Farewell Fall...

Last weekend, after being cooped-up for a week on my sickly hiatus, I headed out to enjoy the last nice, fall-ish weekend here in Sapporo!  First stop, Sapporo Factory for a photography exhibit:

Sapporo Factory was built in 1876 as a brewery, and later became the primary brewery of Sapporo Beer.  Now, it's a huge mega-shopping complex (the Sapporo Beer brewery is now located on the outskirts of the city), but the original red-brick buildings, as well as its trademark chimney-stack, still remain and are particularly pretty in autumn:

One of the buildings of Sapporo Factory houses the Sapporo Photography Library.  They had a really cool show put on by the P.H.A.T. (Pretty Hot and Tempting...ha!) Photo Club here in town:

Of course, afterwards I was in the mood for some self-portraits with my little point-and-shoot:

Continuing the day, I walked clear across town to yet another photography exhibition, The History of Polaroid and Otaru Polaroid Exhibition...a tres fab collection of some magnificent Polaroid cameras, as well as an inspirational display of the fading art-form itself:

The Polaroid exhibit was located in a "grittier" part of Sapporo...of course, in Japan, the grittier parts are usually more interesting anyway, so I was glad to have stumbled upon it:

Finally, I ended my fantastic fall frolic with a stop at TK6 to visit Jacob working, as well as to catch some sumo wrestling on t.v.!  I LOVE that I can go to a bar and watch sumo wrestling here, by the way:

We woke up this morning to a white, frozen blanket of snow, making me appreciate even more the chance to have gotten a little inspiration and to discover a little more of Sapporo on the last perfect autumn weekend.  Okay, winter...it's on!

The Perks of Work

Yesterday, I got a text message on my phone to look outside the door of my house and enjoy my surprise:

Inside a beautiful print scarf was some peppermint tea, a few paper cranes, and a ton of super kawaii (cute) messages from some of my students and one of my lovely JTEs (Japanese Teacher of English) wishing me well from the flu!!

Seriously one of the best parts of this job!

(By the way, I am completely back to my old self again but still under "house arrest" until my 7-day contagious-span is up)! Thanks everyone for the well-wishes!

Swine Flu Likes Irony Too

Turns out that Swine Flu has not only presented itself as the currently feared world pandemic, but it also likes to have the last laugh as well:

(The mark of the tainted...courtesy of the hospital...)

Yes, down for the count this week with the nasty Type A Flu...a subtype of the big SF itself.  The super sucky part was that the aches, pains, chills, fever, coughing, and all the other whatnots  lasted about three days.  The fabulousness of it, however, is I get the whole week off of work as per doc's orders to "self-quarantine" for 7 days!  I had no idea that paid sick leave could be so great (okay...after the not so great part, but still)!

Thanks, Swine Flu.  By the way, I still don't regret mocking you for Halloween...

Halloweekend in Sapporo

The most wonderful time of the year has come and gone, like it always does, incredibly quickly once again!  Halloween is, in my opinion, the most brilliant of all holidays, taking place in the most brilliant of all months.  Celebrating our second Halloween here in Japan, I can see it gaining in popularity more and more (yay!) as there was a definite increase in holiday-related decorations, costumes, candies, and Pringles (yes, Halloween Pringles).  Of course, I love channeling my inner Martha during this time as well:

We held a little Halloween Party Gathering at our house earlier in the evening for our neighbors and some of my co-workers kids.  I say "gathering" because, due to bad weather and that pesky flu going around, most of our guests couldn't make it!  That didn't stop us from stuffing ourselves to the point of sweet-sickness with caramel apples, banana bread, and all of our other Halloween goodies...just the way it should be:

After party number-one and a quick costume change, we headed downtown to Jacob's bar for the evening's Halloween festivities.  Many of our friends headed to Tokyo for the weekend, so it was quite a bit toned down this year, but a great time nevertheless:

Inspired by the one and only thing that has been a constant in our lives here in Japan since, oh, about March or April, Jacob and I went as the Swine "Flew" (hence the wings) this year.  We figured that, lame as it probably is costume-wise, it would be pretty scary to our disease-fearing Asian comrades:

I heard "Jungle Bells" playing at Bic Camera the other day.  *Deep breath*  And here we gooooooooo....