Neither healthy, wealthy, nor wise.

If you were to ask me what time I moved into my Osaka apartment (which happened over a month ago), I could pretty accurately tell you. It was about 5:15pm. How do I know this? Quite simple really; about 15 minutes after I moved in, I was introduced to what would be my new best friend for the next two weeks or so.. the alarm clock from hell. Seems that someone from down the hall turned the alarm on their alarm clock on, and conveniently went on vacation, or died or something, because every day from 5:30 to 6:15 the alarm clock rang continually for about 2 weeks. The story, of course, gets better.. this isn't one of those fancy clock radio alarms I'm talking about here... this is oldskool, two bells and a hammer and a little stick to set the alarm time on. These bad boys don't care if its AM or PM. 5:30 is 5:30, so every morning for the next 2 weeks, Damian woke up at 5:30 and of course couldn't get back to sleep until after the alarm automatically deactivated at 6:15.. What a great initiation to a new environment. After complaining to the super and being essentially told, "Um, yeah, that's gonna continue for a while; I'm gonna need you to be patient", I figured that the best thing to do would be to pick up a pair of earplugs, which worked pretty well.. until of course I got an ear infection. At least I got to experience going to a Japanese ear, nose and throat specialist.

Medical specialists have walk in clinics here, its so weird and great at the same time. This one is set up like a dentist's office. The specialist has the chair that you sit in with his tray of ear, nose, and throat probes and swabs and whatnot, as well as a harem of hygenists (I swear that's the proper collective noun.. I checked.. somewhere) to hand him his stuff and those paper files with the multicoloured number stickers on them that are only used in dentist's offices to keep patient information .

Anyways, I'm much better now, and I think the batteries in the alarm clock have died, so I can sleep in peace. So now you know... "Yo, Joe".

Moving

I may have mentioned this before, but here's a tip for anyone coming to, or already in Japan. The best way that I've found to move stuff (heavy luggage, boxes, whatever) around the country is the Takkyubin (宅急便). Basically, you take your stuff to the nearest convenience store (which in Japan is about 3 minutes walk) and the delivery service picks it up from there and delivers it wherever it needs to go. And its cheap.. I dropped my two large suitcases off at the 7-11 near my place in Sapporo.. 2 days and 3/4 of the country away in Osaka, my stuff showed up right as rain.. All for less than $40 Canadian.. tax included..

Final Sapporo Images

To wrap up the Sapporo leg of my journey, here are a few images of Sapporo.

Lets begin with what are the landmarks of the city...


This is the true landmark of Sapporo, the clock tower. The red stars you see under the clock face is the symbol of Sapporo. Look for it on your next can of beer.


This is Odori park, where pretty much half the city will end up on any given weekend... It's a nice place to stroll through and buy some over-priced corn.


More Odori


This is Susukino. It's billed as the largest entertainment district north of Tokyo. Its a pretty cool place. Pretty much almost every bar or izakaya that I've been to in Sapporo was here. Added bonus: Susukino was well within riding distance of my residence, so no need to worry about catching the last train at midnight.


This is where I lived... nothing says "Men's Residence" like pink tiles all over the outside of the building.

My last Sapporo Festival

My last festival in Sapporo was the Hokkaido Jingu matsuri, which runs for about 3 or 4 days at the beginning of June (please pay no attention to the fact that I am writing about this at the end of July). Like many of the shrine festivals throughout Japan, there are mikoshi that get carried around the streets of Sapporo in a big procession before returning to the shrine later in the day. Like many of the shrine festivals throughout Japan, no one pays any attention to this. Instead, everyone dons thier faviourite yukata (a light and casual kimono.. just click the link), and heads out to the food stalls to buy cotton candy, chocolate dipped bananas, "American" hot dogs (sans bun), and various other fresh and tasty foodstuffs.

Once the sun went down there was a show held in the shrine, featuring some singers, dancers, and taiko drummers. Now some of you may or may not know that I once took a taiko workshop back in the old T-dot. (thanks again to Gina for organizing that). Anyways, at that workshop we were all introduced to the rather painstaing and unconfortable postures and positions required to taiko drumming. The dudes in Sapporo did none of that. They did however wail on those bad boy drums like nobody's business. One guy had about 5 drums going at one time. Two encores later the crowds dispersed with the satisfaction of a show... well... watched.... whatever.

Long and the short; it was a damn fine festival.


　One of the Hokkaido Jingu Mikoshi

Some of my yukata wearing classmates and myself

Hokuei Taiko troupe

Mr. Tambourine Man and Friends

Yosakoi

The beginning of June marks the beginning of the summer festival season in Sapporo. The first major festival (that I attended anyways) of the summer is the Sapporo Yosakoi festival. Basically it’s a dancing festival where teams from all over the country come and compete via choreographed dance routines. The size of the group seems to vary from about 40 to about 150 people with ages anywhere from 6 to 60. Some good fun all around. Naturally I've got a bunch of pics and whatnot, and I even caved any bought myself a commemorative T-shirt.

(白い恋人）Shiroi Koibito

There's a company in Hokkaido that makes chocolate sandwich cookies (kinda like Golden Oreos except square). The name of the company is Shiroi Koibito, which roughly translates as "white boyfriend/girlfriend", which I personally think is a little odd, but might be explained by the fact that the original flavour of this snack was white chocolate and mabye the cookie is the BF/GF.. I dunno.. Anyways.. they have a factory that apparantly is run by Willie Wonka and is open for tours by the public.
The actual assembly line is hardly spectacular, but the main courtyard has a massive animatronic clockwork display on all sides that comes to live every hour. From hippos, to bakers, to chocolate animals, to (la creme de la creme) bubbles. The other highlight was the wall of popular character based stampy knick-knacky things.
###J-popular culture quiz###
How many of these can you identify?








They may be just bubbles, but watching them, I still felt like Eddie Murphy in "Trading Places"

A long awaited update

Well I don't know about anyone reading this, but I've been long awaiting publishing this post, so there.

At any rate, it seems like its been forever and a day since my last post and that's simply because I haven't had an internet connection. So after being in Osaka for almost a month and a full 3 weeks after I applied (I had to send a copy of my ID 5 times to the internet company), I am now the proud subscriber to the Weeb.

So lemme get on with the show..