Syonara Sapporo

We finally headed out from Sapporo on Wednesday at noon with Takano.  Takano is just a very noisy man, but it is more endearing than anything. He is always humming little tunes to himself, or talking to himself, or chewing gum, or snorting.  When we left Sapporo and headed out on our 5 hour journey he spent the first half an hour singing "I will fallow you," and hitting his head in various places as if he were shaping a loaf of bread. A little while after he explained he was quite tired, which explained the head slapping. A little nervous about my drowsy driver, I suggested that we stop for coffee and stretch our legs. The rest of the trip involved more japanese american pop fusion humming, but luckily the head slapping ceased. 

Parks and Beaver Tails

Today (Monday), although many of the staff wanted up to continue work on the model, Takano insisted that we go out with our friend Kazuki from the university to Takino Ecological park, an hour south of the office. Kaz picked us up and we headed to the roughly 20 hectare park. During the winter there were cross country and downhill skiing routes, as well as snow shoeing trails. The portion that TLP designed was not open until April, but we got to see the very elaborate exterior. It was the main children's play area and was supposed to mimic animal habitat, in an effort to show children how they live. The area consisted of a human scaled ant habitat, including a series of underground tunnels, peek holes and a large ant nest to climb up; as well as bird habitats, with elaborate nests woven into groups of trees to be discovered. 

The next day we went to a park designed by Isamu Noguchi, a very famous Japanese-American sculptor. It was blizzarding outside though and quite impossible to actually go outside. Luckily there was a gallery inside a very beautiful glass pyramidal building to be explored.  Noguchi had a very difficult upbringing being half Japanese and always moving from Japan where he was rejected by his father, to America, where he was faced with a lot of racism.  In an autobiography he explains that he was interested in landscape design because it has the unique power to directly connect people to sculpture as well as the natural environment. He also believed that is was imperfections that made a thing great and beautiful, and that we should not enforce unnatural perfection standards on anything or anyone. 

That night, I promised Kazuki, to make and his cousin (who came to see the Canadians) a Canadian dessert, if he made his famous Korean food for us. With no oven, and very select ingredients from the grocery store, I found myself making 2 dozen beaver tails in the office kitchen. They were a huge success and Kazuki's very small female cousin ate about six. 

    

Horse Apples

I just found out that the big bushel of apples Takano brought to the office that I have been demolishing speedily, were in fact for his horses. They were given to him by his neighbour who has an orchard, and were apparently not good enough quality to sell to the market. 

Then Takano told me that his horses wouldn't eat them, so he brought them to the office. So I guess I'm a more experimental eater than I thought I was. 

Bribing Children

Warning* (This is an exert from a paper I have to write for school so the tone is more formal than usual)

Tsukisamu Park is a large park located in the south of the city of Sapporo, imbedded in a residential neighbourhood with a few surrounding shops and restaurants. It was designed in the 1960s and is now in need of a revamping, with its three large baseball fields sorely underused, and the children’s play areas fallen into disrepair. While I was doing a field survey of the park, one thing that struck me was how closely it was connected to the surrounding neighbourhood. Just a very narrow street separated the yard-less doors of houses and restaurants, to the open green space. 

We were introduced to the project context and background and were taken to the site to do an initial survey. We then began construction on a very large (roughly 3 m2) model of the existing park; out of wood, plasticine, styrofoam, and paper, for the most part. Making the model very enjoyable and helped me understand the geography of the site as a whole, and its context. Our next big task was to help in the first workshop that the firm was to host for the park. Most of the employees of the firm assisted in the two-day workshop to lead the building of a snow fortress in the park. 

The concept for children’s play in the park, similar to that of Myonnoka and most of Takano’s children’s parks, is to create an environment for creative play, rather than providing static playground equipment. The programming utilizes the commissioned park play leader to help guide the children to creating their own play opportunities with recycled material or naturally occurring materials from the park; such as a jungle gym woven in the trees with rope, or a tree fort constructed out of abandoned timer. The aim of the workshop was to encourage passing by children to join in the building, and demonstrate to parents and children the potential for more creative play using simple tools and naturally occurring materials (in this case snow). 

This workshop was part of a small snow festival the park was hosting, in which the firm contributed a booth where children and their parents could come in to warm up and enjoy a hot drink and describe what they liked and didn’t about building the snow fort, and what they wanted to see or do in their new park. Because of the language barrier, I spent most of the two days building the structure and setting up the booth. I spent about half a day sculpting a face out of snow for above the main entrance of the fort. We are continuing to work on the design of the park and are now to do a quick charette style park design ourselves, to be presented at a staff meeting next week.  

Birthday Cakes and Throwing Beans

n the morning before we took off, Yamagi mentioned quickly that tonight was the night that 'we throw the beans.' I had no idea what he meant by this, and by the time 10 pm rolled around I figured the beans were off,  but I was wrong. Murata-San (another employee who had just returned from working on a project in Samoa) and Yamagi-San had gone out, but I've gotten very used to having no idea where people are going or when they are coming or what I'll be doing in 15 minutes, and generally not knowing what's going on; so naturally, them going out seemed perfectly normal. They returned however with three big bags in tow and immediately started cutting out cardboard circles. They then drew scary faces on them and tied a string to make a mask. Yamagi put on the mask and we were to throw the blessed peanuts at him and should "go away evil spirits", and "come good fate,"in japanese of course. We took turns (except Kat) wearing the mask and having peanuts thrown at us, and then Murata-San announced abruptly that it was now time to eat, which I really wasn't happy to hear after I had just eaten a huge dinner. He handed everyone something like a very long role of sushi and explained that this year the lucky direction is South-West so we all have to turn to the direction and eat the roll without talking or turning until we finish the whole thing. I was really stuffed and the idea of eating the entire roll was very daunting, so I tried to leave little bits, but Murata who took the process very seriously kept glancing in my direction every few seconds to check my progress. I finished at last and could relax knowing that I won't be haunted by any evil spirits this year. I started walking back to my desk when they explained I could not sit down until I ate 20 peanuts (one for every year I have been alive), I was only greatful that I wasn't Ueda-San who had to eat 57 peanuts. 

The next night Yamagi's girlfriend came from Nara to celebrate Yamagi's birthday. Although most don't know the meaning of half the words, everyone knows the song Happy Birthday in english and sing it on people's birthday. Generally, very few people people in Japan have ovens, so they bought a cake from the bakery and I made smores in honour of the day. After a bottle of Sake was cracked open, Yamagi struck up a conversation in english about how when he dies he wants to sees giant redwoods and baobabs. He actually meant to say, which took us about half an hour to decipher that he wants to see them before he dies. He then started drawing lumber jacks and how large he imagined the redwoods to be in Canada, so wide that 30 people could stand around them holding hands. I drew a line through his tree and tried to explain that they were not so wide, which led to an even more confusing conversation when he became convinced that Canadians were chopping their trees in half and then just leaving them. 

No birru at the brewery

Without anything to do monday we decided to go downtown Sapporo for a wander. In Japan all cities have a subway system and a train system that is connected to the national train system, so there are two networks of public transportation which crisscross and meet sometimes to create a confusing system unless you're in the know. We arrived at Sapporo's main station where all subway lines, train lines, and bus lines meet, needless to say it was huge and very confusing. To add to that there is a giant underground shopping mall and restaurant area, probably the size of the eaton center buried under everything. We finally escaped and made our way to the famous Sapporo clock tour which was once part of the University of Hokkaido. The city of Sapporo was established after Japan's long period of cultural isolation at the end of the 1800's. The politics of the country changed dramatically there was a strong interest in westernizing the country. Because Hokkaido was barely touched before this time, the foundations of the city could be built up in the western style. The agricultural university was taught mainly by americans  who introduced new methods and machines for farming. They even insisted that the Japanese speak only english and take on an American diet, defined as mostly bread, milk, pork and ice cream, to have a true cultural immersion. We then went to a large department store called Tokyu Hands, which is in theory supposed to be a craft supply store, but this 6 storey shop sold a lot more than craft supplies. Valentine's day is a big deal in Japan, and women traditionally make sweets to give to their sweet hearts and friends. Not only did they have kits to make truffles and cakes, but had equally as many to make plastic sweets, and decorative cakes. The store also had three different kinds of bamboo ear wax pickers and hand towels that were folded so they looked like various desserts. 

The next day I went by myself to the botanical gardens of the university and went inside the various greenhouses, as the outside portion does not open until spring. I then went to the first city hall, which is in a western style like most historic buildings in Hokkaido, with beautiful red bricks and a large garden surrounding it. And of course like all trees and shrubs in Japan, all the ones in the city hall park were wrapped up beautifully with bamboo stakes, twine and burlap to protect them from the harsh winters. The building has now turned museum, and they had a full two rooms devoted to propaganda about the three islands that are pseudo shared with russia, just north of Hokkaido, and how the Japanese should take ownership. I then walked over to the Sapporo brewery hoping for a brewery tour or beer tasting. I arrived to the beautiful red brick building, very much in the style of the distillery district in Toronto, and wandered around looking for something beer like. There was none to be had! Just one room with old boilers, beer cans and tv commercials. The old building was filled with small artisan shops with specialty goods from the Sapporo area, mostly shortbread and pumpkin filled (my personal favorite) cookies and chocolates with dehydrated strawberries inside (also very tasty).

I

Voulez-vous coucher aver moi se soir?

Exhausted from the day before, I woke up late Monday morning, to hit my head as usual on the light in the stairway, and then the entrance to the office, and then again on the entrance to the kitchen. We spent the day getting acquainted with the very quirky Yamagi-San, who sounds very french when he speaks his broken english. This is because, as he informed us, he learned english from a french intern who came over who taught him useful french words of which he was forever repeating after he heard I spoke french. Some of them included "vichyssoise, bbouillabaisse and voulez-vous couchez avec moi se soir, etc." He added that he used the last phrase on a group of french interns that came over and as a consequence they avoided him the whole two months they were here. Yamagi is an amazing chef, and we eat very well while he is around, on monday we had chinese style food and then the next night we had a japanese style seafood curry. 

Goats and Curry

We didn't get to sleep in this morning, instead we were swept off back to the Kindergarten school for the morning with Akamine-san to meet her friends and show them around. After bonding with the ponies and feeding them little bits of my apple, we were off again, this time we were going to a friend of a friend's restaurant in the outskirts of Sapporo, which actually turned out to be in the forest. The restaurant specialized in goat's milk products, especially bread and cheese, which is what I had for lunch. After we ate, we went on a tour to see the building behind the restaurant and house, which we discovered housed all the goats they milk, as well as chickens, bunnies, and storage space for wheat. The restaurant, run by a husband (also a an architect) and wife team, produces all the food for their restaurant, including vegetables, cheese and bread on site, so they only use seasonal ingredients. 

We left the restaurant and headed to a park that Takano had designed on top of a mountain offering a view to the entire city and the ocean beyond. From there we drove an hour to an onsen that was high in the mountains, and from the hot pools outside there was an amazing view to the snow covered valleys. The onsen had a curry restaurant, and as I was ordering I was very surprised to see a whole kitchen full of Indian men speaking perfect japanese while shaping Naan bread. It was very sureal. But I have to admit, I don't think I've ever had better Naan!

Beef Deluxe

After finishing the fortress, all the under thirties, there were 6 of us, went to a beautiful onsen. This one had many pools of different temperatures and several outside that were dotted amid a traditional Japanese garden. After warming up and cleaning off we went to a barbecue restaurant, that they told me was being payed for by the principal of the school who gave us 20 000 yen for dinner to thank us for our work. We sat around the barbecue table as the eccentric yamaji-San ranted about the Spanish intern who came a few years ago who wouldn't stop taking pictures of him and everything. According to him, he would take over a thousand a day. They then informed me that they ordered the beef deluxe for us to share and grill. I was relieved and surprised we were eating something as normal as beef, no, it couldn't be, something's up. It was as I suspected, beef deluxe was actually a sampling of various body parts of the cow, even some, that the waitresses couldn't identify. There was however cow stomach, liver, tongue, heart and skin. I didn't eat the skin, but the others were surprisingly okay, although the stomach was very chewy.

 I'm definitely going vegetarian when I get back. 

Kinder-topia

Today we (all the employees and I) left the house bright and early for a kindergarten school on the edge of Sapporo that we were giving a workshop at. The school called Myonnoka, although I'm sure that spelling is wrong, is right at the edge of the forest on a high hill that offers a beautiful view of the City. The school's mission is to immerse children into the natural environment and teach them about living closer with nature. They have kindergarden classes during the day, and offer after school and weekend programs for older children. They have also started offering art and activity classes for parents and adults. The school was almost solely designed by Takano Landscape Planning, even the buildings and interiors and programming were chiefly designed by the firm. The design process taken was described to me by Takano as ecological democracy, so that all people, plants and animals have equal rights, and everyone's needs are balanced. By involving all the people who are going to share the space as much as possible, not only will a more successful place result, but a respectful environment, where children, parents, teachers, plants, and animals are treated equally, working together to create a sustainable space for all parties. The school is centered around a large-ish round pony pen. They have 7 ponies that the kids ride and take on treks through the woods and fields. They also have their own ski slope that all the kindergarden kids learn to downhill ski on. All the buildings were designed to focus on one ecozone. The main office building is built into the natural hill and on top they have a large vegetable garden and bee hives that the kids plant and harvest. On the natural cliff that extends from the building, is a rock climbing wall disguised into the stone. Another main building focuses on the pond ecosystem and extends from the top of a hill to sit over part of the pond on stilts, with a deck in the front. The third main building allows children to study the air, and is a large greenhouse, that is kept sodded in the winter to use as playing field and storage space for the school bus, and transforms into a swimming pool in the summer. The Main building is a large converted barn with a very large open room for all the classes to gather, a secret loft with ladder for kids to play in, and class rooms with views to the mountains. The buildings are not connected, instead teachers thought it was important that kids should be aware of their outside environment, and so a slightly raised boardwalk connects the main buildings, so they can keep their slippers on. They have treeforts in the forest and mini hot springs in the hill, and even a tipi that they use for campfires. 

We were here however, to help them build a large snow fort that would serve as a winter classroom. When we arrived they had already piled a 10 by 10 meters, and probably 2 meter high snow mound for us to start shaping. A student from the landscape architecture department of the University of Hokkaido was also there to help (Kaz) who was very friendly and spoke english very well, so well he could even ask us if we liked karaoke, and after hearing my positive answer invited us to come out on Friday. Anyways . . .  after giving my presentation to the kids about the Canadian arctic culture and igloos, we began construction. Takano was the chief visionary for the project and decided where the three main doorways would be as well stairs and a large snow slide. The kids were really cute, and very useful at hollowing out the hill because they could fit into the little tunnels. It is Takano's ongoing joke that when ever there is a task to be done up high, the tall Canadian should do it! Even when there were men who were just as tall as I was, I think he enjoyed calling on me when he couldn't reach, "We need a tall Canadian over here!" after which he would laugh jovially and adjust his furry earmuffs. The mound was hollowed, complete with tunnels and secret passageways, the stairs were carved, and everything was decorated with snowballs, and snow sculptures. All the kids had constructed their own flags and they all ceremonially placed them on the roof of the fort. After the principal and teachers gave permission, the kids were set loose on the fort and went wild. Some were jumping off the roof, others had found candles that they were using as torches, and they were all generally having a great time with their new jungle gym. When it hit 6, parents finally got impatient and started collecting their kids who in some cases buried their feet in snow so they didn't have to leave. After most had left he told me that "these are the times that give landscape architects the most pleasure, when you create a space that is loved."

Oh I forgot to mention the name of the second man-Yamaji-San!

Coffee and Cigarettes

On friday morning I found myself packing up all my worldly possessions as we were all to leave the Otofuke office by noon and head to the firm's Sapporo branch. We were going to be there for at least 10 days, and I thought I should be prepared for any event in case they make us climb a mountain or give a speech to the CEO of a big bank, which now seems completely plausible. So I filled my big backpacking knapsack about half full and headed to the office to help pack. I arrived to see everyone else's bags lined up next to the car, they all had grocery bag size bags of luggage which looked like mini smart cars next to my hummer of a bag. I felt really North American as they unpacked everything from the back of the car in order to fit my beast in the trunk. 

The five of us, me, Takano-San, Katherine, Naka-San and Akamine-San pilled in to the car and started the 4 1/2 hour journey through the mountains to the coastal city of Sapporo. We quickly stopped at Takano San's house to pick up some supplies we would need for the week. Takano lives with his wife in an old farm house that they completely renovated. Their house is a traditional Japanese farmhouse with all the original hard wood floors, high ceilings and large wooden beams. They also have a guesthouse or entertaining house he called it that was converted from a cow barn. The entertaining house had a very long and low table that would probably seat about 20. It also had grills set into it all the way along for hot pot or barbecue paaty. There was also a loft level with tatami floors where mr and mrs Takano do Tai chi in the morning. Takano is not only a leading architect in Japan, but also casually dropped in that he is ranked 5th in Japan for horse jumping as he showed us the two horses he kept. 

The 4 hour journey through the mountains was spectacular, the road wound around the hills and up the steep slopes through little villages and farms. Higher up, the farms became beautiful coniferous and deciduous forest weighed down with the 2-3 meters of snow. I felt as if I was driving through a winter wonderland snow globe. 

We finally arrived in Sapporo, marked by a lovely 'Curves' fitness for women just as you enter the city. The office is close to downtown and tiny. There are three small rooms downstairs plus a kitchen, and two bedrooms upstairs. We arrived at the office and pretty much simultaneously Naka, Akamine and Takano got to a desk and started working. Not even a nod to the other employees at the office who didn't even lift their heads as we came in. Very confused about the whole situation, Kat and I also sat down a table and started checking our email. I went into the kitchen and couldn't believe the volume of cigarette butts in the compost maybe over 70, that was until I looked over at the desk and saw even more in various ash trays on the desk. I attempted to make some coffee, but there were no filters left, and looking around I found a large cardboard box under the counter that was full to the brim with coffer grounds and filters. I resolved to have tea instead.

About 15 minutes later the other two men working at the office, Ueda-san (mid forties project leader type) and  (late twenties crazy but hilarious type), came over and introduced themselves. Almost as soon as we had finished introductions, everyone started packing up again, and pilling into the car to what I finally found was a lecture about urban design at the University.  It was the usual crowd, business men in black suits, a few women and me, looking out of place as ever in a bright pink shirt with disheveled blonde hair to compliment. There turned out to be no pictures in this two and a half hour lecture about urban design in Japanese, but it became very productive doodling time. We went out for dinner after and finally arrived home, and then set up our futons upstairs. I was really exhausted but had to finish a presentation on the inuit and igloos that I had to make at a kindergarden school the next day. 

I went to bed late, frustrated and cold, but was humoured by a fleecy quilt with sleeves on my bed. 

Conveyer food

Most of our time in the office is spent doing not a whole lot. Today however we were tasked to edit the firm's english brochure. Most of the work involved moving the subject of the sentence from a yoda type structure (Running children to get to school) to standard english structure (Children running to get to school). 

There was a big snow storm today, and in light of the bad weather, Maeni-San offered to drive us the 2 minutes from the office to our house. Her english is not strong and when we got in the car she struck up a conversation in Japanese, to which I responded with many smiles and nods. We got to the driveway of the house and oddly enough the car wasn't stopping, was there something I missed? Where were we going? Should I trust this Japanese lady who feeds me cookies and candies everyday? Was she fattening me up for a reason? 

I chose to trust her in the end, even after we left Otofuke, and then Obihiro, and our trip home had now turned into a 40 minute trek to nowhere. At last we arrived at our destination, which was to my relief, a restaurant. All the tables were placed around a large conveyer belt in the middle of the restaurant. The conveyer belt which probably measured around 50 m in total was carrying all sorts of sample sized sushi, sea weed salads, fruit, jellies, rice ball things, spring rolls, and faux American food. In the center of the oval shaped conveyer belt were 4 chefs who's job it was to stock the conveyer belt. We sat down at our table, as I watched the food move along past my shoulder. Maeni-San, like everyone here seems keen to make me try different Japanese foods, so on this occasion I sampled octopus and scallop sashimi and a few variations of sea weed salad. As the little plates of strange food piled up on the table, I was comforted by the biyabon (traditional japanese stringed instrument) covers of familiar Michael Jackson songs. To pay for our meal, the server simply came over and scanned over our plates with a zapper machine to decode the prices embedded in microchips in the plates.