alcohol, and he said he wants to collect lots of those too to make a tiny bar for decoration.

Blue curry that looks vaguely like drift ice

Back in summer, I bought a pack of "Drift ice curry" in a souvenir shop. Now I finally got around to cook it. The blue curry turned out to be quite blue, but the white curry did not end up looking much like drift ice at all. If I ever try to cook this again, I should probably use a spoon to put the white curry in place more artistically. Pouring it straight out of the bag made it look like crap.

In the end I added some spaghetti and eggs too. I have to get rid of the 40 eggs I won in a bingo game in some way...

Theme of the day: free olives

One of my colleagues is Greek and he thinks that the olive oil that is sold in Japan is a) expensive, and b) crap. He gave me a big can of Greek olive oil of excellent quality.

Later the same day, a woman I sometimes run into since we drink in the same bar gave me two cans of olives. She had received them as a gift from a customer of hers, but she does not eat olives. So she gave them to me.

Showing your underwear in a Japanese bar

Eel bones. Healthier than chocolate. Probably.

I stopped by the snack bar Ropossa and met several people I know. One of them had brought chocolate from Osaka and someone else had brought dried eel bones, which to Japanese people is more or less the same kind of snack.

There was a new game there were you push a button to make a plastic gymnast spin on the bar, and another button to make him release the bar. The goal is to spin him fast enough and release him at the right timing to make him do a 360 in the air and land on his feet on the mat. This was pretty difficult.

Osaka is famous for funny comedians, and this Osaka souvenir cookie brand (Omoshiroi Koibito, "funny lover") is a pun on a Sapporo souvenir (Shiroi Koibito, "white lover" (Sapporo gets lots of snow, which is white)).

I also happened to meet a girl there that I sometimes run into with whom I ended up having a funny conversation a while back when the rivers where overflowing in the middle of the night. She (and everyone else, since the warning system woke you up every 15 minutes anyway) was on Facebook and said that she was right on the border of the "evacuate because of landslides" area, on the "safe" side. But since the areas kept growing, she was wondering if she should evacuate too. She also said something like "and I am not even wearing underwear", so many people commented that she should probably at least put on underwear in preparation for evacuation.

This woman was wearing a kimono and looked like the "mama" of a bar, though she was just a customer like me, so everyone thought it looked funny when we sat next to each other. She pretended to be the mama and pour me beer (which I was not drinking) etc. too. 

Another friend commented that she should put on underwear and evacuate to this friend's house, since it was far from the landslide areas. This friend lives across the street from me, so I added that she could also evacuate to my place, which has the benefit of being on the 9th floor and thus safa against even severe flooding. Also, there is no requirement that you wear underwear here, I added. They thought this was funny, and commented along the lines of "So Jonas does not wear underwear at home". I added that I was in fact wearing funny underwear (Superman underwear), but that it was not a requirement. They thought it was funny and said that the next time we meet I will have to show them my underwear...

So now that we met again, she said: "So, show us your underwear!" And I did.

I was wearing underwear with 10 different playing cards on, which they thought were "cute".