登別地獄まつり

Kazumi and I visited a festival in Oboribetsu (famous onsen town) last Saturday. Here are some movies. Check out my Flickr page for the pictures.

Modeling career?

盆踊り

Went to see the 盆踊り (bonodori) in 倶知安 (kutchan) last night. Here's a short impression of the kids dancing.

Obon

It's Obon in Japan and that means I had (and still have a few to come) free days. The holidays started last Thursday. Kazumi and I went to Otaru. Exploring the canal area a bit and going out for tabehoudai and nomihoudai in the evening. That means all you can eat and drink during 90 minutes for a fixed price. We paid approximately 8000￥ for this feast in a yakiniku restaurant (yakiniku looks like a mini bbq that's put in the middle of your table). It was delicious.

Before going to the restaurant we also visited 天狗山 (tenguyama). It's a famous tourist spot in Otaru and the view from the top of the mountain is breathtaking. Here are some pictures.



Today we went to Sapporo. A big new store opened in January and we decided to have a look at what it has to offer. Before being allowed to shop at this store you need to become a member. Kazumi's mother (she's too kind) paid the membership fee for us.

The store can be compared to Macro in Belgium. It also carries a lot of foreign items. I was able to score me some Stella Artois. ^^




After scoring the beer Kazumi and I went to see "The Dark Knight" at the movie theater located in Sapporo Station. I really enjoyed the movie. We got quite hungry afterwards, so we stopped at ビックリドンキー for dinner.

Evil property owner

Got a phone call today from the owner of the previous apartment we stayed in. Telling us there is damage to the flooring and we need to pay to get it fixed. Hmmm.... Why didn't the the real estate agent mention anything while inspecting the place when we left it? I don't remember seeing any serious damage. According to the owner the damage went through the protective wax layer on top of the flooring and damaged the actual wood. Hmmm.... Definitely don't remember anything like that. On top of that, there was no "current state of the property form" made when Kazumi moved in. So the owner can basically say what she wants. I really don't like this. I'm prepared to pay if it's not too expensive (just so we can forget about it and don't have to deal with this evil person anymore). But I would have to think twice before paying a big sum of money.

Weekend again

The weekend has arrived again. Lots of free time for 2 days in a row. Lucky me.

Last Thursday our new washing machine arrived. It's a Toshiba washer-dryer combo. Our previous one couldn't dry the laundry and this is a problem when living in a small appartment with almost no possibilities to dry your laundry.


I wasn't able to wash my clothes for 2 weeks since we sold our previous washing machine before moving to Kutchan, so I've got lots of washing to do during this weekend. ^^

Today it's my turn to cook dinner. Let's make spaghetti. Will have to go grocery shopping. Might as well pick up some more shelves while doing that. At the moment the appartment is just too messy because we don't have enough space to put things.

Mount Yotei

I took some pictures of Mount Yotei while at work today (part of the job is driving around and taking pictures at construction sites). The weather was really good today so the mountain is very clear.

Still unpacking

Moving isn't fun. (; ;) All our stuff has been moved from Asahikawa to Kutchan, but it will still take a while before we manage to put everything into place. Our new place is smaller than the previous one and as a consequence we're having serious storage problems. I already went out and bought some shelves last Sunday, but will probably have to buy some more this weekend.

At work everything is going on as usual. I'm trying to get a hang of AutoCAD at the moment. Adding furniture to architectural drawings and so on. And of course the usual system administration work.