Botanical Gardens and Barnabas Sausages

Thursday, July 13

Last night, when I went to post the blogs, I connected to the Sherrill’s internet. I went over to Google and…whaala…my computer had become fluent in Japanese. It was a bit disconcerting not knowing where to click to edit or post or…really anything. However, a moment later, after a momentary cry for help, Teresa had talked me through the page enough to find the “translate to English, now, dummy” button and it was all good.

Today Teresa and I went to the Sapporo Botanical Gardens in between running children and grandma to school and appointments. There were beautiful flowers and landscaping along with old buildings that were used by one of the famous botanists. There were collections of letters, medals and other awards by the botanist. In one of the houses was a collection of taxidermy animals of all sizes. There was a giant seal and sea turtle. I also got to use my first squat toilet!

At noon, Teresa, Juanita, Sophia and I went to the 10^th (top) floor of the MaruImai department store and at the restaurant of the Sapporo Grand Hotel and had Hokkaido sushi. I had a lovely combination with at least 10 different kinds of sashimi that are native to the island. There was a GREAT view of the city. The restaurant was on top of a shopping center and we rode up all the escalators and got a quick glance of all the homewares, clothing, toys, etc. Apparently, bell bottoms are coming back in here!

For dinner we had all local Hokkaido foods—local potatoes and Barnabas sausages. After dinner, Teresa and I went to the grocery store and got lots of fun snacks. Mike showed us his warm-up games for his presentation and we were laughing our heads off when his turned around with a stuffed fish on his head. This was a definite missed photo op. In fact, we were laughing so hard that it drew the kids got up out of bed and played, “ika, ika, tako, tako, mambo, mambo” with us as a practice session for Mike.