As november is approaching, nature is beginning to display a magnificent palette of shades of red, yellow and orange. Autumn colours take over the city and the surrounding mountains peacefully. The ever-fresh Hokkaido air begins to cool down slowly, people begin to turn on the heaters and wearing more mufflers and layers when going out. As we are living the last days of october, daytime celsius is approaching ten degrees. Some nights it's quite cool, maybe about 2°C. Why am I talking about degrees and such, it's not even wintertime yet. Well, it just so happens that due to Hokkaido University's strict budget on energy expences, the heating in the campus area, and in the surrounding dormitories, doesn't get turned on until the beginning of November, which means that as I am sitting here in the common room of Ryogakusei-kaikan, typing this blog with my cold hands, the temperature in here is about 13°C. For silly people who speak in Fahrenheit, 13°c means 55.4 degrees Fahrenheit. So, I decided to write this blog in order to keep me warm, but now I feel I have failed. In effect I feel cold. I noticed this as soon as I had finished the hot cup of caffe latte. Perhaps next time I'll bring a whole thermos with me. What a warming thought...If I keep thinking this way, I might get warm soon. Right? Right... Maybe I'll go do something smarter than this. A complete waste of time this was. Half an hour of sitting and writing while trying to maximize my brain activity to produce more articulate sentences, and all I end up with is a cold and a bad blog. The latter of the two is by no means unusual, I tend to write bs a lot, but the former one is something I'm not interested in experiencing. So, on that note, I had better go and do something preventive as far as the cold is concerned, the bad writing is something I can do little about. Remember to dress up warm. I'm out like Tony Danza. Peace.
This blog is going to be weird. For aperitif, here's some wisdom provided by Wikipedia. "Xylitol, also called wood sugar or birch sugar, is a five-carbon sugar alcohol that is used as a sugar substitute." As we Finns know, it is extracted from birch. The thing we use in many mints, chewing gums, and even candy. But here's some information to which I personally was not privy; it can also be extracted from "raspberries, plums, and corn and is primarily produced in China". Nice. But that's not the reason why I wanted to write to you about Xylitol. Did you know:"In Japan and South Korea, xylitol is found in wide assortment of chewing gums." Why would I mention this then, you wonder? The answer, suprisingly enough, is not Japan. In ryugakusei-kaikan, we have a lot of nationalities. Perhaps the largest group is the Koreans, the South Koreans, to be exact. In the past couple of weeks I've gotten to know a few of them. Koreans seem to be (and I believe they truly are) very friendly and helpful people. The funny thing is, every time I've met a new Korean person, something quite bizarre happens. As we all know, the almost obligatory procedure of getting to know someone of another nationality or cultural background is to ask certain questions pertaining to their place and time of birth. We do this for various reasons, of course; sometimes it's genuine interest towards the other person, sometimes it's just casual, even trivial conversation. In any case...During this procedure of getting to know each other, every time I've said I'm from Finland, the Korean person says something that to me sounds like "Chai Little", followed by "Huba! Huba!" Luckily, after a few moments of quiet reflecting, I was somehow able to retrieve the word "Xylitol" from some dimension of my amazingly erratic stream of thought, and so I learned that in South Korea, Xylitol was a Big product. And that was probably the only thing they knew Finland for. Cute. But what was still bothering me was that I had no idea whatsoever what on earth the phrase "Huba! Huba!" might mean. But then, I stumbled upon this..
I have been in here for two weeks now. Still having trouble adapting to the early dusk and dawn here.. The sun rises at about six ante meridiem and goes down about twelve hours later. It's quite warm here too, considering it's October 5th.. I wonder when will autumn arrive here?And how about winter? I wonder... But while it's warm I'm going to take full advantage of it. I've been walking around town almost every day since I've been here, snapping pictures. Just like the Japanese tourists do everywhere. The big flick payback? No, I just like taking photos. A lot. The difference between me and the Japanese is basically that I shoot things, buildings and places, not people who have their "V" up.. Not that there's anything wrong with that habit. It's actually sort of cute. And I'm not just being PC. Cute seems to be a common denominator, at least in the modern Japanese culture. But that might be the subject of another weblog later on.. So on that note, I'm out. But need not worry, I'll be back soon with more rambling. Peace.rambling ADJECTIVE : 1.(of writing or speech) lengthy and confused or incosequential.2.(of a person) traveling from place to place; wandering.
