Today, it snowed for the first time this year in Date. When I say "this year" I of course don't mean 2003 because it snowed all the way up til mid May. Yo, mid-May snow is "nooooo-good." But anyway, it snowed today, and when compared to last year, this year is a bit late. Last year is snowed in the beginning of November. That's right, snow from November to mid-May. A little over 6 months of winter. Blah! Some Hokkaido people were having some fun with me in saying that Hokkaido has only 3 seasons... winter, spring, and fall. They may very well be correct.

So, with snow, come changes. Clothes get more numerous and puffy. The space heater gets turned on all the time. The tires on the car have to get changed... and so do the windshield wipers. I can't wear a pair of shoes I own... and regardless of the shoes I'm wearing, I have to do the "walking on ice and snow shuffle." I can't hang my clothes out to dry anymore (although I think I should try it with an old T-shirt just to see if I really freezes). Hot chocolate suddenly tastes really really good. Ditto for microwaved smores, well, until the marshmallow cools and gets all hard and sticky.

Interesting thing about the Japanese language...

Recently, I've noticed that the Japanese have interesting names for some animals. Japan is not home to very many animals in the animal kingdom. And so, while the Japanese language was being developed, only a few animals got Japanese names. Examples include dogs (inu) and cats (neko).

Some of the animals without Japanese names have names that sound like the English counterpart. Examples include gorillas (gorira) and lions (raion).

But then, there are those animals with names that are really Japanese descriptions. These are the really interesting ones. Examples include porcupines (harinezumi) and raccoons (araiguma). Harinezumi means needle mouse while araiguma means washing bear. The Japanese for porcupines I understood immediately. I guess a person who's never seen one could say that it looks like a mouse with needles sticking out of it. But the raccoon... the raccoon had me stumped for a while. I mean, the first thing I notice about raccoons are the black rings around their eyes. I don't notice the fact that they wipe/wash everything they eat with their hands. And there's the whole bear thing. They don't look anything like a bear. They look more like cats or dogs or I dunno, beavers than bears. But then that's my opinion.

I had sushi for dinner today. It was good. There's a sushi restaurant like around the corner from my place, and that place is bomb! It's close. It's cheap. And they've got big portions. "Sushi? Big portions?" you may be asking yourself. To which I reply, "Yes indeedy!" It's not like you can supersize the rice in the sushi. BUT... the topping (neta) is huge at this place (note: most of the sushi in Japan are the ones with the rice on the bottom and the fish on top... not the rolls).

Example: If you pick up an unagi plate. You get two pieces of unagi sushi. Pretty normal. The rice on the bottom... regular size. BUT, whereas most sushi restaurants have the pieces of unagi sitting on top of the rice, this place has it on top of the rice and curling under it. Basically, it's twice the size. My favorite... the King Salmon sushi plate that has pieces of raw King Salmon resting on top of the rice, with about 3/4 inch of excess flapping on the sides. Can't get that out in Tokyo! Gotta come out to the country to get some of that good finga lickin' food.

One of the things I never get tired of here in Japan are the clothes. I love seeing people wear clothes with weird English on them. When I went to Sapporo the other day, at the train station, I saw this guy with a windbreaker jacket that had the letters "ASS" written in big bold yellow letters on the back. Then below that it said something like "Authentic California Clothing."

Yeah, in all my years in California, I don't think I've ever seen clothes by that make. It just made me think though, "Who designed that jacket?" Some Japanese guy who's never been to California? Or some Californian who wanted to play a joke on Japanese fashion knowing that people would wear that jacket in public in Japan?

Today, on my day off, I went to Sapporo. It was a lot of fun. I never realized how much I am a city boy until I came here to Hokkaido. For those who don't know, I'm in a city of 35,000 people. Now, some of you in the bay area may say, "Oh, 35,000? That's like the size of El Cerrito (maybe?)." The thing about the bay area suburbs is just that... it's a suburb of a fairly large metropolitan area. Basically, if you're driving down I-80... it's hard to tell where one city starts and another begins. Out here, it's very easy to tell where one city starts and another begins. There are stretches of fields that separate our city from its neighbors. So, we get that small town feel. And thus, I realize how much of a city boy I am.

I think I wrote this about Sapporo before, but I find it strange how it seems like the people in Sapporo are like 6 inches taller than the people in Date (where I'm living). Then again, maybe not. Young people live in Sapporo. People in their 20s and 30s are there. Out here, we have more the 50s, 60s, 70s type people. And everybody knows that many Asian people in their 70s are hunched over, pushing some cart or something. And well, people hunched over just aren't as tall as people who are standing up straight.

My hair's getting a little shaggy. Yeah, it's getting a little long. Normally, I'd cut it. But right now, I'm having second thoughts. Why? Because it's getting mighty cold. And short hair doesn't insulate the noggin as well as longer hair. The hair also helps with the wind chill factor. And we got plenty of that.

The problem with longer hair of course, is multiple. It takes longer to dry when I come out of the shower. It goes all over the place when I wake up. It starts brushing up on my eyebrows which I absolutely hate. And well, it's just not very stylin'. Am I metro?

Today there was a funeral...

And go figure, even in this solemn atmosphere, a lady came up to me and asked me, "Would you like me to set you up with my granddaughter?" I've almost gotten used to people saying something like this to me so I wasn't surprised so much by what she said as I was by the way she brought up the topic.

Lady: Thank you for coming.
Hideyo: Oh, it was no problem. You have my condolences.
Lady: Thank you. Would you like to stay around to eat?
Hideyo: No thanks. I don't want to cause too much trouble.
Lady: It's no trouble at all. You can come eat with us.
Hideyo: Thank you. But no thanks.
Lady: Oh. Well, thank you for coming. Would you like me to set you up with my granddaughter?

Completely came outta the blue. I mean, what the hao?!

Tonight, we had our weekly prayer meeting. Only, this week, instead of the pastor, I led it. Boy oh boy... was I overwhelmed! I don't know about everybody else, but I was touched by God during our time of prayer tonight. It was awesome. At the end, I kept thinking, "Man, I should've brought a camera! I should've brought a camera!" It was just one of those meetings where the Holy Spirit was just moving and you could see it with your eyes (and probably through the lens of a camera).

If there's one thing you can't dock Japanese Christians for, it's praying. Japanese Christians pray. There are a lot of things about Japanese Christianity that drives me absolutely nutso... but I highly respect them for praying.

Oh, and by the way, today, I had bowl of miso ramen. That mess is good!

Part 2 of the sticky rice saga...

I forgot to mention that it's the sticky rice balls the "onigiri" that the Japanese anime cartoon people are often eating while they're walking. I don't care what the English dub over says. They ain't DONUTS... or MEATBALLS. Out here, if you wanna get donuts, you go to Mister Donut... or as the locals call it, MisuDo. I remember the first time I heard "MisuDo." I was like "Miss who?"

Mad props out to Kat-chan for the comment about the onigiri. Actually, it probably more like a full blown post. And Japanese ingenuity indeed. It doesn't matter where you go. If you order fried rice, it'll come served as a dome. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you might go to a restaurant that puts a little toothpick flag on top. And if you're still a kid and order the kids' special, you get that with a little tempura shrimp all served on a bullet train (shinkansen) dish. But, shoot, I want some of that bomb umeboshi. I'm guessin that it won't pass through customs inspection though. If Naomi Sato gets a contract with Kewpie mayonaisse though, I can learn how to make that stuff from watching "san-pun-kukkingu."

About Seri's comment, I read the word "inane" like "ee-nah-neh." I thought it was a Japanese word and so I read it like one. Sigh. How am I ever going to get through apps?

The are a lot of ramen shops here in Hokkaido.

I'm not talking about some store that sells cup-o-noodles by the bulk. I'm talking about full blown restaurants that feature ramen. I guess the closest thing I can compare them to is Katana-ya for all you El Cerrito/Richmond folks out there. Except that even there, ramen is one of many other kinds of "Japanese" food you can get. The extent of variety in the ramen shops here in Hokkaido includes ramen (what else?), sometimes potstickers, and sometimes fried rice (I'll get back to the fried rice in a second).

How is the ramen served? In a bowl... kinda like pho minus the nasty dirty chopsticks and the even nastier dirty soup spoon. Yo, if you need to wipe the eating utensils with a napkin before you use em, there's something wrong. Getting back to the ramen, I remember my senior year in Berkeley when my roommate and I went crazy over the Korean ramen noodles sold at Ranch 99. We seriously bought them in bulk. Then we'd put all this stuff inside to make it semi-nutricious. Eggs, bok choy, spinach, even mochi... I don't remember other stuff we put in there. Anyway, because of all the good stuff, we served it as a meal. Gourmet ramen I think was what we dubbed it. Hahaha. So anyway, I come here to Japan, and "gourmet ramen" is everywhere. It's like college batchelors took over Japan and opened up all these restaurants.

So about the fried rice. As my other roommate Jason said once, "You can't make fried rice from your rice." "Your rice" of course, is in reference to the sticky Japanese rice. Apparently, he tried to make fried rice for lunch one day using the Japanese rice, and it just didn't work because Japanese sticky rice stays... well, sticky. Regardless, Japanese people still make fried rice... or at least their version of it. A sticky version.

The best thing about Japanese rice though is that you can make rice balls (onigiri) out of them. Can I get an amen from some of the Japanese readers out there? Going on a picnic? Wanna eat rice? Have no worries. Just smush a gob of rice together into a rounded triangle and wrap it in dried seaweed for some wholesome goodness. Portable rice. Aww yeah.