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).

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