August 2008

För Sverige i tiden (20080801)

Some guy in the university cafeteria wore a t-shirt with the current king of Sweden's motto.

More fireworks (20080801)

More fireworks, and this time I did not go alone. I went with a Bulgarian girl who lived in the same dormitory that I stayed in first time around in Sapporo. She claimed it would be (because it was last week) impossible to find anyone at the actual spot and wanted to meet up far away. I argued that probably her other friends just suck at giving directions. I was right, she found me with no problems at all. The fireworks were better last week, though.

Cool, but laughed at (20080801)

When leaving the fireworks, there was of course quite a crowd going up the stairs. So progression was very slow. The rather unsteady on their feet people in front of us turned around, looked at us crazy foreigners, and one girl (high school, I would guess, but my guesses can be off by 15 years in either direction) said in English that "you, very cool", indicating me. While this was nice, my Bulgarian "friend" then exploded in laughter. Perhaps she coincidentally thought of something really funny at that time?

North Safari Sapporo (20080802)

Today I, a colleague, and a friend, set off to find "North Safari Sapporo", which is possibly in Sapporo but very far from central Sapporo. It is a rather small but very packed zoo or adventure land. You can feed the penguins (they jump up and almost bite your hand, pet the seals, scratch the beaver behind the ears, cuddle with kangaroos etc. Since it was raining, there were not very many other visitors, which was nice.

Interesting food and being called an idiot (20080802)

The main goal of the day was however the restaurant at this North Safari Sapporo that has an ... interesting ... menu. We ordered the normal stuff, reindeer hot dog and Genghis Khan burger, and the crazy stuff: snake, lizard, worms, big scorpion, small scorpions, grasshoppers, and two small frogs. No one had ever ordered the full range from the "challenge menu" before. I had to pay out 7500 yen for it too, which buys you two full course dinners in fancy Italian restaurants in Sapporo. The food was as follows:

Reindeer hot dog: the tastiest, tasting pretty much like a normal hot dog with a slight taste of reindeer.
Genghis Khan burger: the biggest disappointment. Genghis Khan is good food, but this was bordering on not good.
Snake: not much taste. Very hard/chewy. Not really recommended. Everyone in agreement.
Lizard: quite good. Full of bones though, making it annoying to eat. We did not eat the head. The bones in the legs are thin enough to eat. One person did not think it was very good.
Worms: good. Tastes like potato chips. We got over 30 of the little buggers and finished all of them. Everyone agreed.
Frogs: taste OK, but it is a bit disgusting chewing on for instance the heads. Agreement on the taste.
Small scorpions: good. Very much like the worms, but slightly more crisp.
Grasshoppers: disgusting. I have had smaller grasshoppers (inago) before, which was pretty good, but these larger (koorogi) were pretty bad. At first you get only the taste of the salt and butter from the cooking, and think "Um, pretty good, actually". Then it is a bit weird when chewing on the crisp outer shell and the very soft innards. And then you get the after taste from all the soft innards, which is very disgusting. A hard to describe taste, though my colleague thought it was a bit like "kani miso", but not really. My friend did not agree.
Big scorpion: the worst. Very (very very) hard shell. Huge soft innards, tasting very much like the grasshoppers, though possibly slightly more disgusting. Claws etc. were OK. My friend was very unwilling to even try, but in the end tried a very small piece. And regretted that.

We did not manage to finish off all the food (despite it saying 5 grasshoppers on the menu, we got more than 10, similar for other dishes), so we asked a family passing by if they wanted to try some. Especially the boys of around 10 years of age might be interested, I thought. They were more freaked out, actually. When I said, "Come on, try. Look, lizard is pretty tasty" and shoved the lizard in my mouth and took a big bite, the kids ran away, shouting "these people are crazy!". The grown-ups (3 people) took one insect each, a worm, a small scorpion, and a grasshopper.

Playing with the animals (20080802)

You can as mentioned above play with the animals there. Here is me with an owl flying to my arm. You then throw the owl away, whistle, and have it come back. Repeat. There was also a flying squirrel type of animal chained to a tree. When you walked close enough, it jumped towards you (evidently very bored with its current tree). Since the chain was much shorter than the squirrels possible jumping distance, it often jumped fearlessly out and was then jerked to a sudden stop by the collar around the neck, and then fell down and smacked into the trunk of the tree. If you did go within chain distance you got a squirrel on you though. Looked cute, but once it was on you it would never let go. And it had some impressive talons on those tiny feet. Not so pleasant when it decided to explore your uncovered areas. I had blood seeping out from my bicep. Fun to watch the little thing look at people getting close to jumping range, tracking them around the tree and then suddenly flying off.

More interesting food (20080802)

Afterwards, we went to a restaurant with my colleague's friends. Here is shredded pig intestines served raw. For me, this is also "interesting", for Japanese people this is normal.

Open Campus and farting robots (20080803)

Sunday was open campus day at the university, so I was called in to do something to lure poor high school students to attend university. I had my robots do stand up comedy and fart, which some people laughed at. Not that many, though. One theory was that the dirty jokes were way too dirty for such young people of only 18 to understand (sounds implausible). My theory is that they were too embarrassed to laugh in front of all the other people, but chuckled internally.

Completely appropriate in Japan (20080805)

When I took off my pants in a magic show in early spring, I was scolded by my Japanese friends. This was Japan, and no one takes off their pants in front of strangers here. Today, I learned the truth. It is in fact completely normal. Here are for instance two random guys taking off their pants in the middle of several hundred strangers in the Beer garden. The girls around them, whom they did not know (though one of the guys in the group was the older brother of a classmate of the girls, I think), seemed to find it funny and in no way inappropriate. So much for the teachings of my friends. I told my friends this, and they now claim that yes you can take off your pants in front of strangers, but some places and times are appropriate, some are not. Evidently a show during a private party is inappropriate, while in the middle of a park is OK.

My neighbor (20080805)

I was to meet a Swedish guy in the Beer garden today. He was drinking with some Australians. One of them is the only other Westerner in my apartment building, whom I have seen twice in the elevator. Here he is holding a laser sword that he used against anyone and everyone around.

Pigeons (20080806)

People were feeding pigeons in the park, so I had lots of them around my feet. Some people had them sitting in their lap, though.

Accidents (20080806)

I managed to not hit a drunk person when passing the Beer garden on my way home today, and saved my bicycle too. But my shoe broke (the sole snapped), and my toe was rather badly mangled too. I was too excited about all the blood and pain (long time no see!) and forgot to take pictures until after I had cleaned everything up. So I had to squeeze out some more blood.

What I was going home from was a dinner with two people from my former dormitory. One lives in Tokyo and one in the country side, so I don't see them much. One said that she did not have time to meet me despite being back in Sapporo for more than a week. She did suddenly send an e-mail saying I could join up for dinner today if I wanted. Rather than my charming personality, it turned out she just wanted me to come to her and hand over a key so she would not have to come to wherever I happened to be to borrow a key to get a better place to stay in for free in Sapporo. Before when she has told me where to come and when, she has given me the completely wrong address (30 minutes in the rain trying to find a non-existing building, and being yelled at for not understanding simple instructions) and told me five minutes before arrival time "Oh, everyone else is already here, did no one tell you when we start?" (she being the one responsible to do that, and me having asked five times, even when meeting in person, did not seem to register as "well maybe no one did"). So this time I e-mailed and said "If you tell me where and when only five minutes before, like last time, I may not give you the key. Please don't do so again". So the first e-mail is "around five thirty, location unknown". When it is getting close to five thirty, "it will probably be a little later, and probably around Sapporo station". Somewhat later: "Around seven, maybe". Then, at around six thirty, "Nope, more like seven thirty". At 19:09 the final e-mail states "Oh, now we have already started, the restaurant is [name of restaurant]"... Which was actually the name of the restaurant, so it was surprisingly easy to find the place. But of course the other people were already very red faced from drinking a lot of beer, and had already finished the first dishes. I managed to hand over the key without problems, though, and they did stick around and order some more dishes and eat with me too. I guess she did follow the letter of the request (not five minutes before) by actually revealing the details after everything had already started, but the spirit of my request was more like "tell me earlier, please". When I pointed this out, I got yelled at. She got mad, because it was totally not her fault that things had become delayed. Not that it was my fault either, but still. In Sweden, it would still be rude, even if she was delayed by a third party.

Susukino festival (20080807)

There is now a festival again, in Susukino. I thought that would be a good way to kill some time while waiting for a friend to get in touch, but all they did were give long boring speeches about who had paid how much (the opening ceremony).

Argentinians (20080807)

The two Argentinians from the Brazilian drinking party turned up (they turned out to work near the opening ceremony stage) and said hi. They are in the photo but far away and with their backs to the camera...

Interesting food again (20080807)

More food of the interesting variety. A living squid in a very small fish tank, and a model of a flying fish (so probably they serve that inside).

Sparkring (20080807)

Creative spelling of sparkring wine, which makes a good word in Swedish.

Vietnamese food and a male friend (20080807)

Today was a small reunion of people from the dormitory I once lived in. The only other male there was my friends 11 month old son. He was however very popular with the girls, while I was mainly harassed by the drunk woman next to me. The food was OK, while the conversation touched mainly on topics of little interest to me. Me and little Akira are good buddies, though. Some interesting conversation were to be had too, among all the girly talk. Everyone (else) also seemed to be in agreement regarding my sense of clothes (it being bad). They even said my socks were bad (going too high up on the wrist).

Traditional Japanese clothes (20080808)

A summer style kimono. There should be more of these. The shoes are modern, though. These short ones are mainly worn by the girls working in the shady bars/clubs/soap land prostitution it seems.

More rituals in the streets (20080808)

The Susukino festival is still going strong, with people dancing traditional dances, dancing Yosakoi, carrying huge religious somethings among the crowded tables in the streets, etc.

Free drinks over and over again (20080808)

Today they were handing out some vitamin C supplement drink for free and they kept giving me samples over and over again. Tasted pretty good.

Random guy (20080808)

When trying to take a picture of the temple guys jumping around with their huge thing among the tables, this guy jumped in in front of the camera and wanted to have his picture taken. He worked at one of the food stalls.

Miss Waters (20080808)

If you voted for who was the prettiest kyaba kura (from cabaret club, a place where girls sit and drink with you and you pay for your and their drinks and much more) girl, you could possibly win a trip with the girl. I voted for number 11 but only got a small piece of candy.

Up yours (20080809)

Having a shirt that says "Still Single" is completely insane, but having a t-shirt that says "Up Yours" is completely normal. Strange country.

Free hugs (20080809)

Today there were no less than three girls and one man handing out free hugs. They had only little success in this endeavour, but I wandered over and had a hug from the cutest girl. They do it to "spread more smiles to the world" as more or less a hobby, she said.

Japanese modern clothing (20080809)

The style that will perhaps soon replace the kimono as The Japanese clothing.

Slightly more German (20080809)

The Polish guys have become slightly more German in the German village, and now shouts "Danke shoen" all the time. Being rather bored and having nothing to do, I spent a half hour or so speaking about work related things with them.

Tired (20080809)

Some guy sleeping in the park.

Still festival (20080809)

Last day of the Susukino festival.

Food, drinks, and chopsticks with addresses (20080809)

The Swede I met up with in the Beer garden had bought food and drink coupons (from his girlfriend, who got a heavy percentage on these coupons) to treat his American friends to beer and Genghis Khan. They however did not manage to find their way back from Niseko to Sapporo, so he had lots of coupons to spend before the Susukino festival was over (about 2 hours). I was asked to help, and got some nice Genghis Khan out of it. I also got the address of an old Japanese man sitting next to us, who started talking to us. He spoke rather heavy Hokkaido dialect, so sometimes it was hard to understand what he was saying. He also wrote rather unclearly on a pair of chopsticks, which I could not really decipher (Japanese people also had some problems). But he rewrote it later, and claims to have a 25 year old daughter. He bought us beer too. He then wandered away with his friend while my Swedish compatriot was in the toilet.

Guys who want to hug and take pictures (20080809)

While waiting outside the toilets, three random Japanese (rather drunk) guys started hugging me and wanted to take a picture with me. When they learned I was from Sweden they were ecstatic, since they were great fans of soccer and knew many Swedish player names. Their girlfriends were less than enthusiastic about the whole affair and went away.

Photographed by the police (20080809)

In the beer garden, I (everyone) was photographed by the police. Possibly because some bags had been stolen at the Beer garden last night.

A free corkscrew from Australia (20080809)

I was also given a corkscrew by an Australian guy. Perhaps because it was the second time we met in the Beer garden? Who knows about Australian customs for these situations. I politely accepted.

Swedish pancakes (20080810)

Today I went to several different shops, gathering the necessary ingredients (took an hour to find out where they put the flour etc.) and tools (fry-pan, spatula, bowl, etc.) to make Swedish pancakes. Then I made the pancakes. It took some getting used to my induction heating thing, but in the end the pancakes were pretty good. If (as most people theorized upon hearing about this) you think I have too little work to do and no friends that want to hang out with me, you would be half correct. I have work to do, I have just been slacking off during the weekend.

Weirdo event (20080810)

There was some kind of event in Sapporo for what my Japanese friends call nerds or weirdos, and which could perhaps be more politely described as "visual rock" (at least that is what it seems to be called in Japan); rock bands with strange clothes and make up and their fans, likewise. Hundreds of people (mostly girls) dressed in doll's clothes or punk style suits blocked the street. When I tried to pass, someone called out "Yotchan" several times and might even have looked in my direction. I don't think I know anyone who calls me that, though it is possible I guess (seeing as how I am normally called Yonasu). I did not see anyone that looked familiar though.

Healing cocoon II (20080810)

A healing cocoon.

Juggling on a unicycle (20080810)

Some guy called Brian juggled on a unicycle. He was from Kansai.

Sudden death sauce (20080810)

Today was the last day for someone at the bar I often frequent. Some horror story of another staff member there included "death sauce" and crying. So, kindly enough, some other repeat customers showed up and gave the girl leaving a bottle of "Sudden death sauce" and a bag of corn chips. Everyone (including customers) in the bar had to try some sauce. Very spicy. The one with the crying experience from being held down and forced to drink death sauce before is the one running the bar's cleaned water directly into his mouth. Other people ate ice, and one suggestion was that drinking Coca Cola was the fastest way to get rid of the pain. Conversation also more or less died completely for 20 minutes, except for random "it hurts!". Strangely enough, the one leaving the bar today seemed mostly unconcerned about the spiciness, while most other people had a horrible time.

Juggling on a unicycle again (20080813)

The same guy is still going strong in Odori.

Spam (20080813)

In Japan, spam is only used to mean processed meat. No one understands if you refer to unwanted e-mails as spam (this is instead called annoyance mail in Japanese).

Big bird (20080813)

For some reason, a huge bird was handing out crackers to drunk people today.

Jackass (20080813)

In the Beer garden I ran into a former waitress at a restaurant I often visit. Her friends decided that imitating Jackass (TV show were guys do stupid things on purpose) would be a good idea. Also a painful idea. When passing by the Beer garden to see if someone I know was there, not only did I meet this waitress but next to her group was a Swedish woman I have met before. And next to them, a group of people who after seeing me do some new card tricks for the waitress invited me over to do tricks for them too. Twice.

Entertainers (20080813)

On my way home, I ran into a group of people doing balloon animals and making glass orbs float in the air. Very impressive. One of them I have seen before, when he performed at the Sapporo station.

Horses (20080814)

For some reason there were horses in the park today.

O-Bon (20080814)

Having handed over some Swedish chocolate and then been dumped by my friend moving to France in a week or so (she had to go meet her real friends and they did not want to meet me she said), I wandered over to the Bon-odori dancing place and watched some traditional holiday celebrations before going home. This O-Bon holiday made my plane tickets to England expensive, since it is one of the busiest travelling seasons in Japan.

Manchester (20080815)

Today I reached Manchester after a long and rather boring flight. This is a photo of the Canal Street, which is evidently where all the gay clubs are. There were men dressed in skirts and huge platform shoes and much other highly visible stuff there. A warm up for next weekend's Pride Festival. The flight to Europe was as boring as usual, and I ended up sitting next to a Japanese old couple who never seemed to understand that I could understand other words than "excuse excuse" in broken English when they wanted to go to the bathroom. Some of the stewardesses were very impressed by both my handling of cards and handling of the Japanese language though. One thing that tends to strike me when I go back to Europe nowadays is that the service is so bad. When lost in Frankfurt Airport, the only person of help was the Japanese airline staffer helping people debarking. When I found the place where she thought I should go to catch my next flight, there was no staff around at all, and no signs indicating anything of use. I figured that since I had an hour until the plane was to take of, no big deal, but I would have liked to actually find someone who could check me in and give me a boarding pass. About 15 minutes after scheduled boarding time, the monitor near the door said that indeed my flight would leave from here, but there was still no personnel in sight anywhere. About 5 minutes before the last possible time to board, one person showed up and after looking disinterested behind a desk for 5 minutes agreed to check me in if I was leaving on the flight in question. In Japan, there is always people available and happy to check you in, as long as the airport is open. Everything else service related seems to be better in Japan too.

"Hotel" (20080816)

I stayed in a student dorm (conveniently empty because of the summer vacations). The plumbing lived up to the rumors of British plumbing, and the shower drain did not actually drain very much. So if you take longer showers than 30 seconds, the thing overflows and you have water in your bedroom. They fixed it for me the next day when I pointed it out, and then it was blocked again three days later. The breakfast was excellent, though. With lots of hot and cold things to pick from.

Conference (20080816)

At the conference there was free food at 10.30 and 15.30, which consisted of fruits, cakes, cookies, chocolate, and scones. The scones (and most of the other stuff) were excellent. People also had to do presentations, some putting in more effort than others.

China "town" (20080816)

Manchester has a China town, but it consists of one square and two small streets. The food was good, but half the places seemed to serve non-Chinese food, such as vaguely Japanese food, Thai food etc. And is it really good to name your place "Ho's bakery" in an English speaking country?

More Pride (20080816)

The people celebrating gay pride and similar things around my hotel tended to wear hats with blinking lights or devil's horns that blink, or some other strange things that blinked. To blend in, I used my Google logotype thing that blinks that I was given at the conference. It did not seem to impress them, but my colleagues thought it was funny.

Foucault's Pendulum (20080817)

In the actual hotel that was in the same house as my dorm, they had Foucault's Pendulum. And a huge micro chip made from cloth.

Not the conference place (20080817)

While the university's new conference center looks like an unpainted aluminum can, the house across the street looked very nice.

Vending machine (20080817)

At the conference place, there was a vending machine that sold cables, floppy disks (!), and other geek things.

British food (20080817)

There was a free food event today at the conference, serving up traditional British food. Very nice (despite the reputation of British food being summed up rather well with the word "disgusting" or at least "bland").

British lunch (20080818)

Today the student cafeteria was open, and I tried the pizza. It was huge, and not super expensive (unlike eating at other places). Pretty much everything related to food came in huge sizes in Manchester. Not only the food. Even the customers at the restaurants. And it is not just because I have got used to the Japanese "grown up person weighs 40 kg" concept, the British "average weight 100 kg" type would have been "fat" even in Sweden.

Design (20080818)

This room had a cool design, and was populated mostly by Mac users.

More British lunch (20080819)

Once again, the student cafeteria lunch. In a surprising effort to help the guests, someone showed up and took my empty tray etc. away. They also took my card case for my magic cards and threw that into a garbage can full of left over food, which was perhaps not an example of excellent service. I got it back later though. Somewhat sticky.

More on the British plumbing (20080819)

While in Japan, they still seem to have not come up with the idea that you might want to have one control for temperature and one for flow strength on your tap water (they have the old fashioned "flow of cold water" and "flow of hot water" controls still), in Britain they are even worse. If you want to for instance wash you hands in neither ice cold water nor burning hot water, what are you supposed to do here? Move your hands really really quickly between the two jets of water?

British cars (20080819)

Despite the very macho attitude most British men seemed to have, they had rather pink cars. Speaking of the macho attitude, that is one thing I certainly do not miss in Japan. In Japan, no one ever seems to fight, but in Manchester I saw people punching each other and then kicking on someone lying on the ground on my first evening. I also saw someone being honked at by a bus driver asking the driver to get out and fight him, and the bus driver then of course got up to get out and fight... What kind of stupid culture is that?

More free food (20080819)

Today there was a welcome reception, where the mayor (pink hair!) held a speech. Food was good this time too. And the place was very nice. Though for some reason there were balloons stuck on the ceiling. A Finish woman started speaking Japanese to me. The next time we met, she spoke Swedish to me... Impressive language skills (I assume she also spoke at least English and Finish).

Mr Gay UK (20080819)

I tagged along with a huge group of Japanese male researchers that wanted to go out and drink after the reception. One of them led us to this place, which had over 10 posters of Mr Gay UK with naked men, two very feminine bartenders, pink lights, etc. I asked if there was some special meaning in the fact that 10 men brought me to a gay club, but they just replied: "This is a gay club?"...

Cameras (20080820)

Apart from the rain (it rained every day, from the 15th to the 23rd), one of the constants was the cameras. Wherever you go in Manchester, there are cameras recording your actions.

British broken bento (20080820)

Today we had a field trip where we even got a lunch box (bento in Japan, everyone was very interested in what a British bento would contain). The box was more of a very thin paper bag though, so my colleague managed to break his in under 30 seconds.

Party balloons (20080820)

This shop sells party balloons and has taken the ones shaped like letters and spelled out "eat me" in the window.

Tatton Park, the manor (20080820)

The first, and coolest, stop on the field trip was a guided tour of the manor of Tatton park. It was very cool, full of old stuff collected by the idle rich that used to live there. It was also strictly prohibited to take pictures.

Car (20080820)

This is a car from 1900. A Benz.

Tatton park, the park (20080820)

We went around looking for the Japanese garden, also posing and doing the Japanese "I am being photographed, I will make the peace sign" V-sign (in Japan, people think this is "V for Peace") in front of every camera pointed vaguely in our direction. One Korean girl laughed.

Such a thing as a free lunch (20080820)

A British lunch box turned out to contain a chocolate muffin, a banana, some water, and these sandwiches.

British fashion sense (20080820)

Everyone (not British) seemed to agree that British women dressed to look ugly, and British men dressed to look saggy. And the statues wore strange hats.

Chester (20080820)

The second stop on the bus tour was the village of Chester. It was famous for a cathedral, Britain's largest amphitheater, Britain's largest horse race track, and a more or less intact city wall from the time when this place was run by the Romans.

Drive out all who are buying and selling? (20080820)

We entered a church that had a huge sign saying "Cathedral, this way" pointing at it (turned out the sign was pointing in the wrong direction and this was just a church, though) and were surprised to find a cafe and a small shop occupying slightly more than half the church interior. It later turned out that the cathedral too contains a restaurant...

The cathedral (20080820)

The cathedral of Chester, the only place on the tour where we had to pay money to get in. We also got strange looks when claiming to be "from Japan". We had to repeat "yeah, we're with those guys" and point to a Vietnamese girl (who does study in Tokyo, but still) but in the end got the information pamphlet in Japanese.

The amphitheater (20080820)

This is as impressive as it gets, evidently. Looks like a small hole in the ground even up close.

Romans (20080820)

Chester is very focused on the Roman heritage, and you can have guided tours by people dressed up in vaguely Roman attire.

Manchester's best food (20080820)

We went to Manchester's best Indian curry restaurant (according to some sign, selected by the food experts of some newspaper). It was good, but the owner (?) tried to sell us lots of food we were not interested in and was rather insistent. The Nan-breads were enormous and the curry very very good, though.

Work (20080821)

Today there was no tour, only work. Over 80% of the presenters used the Beamer LaTeX class to make their slides.

Tour (20080821)

We ended up on a tour for Japanese people, to see the research institute of the famous Japanese professor active in Manchester. The biggest sight seemed to be the cute girl in this room, and the huge open stairway space. Very nice place.

Afghanistan style food (20080821)

Some Swedes had found a place serving Afghanistan style food on the "Curry mile" (one mile long stretch of street with mainly Indian/Pakistani/Nepal/etc. food). Since no one knows what kind of food this might be, we gathered some random Japanese people and set off. It was very good. Like a cross between Indian and Turkish food.

Coling (20080821)

Our conference was even advertised in the streets. And all the Japanese researchers wanted to take a picture of this sign. Funnily enough, people using their cell phones got nice crisp pictures on the first try, while people with huge expensive cameras had to try for 5 minutes before getting something even readable.

The pizza machine (20080822)

This is a British pizza oven.

My presentation (20080822

I had (again) been scheduled to have my presentation on the last day, which sucks. For nervous people, it is best to get your presentation over with first, so you can enjoy the rest of the conference. I no longer get nervous (I got used to it after my first presentation ever, I think). But still, if you present early people will find you and give you comments later during the conference. If you present on the last day, you are lucky if they have not already left for their home country. Anyway, I had huge success with my presentation of a system that generates and performs stand-up comedy in Japanese automatically (links to the paper and example movies). Comments included Japanese speakers asking "can you really use this [very very naughty] word at a conference like this?!" ("yes, no one under 18 comes here, right?"), and telling me that some of the jokes were not that funny. I also had an old British professor drag his wife over so I could present once more to her, since I seemed to have the funniest presentation around. Most people wondered why I did not have my robots with me and show them a stand-up comedy performance (because getting weird electronics through British airport security is not something I want to try), and in the end I had to promise to at least put up movie clips on the Internet. Sadly, while hugely popular with the young up and coming researchers, none of the big names attending the conference stopped by.

Sneaky (20080822)

This guy was taking a lot of pictures, and every time I noticed him I did the Japanese V-gesture. I have seen him at other conferences too, where we both did the same.

British food (20080822)

We had planned to go back to Manchester's best Indian food, but ended up going for British food with some Japanese people instead. It was good, though the waitress forgot about my food, so I got mine when everyone else was already finished. I also had to borrow money to pay for it, since my new VISA card (the old one had to be canceled since someone copied it at the last conference I went to; as someone did with a Swedish colleague's card at the same conference it seems) does not actually work. Maybe I need to activate it somehow? Anyway, I was out of money and had only a Japanese credit card that no one outside Japan accepts.

Not fat people (20080822)

From time to time, you could see people who were not fat too. Like these girls. Or like the ones on the way home who wore very very revealing dresses and tried to get us to come into the club (?) where they were working. I don't thin I have ever seen anyone use that much cloth to cover so little, and it was a strange choice of places to cover too.

Male fashion (20080822)

Today was the first day of the actual Pride Festival, so we saw many men dressed like these two.

Another hotel (20080822)

Some of the Japanese guy's lived in a hotel where you got many rooms, most of which were larger than my apartment in Sapporo by huge margins. They had palm trees in the stairwell too.

Hints as to why people get fat (20080823)

I like this sign at the Manchester station. Why use the escalator and get tired (!) when you can take the elevator instead.

Luggage (20080823)

I usually travel light, but some people evidently do not.

Waiting (20080823)

Once again being reminded of how nice Japan is, I ended up in a mile long line waiting for check in to my flight (and my flight only, it seemed), and I was there three hours early! The second photo shows us waiting in front of a closed door to board our plane, but it turned out that this was not where we should go, we should just keep going down until hitting ground and then walk out to the plane by ourselves. And understandable mistake by the front people and all the rest of us just stopped when they stopped.

Delay (20080823)

Someone far far behind me in the plane got seriously ill, so an ambulance showed up and people ran around in the plane for awhile. We got delayed by half an hour and they finally dragged him (unwillingly, he wanted to travel on I think) off the plane to take him to a hospital for check up. I was happy about it, since I had 4.5 hours waiting ahead of me in Amsterdam, but the pilot flew really quickly and we landed only 5 minutes late...

KLM (20080823)

I flew KLM from Manchester to Amsterdam, and they do not give me miles on my JAL mileage card. But they do give you sandwiches, which is more than you can say for British Airways (that I flew from Frankfurt to Manchester; but they give you something like 25% of the miles on your JAL card).