A cold cold night...

Last post we left off at how tolerable walking out in -6 degrees is.
But is it the same when standing in -18 degrees? NO! But we'll get there.



Last week, Quijote (who lost his Don because he proved useless in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles), Alejandro decided to have dinner at a place we like a lot. They got there before me and, realizing that the guy (sexy word incoming -> henceforth referred to as the dude) was in quite a bad mood and rather intoxicated, tried to warn me, but it was too late...

Arriving at the scene, I did not notice anything wrong. The dude explained that it was the memory of his mother passing away, that he was sad because he wasn't on good terms with her when it happened, and that instead of eating (since the kitchen was closed by then) we should drink some wine. Being oblivious to the fact that the dude was already quite drunk, I agreed and went and bought 3 bottles of wine from the nearby conbini (again convenience store).

Thus began the longest night any of us ever had in Sapporo. By the second glass, the dude had become quite violent, and The Eye of the Tiger had become annoying to say the least after the umpth time we heard it. Quijote being the heavy drinker he is (drinking a whopping 1 glass of wine!) made Alejandro and me gulp down our glasses to drink as much as we can, thus minimizing the alcohol intake of the dude...

That is when Jake arrived and I cursed myself for forgetting to warn him not to come either... And that is when the dude really became troublesome. More than once, we thought he'd start a fight over nothing, but Jake was calm and gracious, and eventually, like a master ninja, just got up and left without the dude being the wiser haha.



Next comes the part where we tried to get the dude back home. We got into the taxi and went 'approximately' in the direction of the dude's house. The first part of the taxi ride was when the dude started yelling at the poor old driver for taking a longer route than he needed, and Quijote and Alejandro calming him down. Eventually we reached what the dude initially thought to be his house, and turned out not to be... The second taxi ride was when the dude started yelling at the poor old driver (again) for not having children... and Quijote and Alejandro calming him down.
We finally got off at a conbini (slap yourself if you don't already know this word) near his house, and thankfully the guys working there knew him! So he calls his wife to pick him up, gets in a fight with her on the phone, and hangs up... *Super facepalm is in order* and we run after him trying to stop him from buying beer. We order another taxi and wait 15 minutes or so outside for it, and the following equation became apparent to me:
-6 °C + thin sox + sneakers + walking = OK!
-18 °C + thick sox + sneakers + standing = NOT OK! NOT AT FEKIN ALL!



By the time the taxi arrived, the dude had sobered up and knew where his house was.



So a couple hours drinking wine, 2 taxi rides and a nice refreshing wait in the snow, we were back where we started, much, much, hungrier. So at nearly midnight, our choices of places to eat were limited (everything closes so early here) and so it was off to the yakitori place where the mascot is a chicken samurai(?) carrying a shish kebab instead of a sword... love that place! Cheap beer and fried chicken? Yes please! So not all was lost, and Pen2 even joined us so there was someone other than me drinking something other than water... useless Quijote and Alejandro...

Dinner? No thanks trying to lose weight...

After ending the last post on a food note (kinda sounds like foot note? meh beykha...), thought I'd ride that wave into this next one. So the second night after arriving and finding out about the gas (got the bill for that half a month and it's 120$ or so... ouchies! So visiting me now is not recommended coz I'm making up for it by not using the heater anymore so it's below 10 degrees inside most of the time lal which is fine by me with Jeddak's 3abayeh or robe), realized that 2 weeks outside Hokkaido makes you miss some things. And people maybe, but mostly things, mainly Soup Curry! Soup Curry is best eaten at Picante and Picante is the second home for someone called Ted, so I call Ted and naturally, he agrees to meet up. Jesse and James also come, Jake is stuck at work and arrives after we're done.



Now Soup Curry was a dish I was not particularly fond of, but it certainly does grow on you, especially when it starts getting cold! And cold it gets! But more on that later.

After finishing, went with Jake to Jacksonville's so that he could have dinner. Me having had dinner decided to just go with some chicken wings and a beer (bill was 1010 Yen tihi I love silly numbers).
Then we decided to look for an "apparently" good Russian restaurant in the neighborhood. We did a whole clockwise turn around the block and finally found it across the street from Jacksonville... so had we turned the opposite direction, it would be a 30 second walk lol. But it was not a loss! For while looking, Jake noticed a new Sushi place, and noticed that the prices were quite cheap. So he decided to go in and try it real quick. The bastardo, fully knowing that my favorite is salmon (he prolly didn't but I just wanna call him a bad name), ordered just that! And me being a good friend who doesn't like to let his friend eat alone (I'm not just wanted to taste it too), ordered some too. The plate comes with 2 pieces and costs 105 Yen which is quite cheap! Needless to say it was blissful, and I ended up ordering 3 other plates... flat fish (forgot the name in Japanese), crab and another salmon to wash em all down with! Bill was 777 Yen for me (again with the fun numbers heh).

The other realization of the night (other than Jake sux and Dal was right about me being a little piggy), was that -6 degrees is not a big deal at all, even with sneakers and ankle-high thin sox. The night after that however, was a totally different story, but that is for the next post...

Yum yum: part IV

Since I got my new bike, I've been doing all my trips on it. Subway transportation has been drastically reduced! Thus became apparent my huge miscalculation!

I had thought that by riding my bike instead of the subway I would save money AND work out at the same time. Although the second point proved to be spot on, the first one... not so much.

It is true I'm saving money on subway fare, however, I'm paying much much more on food :( for a while now, since I haven't been working out anymore, my appetite was partially tamed. The cage is open now! Run for your lives, or I might just eat you! Averaging 2 lunches for the past couple days, excluding breakfast (and maybe small snack after), and dinner (or two, depending on how late I stay up).

Second lunch Thursday happened when I passed next to a restaurant I knew nothing about except the name Dohton Bori. Well anyway while passing near it, my nose picked up a tasty scent. My appetite called. My body answered.

Traditional sliding doors (less traditional when they're iron and glass though haha) separated me from mah foodz! Inside, I was pleasantly surprised that it was all wooden. Took off my shoes and put them in a shoe locker, then followed the waiter to my table, which is a grill (turns out it's an Okonomiyaki place yay!).

After sitting down I went back out and did the trip again to film it :)

The entrance has a bell that rings when someone comes inside, so waiter was surprised to see ME again lol. I could see the bubble saying "Stupid tourists..." floating above his head. Also excuse the flip of the camera, didn't think that through lol.

So it is that I had my closest encounter with cooking in Japan! For 880 Yen (9$ish), you get a bowl of ingredients for the Okonomiyaki:

A bowl of ingredients for the Soba:

A small bowl of seaweed salad (very tasty btw (by the way)).

Glass (with the restaurant mascot and name lol) you can fill with juice or tea:

Ice cream (banana for me):

And so basically, you have to make your own food on the grill!

Good thing I was watching the cooks in the previous places I went to. Started with the Onomiyaki, which is basically a raw egg with cabbage and some other stuff (depending on your order). You just throw it on the grill and make it in the shape of a disk and the egg eventually sticks everything together. You then flip it (and try not to brake it...) and wait for it to cook.

Put some oil on the grill and threw in the noodles and just flipped the mix over every once in a while pretending to know what I was doing haha. Et voila!

A couple minutes later:

Salah vs lunch... round 2 victor: Salah! *cheers and claps all over the world!!*

Golden week? Hey here's a homework :)

So golden week's basically over, good week it has been though!

The good:

Went out a lot. Photos I took are really bad coz of the dark, except for this one... of the stairs to the Cuban style bar where there was Salsa night:

Ate a lot (naturally).

Proof that choosing where to eat based on the hotness of a waitress is not always a bad idea!

Octopus pancake (unfortunately can't read the menu well to order it without mayo...):

Potato to go with that:

Fillet, spaghetti and omelet on rice... that been said, that meal was tough. Took all my willpower and strength not to look like a barbarian since I was so hungry :(

Last but not least, the other night, was hungry and it was really late, my fridge naturally only has liquids in it :P so decided to finally try the burger chain they have here, Mos Burger, since everything else was closed anyway, and well I gotta say it wasn't bad at all. But more importantly, the waiter suggested the new restaurant next door.

Tried it today, and this happened:

By far the most fatty meat I have ever eaten. Doesn't really show in the photo, but there's a whole layer of fat in-between layers of meat. And it's kinda hard to remove it with chopsticks :'( So I gritted my teeth and took it like a man! And it was much better than expected. Took a photo of the menu so that I drill the kanjis into my brain, in order to avoid trying it again, but all in all, wasn't that bad. If anyone can translate this, it'd be nice of you :) I'm too lazy to use the kanji dictionary, and I'm not really sure I really wanna know anyway hehe.

After that, this is a must. (Eh moz I actually bought fruit...)

Also, was walking around and came across this shop:

I've noticed the huge crab (gotta be blind not to) more than once but never walked near the shop. Yes Sherlock, they have crabs (err that came out wrong):

There's even fresh crab! No idea if you can just pick one and take it though :S

Finally, studied a lot... wait. No that's not right. Wrong section, and well, that didn't really happen anyway...

The bad:

This actually started before. What happened was that the zipper on my favorite black pants broke in the suitcase on my way here. Being the optimist that I am (and seeing how much experience I've had with gluing my fingers together with super glue), this was a simple job for me! Or so I thought... *enter dramatic music* TAM TAM TAAAAAAAAM!

So although I actually put the zipper back together, something is still missing, the zipper no longer locks when you close it and lower the handle, and so eventually it just opens by itself...

Now I am not a shy person, and wouldn't really give a rat's ass if my zipper were open, but I think I'm already scaring the native Japanese people enough without this.

So I went and asked a tailor how much this would cost to fix, 30$... I think I'll leave it like this for now lol.

More bad!

Japanese teachers it seems are more similar to French system teachers, who also believe that vacations should mean more studying, instead of less hehe. That been said, we don't have THAT much extra homework, just for me, ANY homework is a pain. But ya I'm guessing anyone reading this already knows that. So I guess I should finish this quickly and finish my last homework...

The ugly:

I haven't had the chance to talk about Japanese TV:

IT IS F**KING WEIRD!

That been said, if you can get over the occasional disturbing image, even someone like me (who can barely understand a couple words) can laugh his/her ass off at how absurdly funny some shows can be.

Take this for example, the Japanese take on "Biggest Loser". Donno if it was directly influenced by it, but the idea is basically the same. These guys come in and do some exercising to lose weight. But...

Yes they're wearing red tights.

Yes they're training to dance on "Thriller".

YES this guy is TEH AWESOME!

Yes their teacher (who was really hot by the way) was crying by the end.

The dude in the jacket was the one who lost the least weight in the last weigh-in and had to ride around the city on bicycle while they danced. Or so I could make out...

The fluffy:

Couldn't really tell where to put this photo, so I made a new category for them. Was walking around, and saw this guy with these 2 fur balls, couldn't help myself. Asked him if I could take a photo and he agreed. Lol.

Yum yum: part III

As usual, scents and aromas are bountiful in Sapporo eki (station), and today, the ice cream shop got the better of me, and this happened:

Yum yum.

But of course that is no dinner and so at 9 (ahh so nice to be cheap haha), I got myself some great half priced makis, so a bit more than 2$ for all this:

And found myself getting (and eating of course!) the following:

I still have no idea what it is. The guy there saw me looking at them and said some stuff in Japanese, including "oishi", which is the only thing I understood, and means tasty haha. My kind of word! I'm guessing it's something pickled with chilly or some other spice (it's kind of hot). All in all I'm happy with dinner :)

Hopefully someone reading this might be able to enlighten me on what it is I eateded!

Yum yum: part II - The Beginning and The End

For those who remember, I had mentioned in a previous post that my teacher -Nakamura-sensei - invited me to dinner, and there was a 15 minute+ wait in line, so we went somewhere else.

Well today I thought hmm let me go check it out.

This time however, didn't take the escalators for 8 floors... took the elevator, which luckily for my lazy ass, turned out to be right at the restaurant [The Buffet] entrance yay! So far so good :)

More good news: no line.

Was greeted and shown in, and my first impression was... wow. (I thought I had taken more photos of the decor but it seems I didn't... hunger does that to me) So the place is at the same time very classy and very casual, so you feel you're in a nice restaurant, but are still really comfortable.

It wasn't until I reached the section furthest in, where I sat, that I was really amazed by the beauty of The Buffet. The ceiling is at least 4 stories high, and what makes that even better, is that most of the space is taken by huge windows, with a gorgeous view of a big section of downtown Sapporo from the 8th floor. Now 8th floor isn't much in itself, but there aren't many tall buildings here anyway so the view is mostly unobstructed.

Now to the important part, the food. So basically it's an open buffet, so yes, it's "all you can eat"! And naturally, I took advantage of that very fact lol. You can have open alcohol for around 12$, but I just went for open juice (2$) which, I know now, was a mistake hehe; I barely even finished one glass since I don't really drink with my food. You could easily not order juice and just get some if you want, which really shows how honest Japanese people are. I love that.

First stop, the sushi (and other stuff) stand. Not a very wide array of items, but what's there tastes great, and is very fresh. Also to note is the size of the sushi was just right. Not too big, but big enough :)

There's a big bar. I was sitting right on the other side.

There are a lot of wine bottles (probably "meh" wine but still).

The salad bar.

The pasta\pizza\bread section. This is one big continuous counter, and has lots of other sections, which I didn't photograph because I wanted to.. well.. eat!

Oh and let us not forget, the dessert section!

So round 1: salmon, tuna and scallops sushi! Pizza (unexpectantly really good), potato salas (?), some Japanese salad, green salad with amazing dressing (don't know what exactly allz I know is that there's sesame seeds in it which rocks) and pomegranate juice.

Round 2: more pizza (1 slice pepperoni and 1 slice hot dog), some Chinese dish that has meat balls and omelet in it with sweet and sour sauce (or something like that haha, important thing is that very tasty) and last but definitely not least, spaghetti with clams in it!

The above-mentioned spaghetti.

A couple extra plates of sushi between rounds :P

Round 3: Chinese foodz: noodles with vegetables, chicken dish and another "I have no idea" dish that tasted great. Good enough by my book lol.

Round 4: time for dessert haha. First proper dessert I have here! (not counting chocolate chip cookies and "tamer" of course hehe) so going clockwise from the top right corner, FRESH lichees stuffed with sweet bean paste (ouch good stuff), none of that canned crap, more lichee with more beans (I think lol), mango dessert, creme caramel, fresh lichee (you crack it open and eat it mmm...) and pineapple, and finally something white and tasty is all I can say lol. As you can see, am not a dessert person.

Round 5: lol yes there's more! Haha kinda ate a lot... so ICE CREAM! I have some iiiice creeaam... and you didn't geeet noooone... coz you're on the weellfaaaare. So ya vanilla, orange, berries and chocolate mint! And baby banana!

So full...

Should've taken a photo of all the empty plates haha.

Well anyway, the meal coz quite a lot, but was well worth it, especially if you take into account the actual cost of all the food I ate lol. Paid something like 24$ though, but I'm happy :D

Yum yum: part I

Since food is such an important issue, decided to start posts just for... you guessed it: FOOD!

And today's dish: Uni Tekka Don (place is called The Don)

So basically I pass by this place everyday on my way to the subway. As I had explained before, the subway is under the biggest building in Sapporo. This building has 4 huge ass mofo department stores (each one 10 stories high I think), the movie theaters and of course the train station! So the basement (just above the subway) is the food floor muahahaha.

But I digress... as you can see, as soon as you order, they bring you tea in an amazingly cute (no I'm not gay it's just really cool) tea cup. I ordered a main dish of raw tuna and urchins, with rice, sea weed and something green that looks like "ba2leh", but with smaller leaves. This comes with a side order of cabbage salad, and miso soup.

The cute matching little plate has wasabe! You put soy sauce on top and pour the mix onto the main dish, ITTADAKKIMASU!