Category: Chitose

100 yen shop

whbeebe

Chitose isn’t a large city like Saporo or Tokyo. But it’s still a compact city with everything built up, especially as you head towards the train station, which serves as the central transportation hub. While I went to the Aeon mall just about every evening because it was closest to the hotel, there was a five story building that contained a mix of businesses, such as one, the 100 Yen Shop. We stopped there on our way back to the hotel from the udon shop.

The 100 Yen shop is the equivalent of the Dollar Store here in America. All the items in the store are 100 yen or less. The big difference is that every item in the 100 Yen Shop appears to be of excellent quality. The store is bright and clean, and every item is pleasingly presented to the prospective buyer. No item was out of place and there were no broken packages anywhere. Think of a budget version of Target.

One part of the store that almost leaped out as me was this candy section. My photography doesn’t do justice to the electric colors for all the various bags of candy that lined the wall. Marketing competition is fierce in Japan, far more so than it seems here in America.

All the floors in this department store center were interconnected with elevators and escalators. What I found interesting is that the escalators in this store were only narrow enough for one person to stand. Our American escalators are built to hold at least two abreast, with room to spare. I saw this style of escalator in a number of public buildings. One of the features of many of the escalators (but not here) are photo-detectors that determine when someone walks towards an escalator. To conserve energy, a lot of escalators are simply turned off if no one is around. When someone approaches, they automatically start moving again.

The department store center was filled with many businesses. One floor seemed to be taken over with a book store. On the way through the book store I came across this Snoopy display. The Japanese seem to love cartoon characters, both their own as well as American. This display combined their deep interest in Snoopy with Christmas. It was oddly touching.

I wish I had had more time to just walk about and observe the intersection and intertwining of Japanese and American pop culture. Perhaps when I go back to Japan next February.

udon supper

whbeebe

Sunday was the first day on the job in Chitose. It was a basic meet-and-greet day where I was introduced to all the folks I’d be working with while staying in Chitose. My primary task was as technical adviser, a kind of insurance to fall back on in case something went wrong during the time I was there. The staff running the systems were well qualified in the operation of all the systems, and even showed a deep enough understanding that they could (and did) debug and solve their own problems. But I was there Just In Case something horrible went wrong.

The work day was only nine hours long and I got out well before the local shops and restaurants closed for the evening. On the advice of my traveling companion and another contractor we’d met on site, we walked a few blocks away from the hotel to a local udon shop for supper.

Udon is thick wheat flour noodle. The various shops that make it and serve it take great pride in the quality and presentation of their udon-based dishes. According to my companions udon is made fresh every day. This particular shop was an example of this, with everyone there helping us select our particular udon meal.

The Japanese make a variety of dishes from it, from a single soup with udon noodles to fairly sophisticated concoctions. The one I had (and shouldn’t have had) included seaweed, a whipped sweet potato based cream, and a very soft boiled egg. This is what my traveling companions ordered, and I went along because I didn’t know any better. It was alright as long as it was hot, but as it cooled the sweetness of the sweet potato combined with the soft-boiled egg caused a severe gag reaction that forced me to stop eating.

Fortunately for me I also added some Japanese fried chicken to my order, so I was full enough by the time I left. The next time I ordered udon, it was at the same type of store back in the Aeon mall. My second udon meal was excellent and I finished it off completely.