Short meeting at uni

Since I was going to Tokyo for a serious research funding thing, I wore a serious looking shirt.

I had to go to Tokyo for an important meeting early on Saturday morning, which meant an afternoon flight from Sapporo on Friday. The Friday we have the "once per year super fireworks festival", so that timing sucked. It was also the Friday a singer I know was going to visit our university. She e-mailed me and asked if I had time to meet, since she was going to be at the university anyway.

Since I was leaving at two in the afternoon, I suggested we meet at twelve and have coffee. She was supposed to have lunch with some professor at our university later, but he did not have time to meet up until 13:45, so we would have to have separate meetings.

I met with my friend the singer in a cafe near the main entrance to our university. It has been open for a few years now, and my Swedish friends often went there they said, but I had never been there. I ordered something that looked like sweet bean paste in water, but which was actually "hasukappu" ("honeyberry"?) ice cream in lemon soda. It was good, but everyone agrees that it looks like Japanese bean paste.

Drinking carbonated vinegar

Our coop has started selling carbonated vinegar again. It says that it is Calorie free and very good for you body, so I bought it a few times. It does not taste that great.

Ropossa: wedding stuff, girls falling for me, women touching me in strange places

Something cheese like made from the first squirt of milk from young cows after their first calvings.

Last week I dropped by the magic "snack bar" Ropossa, and it led to an interesting evening. I showed up wearing a pink t-shirt with a family of pigs eating deep fried pork, with very sad faces. A young woman there said: "Ah, I have the exact same t-shirt!". She had seen me wear another shirt in the same series (cows eating steak, hens eating fried eggs, a salmon eating salmon sushi, etc.) and had bought one with pigs for herself a while ago. She had never seen me wear the pig version she said.

Chinese deep fried dessert

I took this as a sign that even people with normal taste in clothes can wear these shirts, which I find to be very funny shirts. My friends keep telling me only weirdos would wear such shirts. I wrote about meeting this other person who also owns the same shirt on Facebook, and one more (Japanese) person chimed in that she also owns such a shirt. Both these two did however later specify that they would of course never wear these shirts where someone could actually see them wearing them, and they only use them as pajamas...

Someone had brought huge amounts of Chinese food to Ropossa, so I got a large serving of that. I also got something that was kind of like cheese and was apparently made using "the first squirt of milk from a young cow after her first calving", and thus quite rare. What is so special about this first squirt was unclear.

As often happens, I was asked to do some magic for other people. There was a young girl (12 years old, perhaps?) there with her mother. I showed her some magic tricks, and she reportedly became much more quiet and shy than normal when she was around me (I had never met her before, so I don't know how she normally behaves). But she seemed deeply impressed by me being blond etc.

The mama of Ropossa thought this was very funny, so she asked me to do the trick where the cards suddenly spell out "I love you" in Japanese to this girl. I did, and she became quite red in the face. Later she told her mother that it was the first time anyone said "I love you" to her, haha. Too bad it was some weirdo foreigner. She even asked for my physical address afterwards.

It turned out that the reason her mother was in Ropossa was that she had just had the girl who owns a pork eating pigs-shirt and the Ropossa mama witness and sign her marriage papers. She and her future husband were going to hand over these papers to the city office the next day to get married, and they were celebrating in Ropossa.

Later, a cake that said: "Happy Wedding!" showed up, and they were asked to cut the cake together (which is customary in Japan). The not so much like a cake-knife knife that they had to use did have a nice red ribbon. It turned out to be one of the magic handkerchiefs that they use for various magic tricks in Ropossa that had been re-purposed into a wedding accessory.

 I also ended up doing some magic tricks for the company boss of some company who was there with four of his staff. He was so impressed that he paid for everything for me at Ropossa. And for everything for the girl who claimed to own a pig shirt, despite her not being involved in any way and we having met by chance in Ropossa, haha. He also asked the only woman among his staff to come over to where we were sitting, and I did some magic tricks for her too. She was a perfect spectator, cute and amazed by everything and anything. I made a rubber band disappear and she started looking and feeling around for it with a confused face. Was it in my hands? No. In my sleeves? No. On the floor? No. The she started parting my legs, still searching. The girl with the pig shirt then stepped in and said: "This is not really that type of establishment!" and sadly stopped the other woman.

Late at night, a very funny man who also sometimes makes magic props showed up. Even later, a man I had performed for in Ropossa and then later came to see me in the magic bar also showed up. So I was asked to do some more magic. I did a new trick which involves giving away a present "randomly" determined by the spectator for one of them. The other one then asked if it would be a different present if I did it for him too, so I said "Of course, but I can only do the same trick once per day.", which is a well known "fact" about magic in Japan. He said: "Didn't you say you did this trick for the cute woman who left a while ago? And that she reacted in a funny way to it." As luck would have it, that happened at around 23:30, while these two showed up at 1:00, so I explained that since it was now passed midnight it was not the same day.

Before leaving, I also got some presents. I got a huge fake diamond, and an old American half dollar.

Banana experiments

I found a recipe on Google+ that said something along the lines of "healthy pancakes". Taking a quick look at the ingredients, it said: "One banana, two eggs". And nothing else.  I though that using only a banana and two eggs, there is no way you will be able to make pancakes.

The next day, I happened to walk past a place selling bananas and eggs cheaply after I had left a pair of trousers with an old woman for repair service. I decided to buy some bananas and eggs and try this pancake recipe out.

After mashing the bananas with a fork and adding the eggs, I poured some of the batter into a frying pan and after about a minute or so of frying this, it did indeed look quite a lot like a pancake. The consistency of the food was also quite pancake-like. It was quite a lot harder to flip this banana pancake than flipping a normal pancake, since the banana parts tended to lump up and make some parts extra heavy and the pancake itself was a bit soft.

While this thing did look quite a lot like a pancake, it did not taste like a pancake. It tastes like a banana you have warmed up. If someone said: "This is a banana pancake", I would think: "OK, that is a reasonable expression to use". If someone said: "This is a pancake", I would think: "No, it is not". It was pretty good, and I guess fairly healthy.

After eating all the eggs and bananas over a few days and finally being able to turn off my refrigerator again (in Japan it is cheaper to eat at restaurants than to cook, if like me you eat alone, so I do not cook very often any more). Then, one or two days after I finished off the last of the huge pile of bananas I had bought, Google+ once again suggested a recipe for me: banana cookies.

The ingredients are: "one banana, half a cup of oat meal". I happened to have some Swedish oat meal left at home, but no bananas, and thinking "Can you really make something like cookies using only a banana and oat meal?" I went to the 24h open super market at 2 a.m. and bought some more bananas... Oat meal is usually not sold in Japan, unless you go to special import stores where they sell American things very expensively, but the small amount I had left would be enough.

Again, I mashed up a banana and mixed it with oat meals. Then I tried to bake cookies in my Japanese "oven". Japanese ovens do not get very warm, and they are tiny. The result was something that looked a bit like cookies, and tasted like warm bananas. Adding chocolate chips, nuts, or raisins might make these more interesting. Using only bananas and oat meal, the result was not that great.

Natulicious, and strawberry chocolate potato chips

Today I noticed that our university coop is selling "Natulicous" candy, and potato chips covered in pink strawberry taste chocolate.

Magic and crabs

Two weeks ago some guests in our magic bar brought crabs with them as snacks to eat. They brought too many, so they gave us a bunch of crabs to eat. Very good, though it was a bit weird to eat the shell and everything at first.

End of the year-party

Fried chicken cartilage

On Monday I was working hard trying to finish writing a research paper for my professor. He had to submit a 6 page paper by Tuesday, and since he had other things to do and we were working on a paper together since some time back, he told me to write it for him. He sent me 7 pages of text to add to what we already had, though, so he contributed quite a lot too.

He sent me this on Christmas Eve, since why would you not be working on Christmas, right? Well, in Japan Christmas is just a normal day, so that thinking may be reasonable some years, but this year Christmas Eve was a Saturday... Also, it was a little unclear if we really needed 7 new pages to fill out our already long paper when the page limit was 6 pages...

Anyway, at 17:09 I got an e-mail to my cellphone from a girl who is in the lab at my university where I used to work. She said: "I know this is short notice, but our lab has the end-of-year-party (忘年会) today, and many would be happy if you came. It starts at 18:00, near Sapporo station. Can you come?" Yes, short notice indeed. I said I'd try, but would not make it by 18:00.

I managed to finish the paper, or at least my part in the process, by 18:15 and reached the restaurant at 18:35 or so. I got to talk to my old boss, my Bulgarian friend, a Japanese guy I did some experiments and ate insects together with, some Swedish people I know, lots of Polish friends, and much more. I also got to see Miss Sapporo for the first time (she is in my old lab, but I have never managed to appear at a party where she attended, though I have been to several of their parties).

I also got to speak a little to two former students in our lab who are now working at universities in Yokohama and Fukuoka. They were back in Sapporo for New Years (I guess). They said that the most surprising thing about being back in Sapporo was that I was wearing a shirt with longs sleeves. Apparently, every other winter (and summer) party that we had when we were all in the same lab, I attended in a t-shirt... I thought it was only two or three times I went that lightly dressed in the winter, but still.

In my current lab, they keep putting all parties of Fridays, i.e. on days when I work in the magic bar. So I almost never participate. My old lab had the good sense to know that people have other things to do on Fridays than to hang out with their colleagues from work, so I could participate almost every time when I was in their lab (and often participate now too, though they rarely remember to invite me despite me begging them to not forget me...)

The photo shows fried chicken cartilage. This is very popular in Japan (all kinds of ways of preparing cartilage are). In Sweden we do not generally eat the cartilage, so this qualifies as slightly strange food for me. The first or second time I was in Japan, I was travelling with my brother. We went to a restaurant with two of his Japanese friends, and neither of us knew much Japanese back then. My brother decided to try to use what little Japanese he knew and tried to order something himself from the menu without asking the Japanese girls for help. He could read "chicken" and "fried", but ended up ordering fried chicken cartilage and the girls asked if he really meant that, if he knew what he just ordered, etc. He asked if he had ordered something weird, but they said no no, no problem. It was a bit weird for us, when it showed up.

Slightly Strange Food: orange juice that looks like soy sauce

Someone brought a slightly weird orange juice to our lab. It was brown, and did not look very much like orange juice at all. It looks so much like soy sauce that it even says on the bottle: "This is not soy sauce!"

Orange juice. Not soy sauce.

When I noticed this bottle for the first time, the expiry date had already passed, but only by a week or so. So I poured myself some soy sauce looking orange juice. The taste was... what you would expect from orange juice. It tasted like completely normal orange juice.