Am leaving Sunday and will be back on the move once more. Will really miss Kushiro, the people (some of them) and the beautiful afternoon sun.
It is not the prettiest of places, but it grows on you. The rest of Hokkaido is pretty nice as well. Get up here if you have the chance.
There has been over 100 snow related deaths already this winter, which apparently is fairly usual. Has been interesting to experience a winter like this, has made for some unique experiences and some good skiing but overall I am happy with Tasmania’s mild winters.
Went up to the top of Hokkaido the other weekend in the hope of getting out on a boat in the drift ice. It was -10 and snowing but there was no ice because the wind had blown in all away. Devastating.
Luckily the same trip involved a beautiful day skiing and also a visit to a cool toy museum which also had a collection of ‘shadow art’ by Seiji Fujishiro. These were really interesting, in particular a huge picture that occupied an entire two storey wall. Took a few illegal photos here. Check it out: http://city.hokkai.or.jp/~chacha/Ekagee.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/kids/2005/05/paperandglue.html
http://shaw-id.cool.ne.jp/photograph/photo/Fantastic_Silhouette_Art/seiji-fujishiro-silhouette.html
In winter, when the temperature drops to -20 water particles in the air freeze and you can see them when the sun bounces off them. Very beautiful. The locals call it ‘daiamondo dasuto’. Can you work that out?
Some teachers don’t seem to mind if students fall asleep in class, and I even saw one teacher punch a couple of kids in the head because they forgot their text books.
Will be nice not to hit my head every other time I walk into a room; Japan is the only place where I am happy I am not quite six foot.
I don’t have any accurate statistics on hand, but I am happy to say that in general; the Japanese are alcoholics.
All mobile phones from the bottom of the range up have email, camera, TV etc so people can spend all day playing with them.
My students show my pictures from their travels every now and again. Some collections consist nearly entirely of that person standing sombrely next to something of note. No smile, no companions just the obligatory shot to prove that they were there. Others have come back with photos of their meals making up a large percentage of the shots.
Seems that I won’t be sending my skis home. Went to the post office today for another only in Japan moment. They measured my skis and discovered they were too long to be sent by post and rules are rules. They then proceeded to ring up everyone in the phone book to ask how I could get them home. Talk about service. Just lucky I wasn’t in a rush! Eventually they stopped calling and started chatting animatedly to each other. They obviously had an answer to my problem but they weren’t sure how they were going to tell me. They seemed to conclude that the price was too high so back to the phonebooks they went. During the next intermission they obviously decided it was time to lay it on the table. I got enough of it to know that my old second hand jalopies were not worth the trouble. So that was that. A fine way to spend half an hour!
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