Weekend Update

It's Monday now and there's not much to say; I had a great visit with the Suginome's which included me making my Mom's famous Beef and Corn Casserole and finally meeting Miki's long lost older brother who - it turns out - was only long lost from me. My family has known the Suginome's for many years but I have only just this past weekend met Toshio Suginome (who recently moved back to Sapporo from Tokyo). It was nice to feel like I had known him all along. Sadly, I forgot to take any pictures of dinner because I felt just so at home. It was a great summer weekend to walk around Sapporo; not too hot nor too cold.


On Sunday before my train left, Mrs. Suginome and I had lunch at the nicest little Italian restaurant. The restaurant is tucked snuggly on the side of a hill, away from the road, and over looks downtown Sapporo. Good Italian is hard to find here (what we normally get is Japanese-Italian food which is slightly different if one is expecting Italian food) and altogether I really had my heart set on some kind of stuffed pasta my tomato and mozzarella spaghetti was excellent and authentic! It was a great meal which we ate on the patio outside without wasps or mosquitoes. I paused for a moment while eating; suddenly I was back in Canada remembering meals with my family. People say that memories are often strongly tied to smells, but it was proven to me that tastes are what brings me back; basil, fresh pepper, oregano, roma tomatoes. Mrs. Suginome gave my a thoughtful look when I told her.

Didn't do too much shopping. I did pick up some Japanese study texts; one really great book on Japanese grammar and also a book on Japanese idioms and a romanized Japanese-English dictionary. The latter makes it far quicker to look up new words than using a hiragana dictionary. My goal it to get really good at reading and then learn to write well in Japanese. Some may disdain the use of a romaji dictionary to this end, but I think being quick is more important at this point because you can get far more studying done. Conversational Japanese will always fall in to place - naturally or not. The grammar book I like is called "Making Sense of Japanese: What the textbooks don't tell you" by Jay Rubin. It is not any sort of expose, it is, however, short and humorous; he is a very funny translator/linguist/teacher. It answers many grammar questions in detail that advanced learners may have. In one sense it is kind of depressing because at stresses that all languages are in some sense innate and that certain points will always elude even the most advance Japanese learners. I am over half done the book and I only got in on Saturday. An example is the different between the particles ~wa/~ga. It is very hard to know weather to use ga or wa in a sentence. Often in Japanese one doesn't state the subject of the sentence explicitly, something that we always always do in English or else the sentence doesn't make sense. It takes a lot of brain re-programming. A rough analogy is the~/a~ which even very talented English teachers in Shikaoi have problems with and yet I can barely explain why to use one over the other.

I also picked up a North American-style garlic press from Tukyu Hands that I have been looking for forever.

Sapporo this weekend was a hub of activity as the Yosakoi festival begins today. Yosakoi is most easily explained as a type of Japanese-dance. The festival is massive and I have seen estimates that put it in the same league as the Sapporo Snow festival which, in turn, is bigger than the Calgary Stampede (for some perspective). I'd love to see it but I have another commitment that weekend when the festival is at its height.