Wow! 10%!

Excavate the linen closet, Mom and Dad. Even at 10% off, this McDonald’s sheet was $40. My favorite part about this sign is how the dynamic, warp-speed 10% off script is undermined by the utterly unattractive phrase “used sheet.”

I thought at first that this shop was for retro-loving 20-somethings, but it turned out to be a store for actual children.

Oom-pa-pa

G had to work Sunday, but he had a great launch and was in a celebratory mood (see above). Lucky for me, he wanted to go to the German beer garden; I had just been thinking how tired I am of the cheap stuff we’ve been drinking. (Especially when I think back on late spring in Houston, when my fridge was full of Duvel, La Fin du Monde, Delirium Nocturnums, etc.) And, G’s had been going on and on about how he wanted a “bretzel.”

The German section of the garden is sparsely populated, probably because a pint of Spaten costs $12. (The brats and kraut were a deal at $6, however.)

G was so happy to be there; when I was walking back to the table with our sausages he was bobbing up and down in his seat enjoying the accordion player on stage. It’s nice to be married to such a happy person. Later he really wanted to polka, but I had to shut that one down.

In between the accordion sets, they had chug contests with small prizes sponsored by Lufthansa.  If you didn’t win, the consolation prize was getting to finish your beer in your seat. The men got to chug Spaten Optimator. (Mottenai! It’s way too nice to chug!) The women got something light-looking in a green bottle.

G really, really wanted me to do it, so when the Japanese women were reluctant, I waved my arms energetically and got picked. I got smoked. A second before we started to chug, the Lady MC chirped, “This beverage only has 2.5% alcohol, so it should be easy to drink!”

Turns out, it wasn’t light beer, like I thought, but a sickly-sweet, lemon-grapefruit, Zima-esque monstrosity. I was so shocked– yes that’s it– that I finished dead last. (The Lady MC pointed out to everyone how much I had left.) I took the beverage back to my seat, but only in order to torture G with it. The upside is, the next time a German hassles me about America’s inferior beverages, I can bring up the abomination that is V+. 

Midday Slump

Best soap opera moment ever!

Courtroom scene. A Geisha is testifying in a trial against a businessman. He leaps up and shouts, “Don’t believe this lying woman! She’s just a geisha.”

She replies, “I may be a geisha, but I am also — dramatic flourish to reveal a Japanese Bar Association pin on her kimono collar— a geisha lawyer!!”

The judge nods approvingly and smiles, the businessman drops to his knees, defeated. 

And…. scene. 

Geisha lawyer! That would probably be a good bet in that google game where you enter in two words into google and try and get exactly one hit. I don’t think I’ve ever conceived of such a thing. But, if there is one thing harder than becoming a lawyer in Japan, it’s probably becoming a geisha. (There are only 20,000 lawyers in Japan, and the bar exam has a pass rate of under 2.5%, and there are, what, less than 1000 geisha in Japan?)

Both professions require immense effort and dedication, but in completely different ways. One is cerebral and asexual, the other artistic and utterly feminine. A woman who could be both would be the most formidable creature imaginable (which I’m sure is what the writers were going for).

Apparently, Zacarias Moussaoui didn’t realize this, because the only Google reference to “geisha lawyer” is from his trial in 2006, when he used it as a slur for his Japanese-American counsel. Huh. 

Ready for the Recycling Truck

Are they as fresh as the buns?

Look, McDonald’s in Japan now has a McBakery. There is a melon bun, a sugar croissant, and a chocolate danish they are calling them. Only $1 each, and go nicely with the new and improved coffee there, the picture suggests. I can’t really bring myself to set foot in a McDonald’s, so you’ll have to guess how these taste based on how all their other food tastes. Ok? Great!

Life Happens at the Beer Garden

Odori Park, a ten minute walk from our place, is a block wide and thirteen blocks long, spanning the center of the city. During the winter, it hosts the Sapporo Snow Festival with amazing sculptures made out of snow. We’re going to miss that, but the Beer Garden, going on in the park for about a month in July-August, probably makes up for it. 

Each of six blocks of the park are sponsored by different beer companies, we can choose the Sapporo block, the Kirin block (the most wild and young customers, it seems), the Sapporo Park Hotel Block (definitely the older crowd), the Asahi block,  etc. Each area has its own brews, and slightly different food options, dozens of staff, hundreds of seats, and entertainment stage.

We lined up and bought tickets for the special pork round roast, grilled squid, turnip pickles, octopus dumplings, and two medium beers (750 ml). It rained all day, so we had no trouble getting seats. 

Every so often, the lady MC came on stage and led everyone in a united “Kampai” — “Cheers!”

The Beer Garden is a bright, festive atmosphere with everyone having a great time. There was a Beatles cover band and this guy (above) dancing wildly. The guy at the next table over proposed to his girlfriend. They had to stand up while everyone clapped along with the band playing “All You Need Is Love.” She had tears running down her face the entire time. 

Before the Beatles band, there was a very cute but mediocre piano player who did a shaky and less-than-energetic medley of J-pop songs. It was her sad luck to be sandwiched between two much superior acts. Yet, the young woman must have been a minor somebody, we thought, because there was an entire table of these guys (below) wearing t-shirts and holding fans with her face on them!

I was first thinking that maybe it was a joke, a la this Improv Everywhere stunt (Act II) where an improv group became some random band’s super-fans for one night. Maybe they printed up the t-shirts and fans and shouted for her as a joke? Then we saw an older couple there too– aha! Mom and Dad printed the t-shirts and fans, and bought the “fans” free beer to cheer, it seemed. Sure enough, after her set, she sat down with mom and dad, and the fans all bowed and thanked dad for the beer, then got out of there pretty fast. 

As they passed by, I got them to stop for pictures, and they gave G one of their fans. He was, as you can see, positively giddy. Now he’s got the bizarre thing propped up on his bedside table. He wanted to post it on the wall, but I said noooooo.

I don’t know if we can beat this night, but we’re going back every Saturday to see.

Oh, and here are more pictures, and a video of the band leading the crowd in “Twist and Shout” on Flickr.

Look, a pineapple!

 

Last Friday G and I went to see the fireworks. Fireworks are a sweet Japanese summer instituion. They don’t coincide with any particular holidays, but the  girls wear their bright yukata robes and their boyfriends may wear a handsome, darker yukata or jinbei shorts sets. Often there are booths selling octopus dumplings or chicken on a stick, or games like catch-a-goldfish. It’s lovely to wander around, nosh, look at the cutely dressed couples, and see children play the games. 

This wasn’t like that at all. There were no food or games, and we couldn’t seen anyone’s outfits because seemingly the entire population of Sapporo was surging into the park via two tiny street bridges. We were caught in the crowd and diverted into a low alley, where we — along with a thousand other people, couldn’t see fireworks, couldn’t move forward, and couldn’t escape. Everyone was patient and eventually we moved up to street level and into viewing position, but it felt potentially dicey. 

Once we got up to viewing level, we saw a pineapple. 

Safety First

On Sunday, July 26, we saw a cluster of tents and a stage near the river we were biking over, and went to investigate. It turned out to be a safety festival! My first safety festival since, err, ever really. They had different activities for children designed to prepare them for natural disasters. There was a wind and rain trailer, where children in raincoats down to their feet got water blown on them at high velocity. No child exited that trailer looking happy. At another, children could walk in a strong current. One girl said, Oh, feels nice! At a third, the child tried to open a door that had water behind it.

My favorite feature of the safety festival were the elaborate signboards introducing the point of each activity. (Notice the screaming lady pounding on the door on the far left!) 

And look, the kids even built a dam! Then put safety gates around it, so that the dam would not be mistaken for a bridge. 

It’s the Fighters, not the Ham Fighters

 

The sponsor is Nippon Ham, see? So the team is the Nippon Ham Fighters, and naturally the mascot is a squirrel, and the cheerleaders wear shiny pink and do the YMCA dance together with the groundskeepers. Got that? 

I’m not big on baseball really, but G and I went to the college games sometimes, and I could kind of get into it with his extremely knowledgeable explanations of obscure rules and practices. He couldn’t provide that kind of narration for the Japanese baseball game, so I had a bit of trouble focusing on the action on the field. 

Who can focus on the game anyway when the lady next to you has a towel on her head? And when an entire section of mega-fans in the outfield keep up a constant stream of singing, cheers, and chants? They had a cheer leader, extra big flags to wave, and a drum to keep the cheer beat. The opposing team, the Lions, also had a fan section there, all in blue. I decided to root for them, because I liked the little dance they did with their songs– shuffle to the right, shuffle to the left– nice. 

Most of the people in the stadium had hollow, plastic sticks to clap together in rhythm with the chants. Some popular(?) players got special props. When #3 came to bat, most people in the stands pulled out large, inflatable, pink plastic hands out to wave.

After six innings of careful scrutiny, G could predict the umpire’s calls. “Next pitch will be a ball. Next pitch will be a strike.” Apparently, out of fairness, the ump likes to keep the count even. So if a hitter has two balls and no strikes, the next pitch will be a strike or foul. If no there are all strikes and no balls, the next pitch will– guaranteed– be a ball. As a result, unless the hitter actually hit the ball, all the at-bats were full counts. And as a result of that, the game was slooooooow. We left in the 7th inning after more than three hours! 

You could take food and drinks into the stadium, just as long as drinks were poured into paper cups they provided and the bottles and cans thrown away. Really great! Even so, a large draft beer was only $6. The stadium was gorgeous and spotlessly clean, but even G complained about the narrow seats. Also sad, the Sapporo Dome does not open, so one of our first gorgeous weather days was spent inside. 

I think I’d go back again, IF I get to do the little dance too. 

Check out more baseball pics on Flickr.