In hot water again

The weather kindly eased off a little for the weekend so I was able to go for a relaxed hilly ride with a few people from the Attic cycling team:

 

A hilly loop.

 

 

 

I puffed myself out racing up the hill so I could take a photo looking back.

The autumn colours have almost all gone as the trees are getting increasingly bare but it is still pretty pleasant getting out of the city and on to a quieter road.

 

Hey wait for me!

But this was a small fitness entree to the weekend’s main course of relaxation. Whereas I would have been more than happy to treat Kazuko to anything she wanted on the menu at Burger King, apparently we had to do something better than that to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary. Kazuko has spent the last month or so studying web pages and holding long consultative discussions with her sister Masako until choosing an onsen hotel in Jozankei that Masako had previously stayed in. In fact, we ended up getting the same room as they had had. Jozankei is a spa town with a cluster of hotels built around the town’s healthy natural hot water. We arrived a little early to check in so we went for a walk around town first. Hotels in these towns provide guests with a yukata (a light summer kimono) and many people see no problem in wandering out of the hotel and up the street in them.

 

There's the ladies, enjoying a lovely day out.

The hotels are all built around the town’s river.

 

That's looking one way.

And this is the view from the other direction.

I assume the source of the town’s hot water is nearby as there was plenty of water flowing down walls and also a couple of places where people could kick off their shoes and warm their feet in ponds of hot water.

 

Enjoying the warm water.

Being such a watery town, there were plenty of kappa about the place.

 

Here's one just kicking back.

People familiar with the Japanese television series Monkey will remember Sandy the water spirit who was also a kappa.

 

Here's one enjoying a hot water bath.

And here's one promoting the town.

Meanwhile, Kazuko had spied a cat and was trying to make a name for herself as a cat lady.

 

She says she had five of them around her at one point.

On the way back to the hotel there was a small shrine where people had tied their wishes to a tree.

 

Write your wish on a piece of paper and tie it up and of course it'll come true.

Back at the hotel, our room was nearly ready but we had to take our induction course first. Kazuko really outdid herself in choosing the hotel. Everything about it was immaculate, including (as you would expect in Japan) the manners of all the staff. I was unable to walk past any of them without at least one of the great range of Japanese ingratiating remarks. The best one was the cleaning lady who said good morning to me in Japanese, I replied good morning in Japanese and she then told me, again in Japanese, that my Japanese was wonderful. I have no problem at all with false flattery. In any case, we were led to the sixth floor and into a lounge area where we were presented with a nice cup of tea and a snack while the hotel lady ran us through all of the facilities and presented us with our vouchers for free use of certain baths, free drinks and free late-night noodles. She finally took us to our luxury suite. In addition to the hotel’s main baths, we had our own private bath. It looked like this:

 

This is the view from through the window looking at our bath.

And it looked like this with me in it:

 

You really don't want to see the photos Kazuko took standing up.

The trees were bare on the mountains outside our window:

 

Those are trees and mountains.

And our room had a nice large area of tatami mats as well as another room with armchair, sofa and refreshments.

 

Kazuko enjoys sitting on the tatami in our luxurious room.

Campagnolo fans get tattoos. Us Shimano people just wear the socks.

Although an onsen is a very relaxing place to stay, our relaxation was still filled with the very Japanese stress of having many things to do in a limited time. Curse all those vouchers. We headed down to the main baths, which are segregated, where Kazuko and I waved goodbye to each other and promised to meet back in our hotel room. You’re not allowed to just walk into the baths, of course, because that would make them dirty so it’s compulsory to have a shower first before getting into the bath. Everyone is naked but we all have a small towel that we carry with us. Some people are quite careful about using the towel to cover themselves up whereas others, usually the old men, are quite happy to go full frontal. I opt to casually dangle the towel about in front of me somewhere, as if to say ‘this is a token gesture I make in order to not embarrass the rest of you’. Once in the water, most of us place the towel next to the bath but I notice many old men will fold it into a square and put it on their head. I think this is the Japanese equivalent of wearing a knotted handkerchief on your head.

My strategy is usually to sit up to my waist in water for bit, then up to the neck until the extreme heat of the water sends my heart rate sky-rocketing, then I head to an outside bath where the air is cooler and sit up to my waist until I’ve cooled down a bit. Then to the sauna, then the cold water bath, then back to a hot water one, then outside, then the steam bath, back to the sauna, cold water, hot water and finally it must be time to go and meet Kazuko back in our room, where we rested for just a short while before heading to the hotel’s external bath house to use the first of our vouchers. By this time we were dressed in our hotel yukatas and wearing Japanese flip-flips so we could blend in with the other guests. And because they are very comfortable. This bath, segregated again, had an indoor and an outdoor bath. I could hear the ladies next door chatting away but we men are more austere than that and our side of things was very quiet. In fact, I was playing the ‘how do they react to the foreigner’ game. If I enter a bath and a Japanese man immediately leaves it, I like to think it’s because he’s uncomfortable sharing the water with a foreigner. On the other hand, if he doesn’t immediately leave, I think it’s because he’s realised that it would be rude to leave now so he’s forced to sit there longer than he otherwise would have out of a peculiar sense of politeness. They can’t win.

Our next voucher was for a free drink in the lounge of this bathhouse. Kazuko had a juice drink and I had a delicious cold beer served in a pottery cup. And then it was off to a very Japanese dinner. We had a private room and a lovely energetic grandmotherly type as a waitress. Dinner was endless courses of small Japanese dishes. Sushi, octopus eggs (quite tasty), tempura ginger stalk and Japanese maple leaf, sashimi, bits of fried beef (possibly wagyu but I’m not sure) and pumpkin ice cream were just some of the meal. At first even Kazuko was thinking the portions might be a bit small but we went away absolutely stuffed.

Then it was back to our room to open a bottle of Italian fizzy and enjoy our private bath as well as letting the Facebook world know that we were having our anniversary (mobile phone technology, eh?). A quick ten-minute nap to break up the relaxation and out we went to use the rest of our vouchers. The lounge where we had our induction course was now the evening lounge and there was free tea, wine and whisky. I was tempted to pretend I was in a 1960s American movie and throw some ice and whisky in a glass but common sense prevailed and we decided that the wine and whisky were probably both not the highest quality so went for our late-night noodles instead. As if we needed them. And finally we had vouchers for the cocktail bar. Kazuko fancied some Baileys (but not from a shoe – please see The Legend of Old Gregg) so she talked the cocktail waiter into making a not-on-the-menu Bailey’s and coffee while I had a brandy, Baileys and Kahlua concoction. Kazuko impressed him enough that he dished up a further Baileys drink for her later. And as we left he wished me to ‘take yourself at home’. I’m not sure what he meant by that but I always appreciate it when people make the effort to use a bit of English. Anyway, it was back to our room to finish the fizzy, have another dip in the bath and collapse tired but happy in bed.

And before we knew it, it was morning again. A quick plunge in our bath and we put on our yukatas and looked at ourselves in the mirror and headed out.

 

There we are.

And that's the corridor in the direction of breakfast.

Breakfast was back in the same place as dinner last night and we got the same lovely grandmotherly lady as our waitress again. Breakfast was another collection of several dishes including the following:

 

Natto is fermented beans. It's horrible. I think it's the only Japanese food I won't eat. The Japanese love it, which makes it their version of Vegemite I suppose.

Raw squid in its own sauce. I confess this was a little strong for me first thing in the morning too. I just had a few pieces.

Raw tuna with daikon and wasabi. This one was very tasty.

The full meal. Unfortunately Kazuko was not happy with her morning face so in order to gain her permission to use this photo I have had to pixellate out her still-sleepy expression.

Then it was back to the hotel room for another quick rest. Kazuko needed more for me so I dashed off to the lounge which was no longer the whisky lounge but had become the coffee and danishes lounge. I could only stomach the one danish after that big breakfast but managed a couple of cups of coffee before Kazuko arrived. Then it was back to the main baths where I took my time shaving (face and legs) and managed about thirty seconds in each of the baths before heading back to our room via the coffee lounge. There was just enough time for the briefest of relaxing dips in our bath before we had to leave the room. If you go away anywhere in Japan, however brief, it is compulsory to bring souvenirs back to your work, so Kazuko had to make a quick trip to the gift shop while I was able to squeeze in another cup of coffee. And finally, after an overnight stay of intense relaxation, we were able to have a rest in the taxi on the way back to Sapporo where poor old Kazuko had no time to rest because she had to head out to work in the afternoon. It was a fabulous night away so thank you Kazuko for organising this and for putting up with me for seven years now – good heavens!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow in the mountains

I’m posting incessantly this weekend. Looks like we got some snow overnight but only in the mountains. This is the view from our balcony this morning. The top of Teineyama is hidden behind that cloud. Must be a chance of snow down here at sea level today if those clouds fill in. Should I go for a ride today? Looks cold out.

More photos

Another walk, another bunch of autumn photos. Still no snow, though – maybe tomorrow. Click on the photo to get to the gallery.

Hunting for snow: Teineyama

Snow has been forecast for Sapporo for the first time this winter:

As you can see from the graphic above, there is a 70 per cent chance that this afternoon clouds are going to turn into snowmen. You can also see that the temperature is now officially cold and probably getting colder.

I’m quite fond of cold weather but I can’t see the point of living somewhere cold unless you get to enjoy snow. Even though I can’t ski and flounder helplessly on ice skates or any other form of cold weather transport, I still love the snow. Maybe it’s because I can make snowballs – and I still have very fond memories of my first teaching job at  high school in the Czech Republic where I was able to hit the head-mistress with a snowball and get one of my students blamed for it – or possibly because snow just makes anywhere look nice, dampens the sound of traffic and somehow makes the landscape seem very peaceful. In any case, when I saw snow on the forecast I became very excited. ‘Where is the best place to find snow?’ I asked myself and the obvious answer is up a mountain so I decided to head up Teineyama – my local hill climbing training spot – and see if I couldn’t get snowed on.

And just in case it didn’t snow, I thought I’d better take plenty of photos to document my trip out there and up my favourite climb. First I got wrapped up in my warmest cycling clothes, although I did make the blunder of not putting on full-finger gloves, a decision I later regretted as I was descending a chilly Teineyama.

Moments before exiting the flat.

The bike is rearing to get out of the lift.

I would have taken a photo of the front of our apartment block but some neighbours arrived and I was suddenly self-conscious so you get the back of it instead.

Up the road and past the high school on the right. The poor kids have to go to school on Saturday - how unreasonable.

A few turns takes me to this busy street which will take me most of the way to Teineyama.

An overpass takes me over a river.

Mt Teine looms. No sign of snow yet.

Looking back at that same road again.

And now from the same spot I turn left and go this way.

Ever vigilant for unusual punctuation.

A ramp over the train line. Sometimes I take the road, sometimes the pavement, It depends on my whim.

Coming off the ramp was this bizarre thing. I couldn't tell if those are wing mirrors or not. He's overtaking one of those motorised oldpeoplemobiles.

Finally I got to the base of Teineyama but no sign of snow. Google Earth has cunningly anticipated what Teineyama looks like with a bit of snow on it, which is something like this:

This traffic light is my start line for the Teineyama climb.

There's a few more houses.

Until finally the forest starts.

The road soon kicks up.

The bottom right number says 10 per cent gradient.

My first landmark is the bridge.

And the view from the bridge is this.

Past the bridge.

These dips in the road are a bit of a hazard on the way back down.

The road up to the golf club is a bit deceptive. There's an incline which fools you into thinking you can keep going pretty quickly but the road then turns up to 8-9 per cent before hitting 12 per cent on the corner before the club.

This is what golf looks like.

Apparently there are bears somewhere.

To the right of the golf club, the ski fields are getting ready for winter.

And here's a relic of the 1972 Winter Olympics. I was born in 1972.

There's a Columbia ad to remind me that not only will I never sprint as fast as Mark Cavendish, he can out-climb me as well.

The next landmark is the entrance to the fun park. There's a drink machine there.

Is it through an underpass or under an overpass?

Oh look - 12 per cent gradient.

Here's some cyclists coming the other way. I saw a snake around here in the summer.

Nearly there. Get out of the saddle here for the last charge up the hill.

That's the finish line up there at the entry to the car park.

And there's the Olympic building with the steps I sit on.

But I knew it would be a chilly descent so I didn’t want to stop and cool down. In all, the Teineyama climb is 8.5km and my GPS reports the average gradient to be between 6 and 6.3 per cent. I suppose it varies because the GPS doesn’t record data continuously. There were clouds about at the top but no sign of snow so I thought I might as well descend and ride up again and to try and beat my personal best and hope that by the time I got to the top, it would start snowing. I beat my PB but it didn’t snow.

Look - lots of numbers that I don't understand*.

I then had a descent that froze my fingertips followed by a chilly ride home, two cups of nice, hot coffee and a nice, hot shower. Sadly, still no sign of snow but some fog/clouds moved in over the mountains.

Here's the view from our balcony a little earlier. You can't see any of the mountains now.

Sad to report, I don’t think we’ll be getting snow today. I think it’s trying to but all we’re getting outside now is mushy rain. And now I have to find a way to the pub to watch the Bledisloe Cup on the telly.

 

*By which I mean I only spent several hours scrutinising them last night.

Let’s Wedding!

I cleaned my bike on Friday morning so of course it rained on me when I went for a ride later that day but Saturday and Sunday were a different story indeed. Cool and crisp but nice and sunny, I went for a couple of rides with Team Attic and continued enjoying the autumn scenery. It’s a 15km ride each way to the meeting point for these rides so Kazuko was quite exhausted after we did a total of 100km on Sunday. The Attic shopkeeper, Mr Katahira is always updating the shop diary so I’m going to shamelessly steal the photos from his latest post as I was too lazy to get my phone out of my pocket and take any of my own pictures.

This was a pretty nice back road over the hills from one valley to the next.

More of the autumn scenery.

It's me! Zooming past on my Pista.

At times the group is a bit fast for Kazuko and one or two of the other riders and it would be pretty rude of me to take off and leave Kazuko floundering, especially into the strong wind that we had yesterday so I thought if I took the single-speed Pista along I could lead out the slower riders but still get a bit of exercise in. And the bonus was I could sprint up all the short hills and look impressive but as soon as I got tired (which is quite quickly) I could pretend to be going back to check on Kazuko. It was a classic win-win situation.

Not only was it a great weekend for cycling and ego-inflation, it was an excellent weekend for attending Kazuko’s cousin’s wedding. So on Saturday after I got back from cycling and Kazuko got back from work, we put on our best clothes and got ready to be picked up by Kii-chan, who was giving us a lift to the hotel in town. At first I was a bit worried that Kii-chan had driving duties but Kazuko reassured me he was only driving us there. I hated to imagine Kii-chan stuck at a wedding and not able to drink.

We missed the wedding ceremony and arrived for the reception at the Grand Hotel in Sapporo. As a token foreigner, I’m a mild attraction but because my Japanese is rubbish I think I can get away with pretending to be a bit simple and I’m generally left alone. One of my colleagues whose Japanese is pretty good told me he always gets asked to make speeches at weddings so there is at least one reason not to learn Japanese (among the pool of excellent reasons to learn it such as to talk to people).

Japanese weddings are often held in churches purpose-built for weddings. You’d think they were quite religious but once you realise what’s going on, you notice a lot more wedding churches than real churches. When I lived in Tokyo in the mid-90s, I had a friend called Jerome presided over weddings on his days off. He was out drinking one night and got talking to a bloke who told him he had the look of a pastor and offered him work doing weddings. He said he liked to add his own touches such as bringing a small bottle of water with him and ‘blessing the rings’ or leaving the alter and walking among his ‘flock’ while he was reading his sermon. If the bride was good-looking, he gave her a kiss as well.

Although I wasn’t there, I assume this sort of shenanigan didn’t happen to Kazuko’s cousin and his bride but, just as I can’t say for certain that the Large Hadron Collider is not being disabled by forces from the future to save the universe, it may well have done but I simply wasn’t informed of it. In any case, the next stage of a Japanese wedding is the reception and this is usually held at a hotel which will often have several floors set aside for weddings. Kazuko and I didn’t get married in Japan but we did have a reception here and that hotel even had a set of steps which didn’t go anywhere and were just for having your photo taken on. These hotels will book several weddings a day for each of the wedding rooms so there’s a strict time limit. You usually have to go in, get the eating and formalities out of the way within three hours and then clear off sharpish.

The Japanese are usually very efficient so imagine my shock when, having been ushered in to the reception room, the bride and groom entered and they started on the speeches while there was still a roomful of empty glasses. I don’t know about you but I find the older I get, the less tolerant I am of formal speeches. If someone chose me to talk to the Association of Semi-Conductor Salesmen, I would be well-advised to go away and find out a little about the sort of things that interest semi-conductor salesmen so that my speech might have some relevance*. Sadly, at weddings, the audience is the last group to be considered when it comes to speeches. The speech makers are chosen not because of their charm and wit but because of their relation to the betrothed (or the betrothed’s parents). All you can hope for is that the speech maker realises this and keeps it short. Sadly this is rarely the case and the speeches drag on as a result of either the speaker’s self-importance or belief that the occasion demands a longer speech. (Unfortunately, I’m not immune to this. My own wedding speech started with a bon mot and should have finished soon after but sadly didn’t. Chances are I also forgot to thank all the people I should have.)  The plus side was that although I didn’t understand a word of the speeches, I could guess exactly what they were saying. As I looked around the room and saw a sea of smartly dressed people with glazed eyes, I realised it should be made illegal to have formal speeches before the booze has been dished out.

 

Kazuko's Mum and Dad in happier times before the speeches started. That's not a sunburn, it's the reflection from the vases on the table.

 

They look happy now but 10 minutes in to the third speech no one was smiling.

Happily the first round of speeches finally came to an end and our glasses were filled with lukewarm champagne so we could toast the bride and groom. Even more happily, Kazuko’s sisters and parents don’t drink so Kii-chan and I inherited all their glasses.

 

Sakurako is showing Kii-chan who the boss is.

Kazuko's elder and younger sisters.

And don't we look smart?

With these formalities out of the way, the next round of formalities started. It’s very important to pay your respects to the people you know and this can be done by taking a bottle of beer from your table and walking around to other tables topping up the glasses of people you know. I didn’t know anyone so I was able to sit back and observe these Japanese customs. The food was tremendous and once the alcohol had been turned on, I almost didn’t notice the second round of speeches, which seemed to have more of a corporate feel to them. Before I knew it, dessert and coffee was sitting in front of me, the dancing was over and just like number 51, our time was up. I had time for a quick photo of the emptying room and the Takahashi ladies before we were whisked out.

 

Looks like it's time to go.

All the womenfolk.

Luckily no one was inspired to carry on into the wee hours so Kazuko and I were able to get an early night and wake up ready to ride in the lovely autumn countryside.

 

 

 

 

 

*In fact, semi-conductor salesmen are among the dullest people on the planet and are interested in nothing so any speech would be doomed to failure anyway but it wouldn’t matter because they probably weren’t listening in the first place.

 

Autumn colours

We’ve had a reprieve from very icy winds for the moment but the weather in Sapporo is still headed in the direction of winter. Before it gets properly cold though, we have the pleasure of enjoying the colours of autumn as the trees get ready to shut down for winter. I went for a walk around Maruyama Park today and took endless photos of leaves which you can see by going here: gallery.brucerollerson.com or by clicking on the photo below.

Autumn leaves

Let’s beer!

It’s been suggested in the comments section that my cycling ability could be improved if I wasn’t drunk most days of the week. This may well be true, but like a climate change denialist clutching at straws of gross generalisation, I would like to point out that it was the demon drink that powered the engine room of Nelson’s Navy and made the British Empire what it was. I remember reading somewhere that more people died at the Battle of Trafalgar from drunkenly falling out of the rigging than from the enemy’s doing. However, I’ve never been able to find a source for that information so there’s a good chance that it’s entirely untrue. Nonetheless, although I couldn’t possibly keep up with the Royal Navy’s daily issue of half a pint of rum or a gallon of beer, I still believe beer to be a tasty treat and although I’ve been living in Sapporo for about four months now, it’s to my shame that I had not yet visited the Sapporo Beer Museum until yesterday.

Sapporo is famous for the 1972 winter Olympics (the first ever held in Asia) and for its annual snow festival which features snow sculptures in Odori Park in the middle of town but probably Sapporo’s greatest fame is in its world-famous Sapporo beer. It was therefore necessary for me to visit the Sapporo Beer Museum to learn more about its history. But first I took a visit to the Sapporo Beer website where I immediately had cause to doubt the reliability of its information:

The only beer museum in Japan. Except for our other one.

The real joy of the Sapporo Breweries website was in the excellence of its corporate mumbo-jumbo. I learnt that:

For over a century, Sapporo has aimed to enhance its corporate value by consistently creating and delivering new value in harmony with changing customer lifestyles and tastes.

And I was pleased to hear of their:

Establishment of the Frontier Laboratories of Value Creation

The need for each company to identify its core competencies in research and development is becoming more and more important against the backdrop of an increasingly competitive society.

It is indeed important to stay on the frontier of value creation but I always wonder who on earth this sort of guff is written for. I imagine someone was called into an office and told: Look, we’ve got a website so we need to put some words on it. Can you write a lot of words that sound fancy but are essentially mundane and meaningless yet portray us positively?

I didn’t let this put me off, so Kazuko and I got on our bikes and headed for the museum. Unfortunately it was very cold and windy and when it started raining on us, we decided to turn around and head home. But then yesterday the skies were clear so we tried again and this time we got there without getting wet. So I celebrated with a photo of Kazuko in front of some barrels:

Hooray! We made it to the museum.

And then we found some parking and headed to the entrance:

This way in.

As we entered, we were passing a couple of little old ladies leaving when one of them loudly told the other that she was now very drunk. Music to my ears. The museum part of the museum actually wasn’t all that big – it was really just a room on the third floor. Still, it had some old beer bottles:

Yebisu, Sapporo and Asahi from 1908. All three of these are still major brands in Japan.

There was a timeline on the wall which showed various points in the history including the 1906 Peace Beer:

Tactfully celebrating the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

And my enjoyment of the beer ingredients section was hampered by the dastardly Hog ‘Flu:

This is the barley to help stop the spread of the flu. Do not eat it.

And you can leave the hops alone while you're at it.

And then we were treated to the process of beer-making in the magical beer land:

Fields of barley.

And hops that grows up to the clouds. (Did you know, in addition to adding bitterness to beer, hops acts as a preservative?)

I think they may be grinding the malted barley. Malting means allowing the seed to germinate a little, then heating it to stop germination. Many kinds of seeds can be malted but barley is best for beer.

Looks like we may be mashing. There are two enzymes in the husk of barley that, at the right temperature, will break down starches into sugars that can then be fermented by yeast.

Rivers of beer. This must be fermentation. Did you know yeast can reproduce by both budding and fission?

Bottling. Spot the lazy worker.

And finally shipping the beer to foreign destinations. Nowadays beer is often brewed under licence in other countries. This is much better for the environment than shipping beer half way around the world.

Downstairs there was a display of beer advertising boards:

Can you guess from these what the Japanese writing for beer is?

Ah - the myth of the jolly fat man.

And a display of beer packaging and novelties down the years:

I couldn't see a size for the smallest can but it's about a mouthful.

I wonder why this packaging never caught on?

A handy beer dispensing fridge. Hit the jackpot every time!

Love Beer? The action figure.

Now seems to be as good a time as any to slip a beer ad in:

Hmmm – he actually says ‘Rub Beer?’

And after the tour, it was time for tasting. Behind the bar was an impressive collection of beer cans:

All the old cans. I wonder if they were full or empty?

The menu included a tasting tray of three types of beer for only 400 yen. That’s cheaper than most places sell just one glass for. I think the museum may become my local. If you’re interested in improving your beer knowledge, I recommend getting several types of beer and sipping from one, then another glass to properly compare differences between them. I also recommend becoming familiar with the many different hop varieties and discovering what a difference they make to the taste of beer but that involves a different level of dedication.

From left to right: Sapporo Black Label, Yebisu the Black, Kaitakushi Beer.

Sapporo Brewery actually outdates the Hokkaido government and was originally called Kaitakushi after the commission that originally controlled Hokkaido in the 180s. The Kaitakushi beer that I tasted was easily the best beer of the three, which makes it all the more puzzling that it is only served at the museum and a restaurant across the road. This is not to imply that the other two types of beer were not good. I could have stayed all day. Kazuko tried to emulate the ladies in the ads behind her:

Cheers!

Can you notice a common theme to the Sapporo ads?

You have three sentences to describe the beer. Make sure you mention the Collaborative Contract Farming System.

And finally we headed down to the souvenir shop:

Beer, jelly and chocolate. A fine combination.

But all good things must come to an end so finally, Kazuko dragged me out of there to wobble home on the footpath on my bicycle.

And now the big question is will Chong win the comments race three times in a row?

Fumy Beppu fan post

You’ll have noticed that on this blog’s sidebar, I have put a widget that displays my Twitter posts. This is because in this socially networked internet age, we don’t do things for their own sake any more, we do them so we can tell the world about them on Twitter (or Facebook or whatever). So tune in here to see my Twitter feed which will contain exciting updates such as: ‘Walking up steps. Halfway there!’, ‘Having a shower. Phone’s getting wet! LOL’ or ‘Crashed bike. Blood everywhere! ROFL!!’.

Twitter’s also handy for pretending you’re friends with famous people. I feel I’m part of obsessive twitterer Lance Armstrong’s family now but I’m disappointed that the DiLuca has stopped posting on account of the conspiracy or conspiracies against him. And one of the people that I follow is multi-lingual twitterer and the first Japanese to finish a Tour de France, Fumiyuki Beppu. So you can imagine my surprise when I received an email letting me know that Fumy (now that we’re buddies, I feel I can be more familiar) is also now following my Twitter:

That’s right, I’m now one of Fumy Beppu’s 5000 best buddies. To give credit where it’s due, if that many people were following my Twitter, I’d be far too lazy to sit down and click the follow this person back button 5000 times. It also makes me wonder about the people he’s not following. In any case, because he’s so nicely brought me in to the inner circle, I’ve decided to become a proper Fumy Beppu fan boy. I’ve written his name on my pencil case and everything. But I’m also putting Fumy’s Twitter feed up on the right hand side there so you can keep up with him as well. And here’s a picture of him doing a bunny hop after the Tour:

Curses

Just got thrashed up Teineyama by some Japanese young Turk. At least it’s stopped raining.

But despair has turned to joy now that I’m at home and find my average speed up the mountain was 16.6kmh. An improvement on my previous best of 15.9kmh. Still a long way to go – the young Japanese chap probably beat me by four or five minutes. And now to try and persuade Kaz to take me to the Sapporo Beer Museum…

What is the plural of criterium?

I’m not even sure that criterium is a real word but it does at least turn up in some dictionaries. For those not among us cycling cognoscenti, it’s a type of bike race that takes place on a small circuit with either a set number of laps or a time limit plus a couple of laps. If you get lapped, you’re out. Because they are usually relatively short, they are normally raced at a pretty quick pace. On Sunday, I rode both my first criterium and my first bike race in Japan.

It was back at Moerenuma Koen, scene of the Tour de Hokkaido criterium. I had to get out of bed early to ride out there for the 7.30am registration. Kazuko was still sleeping when I left but I mustn’t complain as the children’s clinic where she works was the rostered open Sunday clinic (remember the old petrol station rosters?) and she ended up working form 8am to 9.30pm thanks to lots of kids having the flu. Lucky Kaz. I don’t think any of the kids at Moerenuma Koen had the flu but some of the kiddies races were first and I think the toughest part is waiting on the start line for all the parents to take photos before they can finally start.

That's Mr Kawakatsu from team NSR photographing one of his kids.

Note the full range of bikes from road bikes through to the kid on the right who is racing with a basket and headlight. These kids just did the one lap of the 2.7km course and although it was a young chap on a road bike who won, the lad with the basket didn’t do too badly either.

My race didn’t start until 10.40, so I had plenty of time to hang around. The owner of Attic, Mr Katahira spotted me when I arrived and invited me over to their tent, so I made that my base. The Team Attic guys are all pretty friendly and tolerate my hopeless Japanese quite nicely. I’m pretty sure that whenever I have a conversation with someone, we both walk away with quite different ideas of what we were talking about but I enjoy it all the same. I hope at least that it’s helping my Japanese improve.

The kids’ races were followed by other short races. The masters and ladies only did three laps. That’s hardly value for money. Thanks to Mr Kawakatsu putting in a word for me with the cycling body, I raced in S2 division – the next one down from the top Elite division. Apparently you usually have to start in S4 and work your way up. Maybe this wouldn’t have been such a bad thing for my ego, as I realised pretty soon after the start that my dream of making a big break on lap five and riding the last five laps with an enormous solo lead was just never going to happen. In fact, we took off at full throttle and the pace never eased up. My cornering was terrible so instead of tucking myself safely behind someone and staying in their slipstream, I spent a lot of time flapping about in the wind trying to find a position where I wouldn’t get in anyone’s way. I thought for the sake of pride I should try to have a break anyway so I made a burst on the second last gap and lasted about five seconds before being put back in my place. I ended up third last and with a lot to think about.

That's my name at the top. I came 22nd. I beat three people.

Even though I sucked, it was pretty exciting racing about at the speed and I was already looking forward to doing another one. Luckily, there was a bonus extra race at the end of the day: the Sapporo Mayor’s Cup was open for entrants from any division. I just had to hang about for another couple of hours while some other races got under way, including a toddlers race:

Dad with the camera is keeping up with his youngster and in the background, someone's elder brother is giving a push. His mum took over soon after. Just like Valverde in the Spanish mountains.

I thought this one was easily the most exciting race of the day and I used it as motivation for the 10-lap Mayor’s Cup. Unfortunately my mum was too far away to push me when I got dropped after lap 6 so I just had to grit my teeth and try to finish as well as I could. Luckily I found another guy to ride with and we worked well together and even managed to pass quite a few of the riders who also got dropped by the main bunch. I’m pretty sure we were both right at our limit. There were a few times I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep up with him and I think he was the same.

I was 48th and my buddy was 50th. I managed to sneak ahead of him a little at the end.

After the finish, we did the polite Japanese thing and thanked each other formally for our hard work. We were both so fired up from the race that we spent the next five minutes excitedly babbling to each other. I didn’t understand a word he said and I’m certain he had no idea what my pidgin Japanese was meant to mean but we both went away pretty happy.

And if the physical exertion wasn’t enough, instead of wallowing on the sofa as I should have done, my brother-in-law Kii-chan took me out to an all-you-can-drink izakaya to ensure there was little of me that didn’t suffer on Monday.