Everything's Smaller in Japan

Even the Hummers.

Christchurch, NZ: Gateway to the Antarctic

Yes, Nana and I are still catching up on posts from the summer - and now interesting stuff is starting to happen this fall, too!

Since the earliest days of Antarctic exploration, Christchurch has served as the main jumping-off point for expeditions to the great southern continent. This isn't really a surprise when you consider Christchurch's location: Christchurch is one of the closest cities in the world to the South Pole, and pretty much the closest major city to the region around the Ross Ice Shelf, which is roughly speaking the closest the coast of Antarctica gets to the South Pole itself.

But still, nowhere is really all that close to Antarctica - we're still talking thousands of miles, meaning that any staging area would need some hefty transportation infrastructure to be able to supply and coordinate missions over such huge distances.

Thus in Christchurch the International Antarctic Center was born. Representing the combined efforts of the American, New Zealand, and Italian Antarctic research programs, the International Antarctic Center is a huge research and logistics facility that supports those nations' bases in the area around the Ross Ice Shelf and at the South Pole. The Center, which was thankfully unaffected by the recent earthquakes, is also one of Christchurch's most popular tourist attractions, doubling as a hands-on museum of all things Antarctic.

In addition to the Center's penguin rescue program, which Nana touched on in a previous post, I especially loved the wealth of exhibits that tried to capture what it's actually like to live and work on the Antarctic bases. There was even a winter storm simulator - though disappointingly, the storm simulator didn't really get any stormier than a typical Midwestern winter blow.

The two big takeaways? Emperor penguins are ENORMOUS.

That's a life-sized profile. Seriously. They're some of the biggest birds in the world.

And Nana and I have officially stood on snow from each of the Poles.

Granted, it may have been in liquid form at the time. And thousands of miles from the source.

PS: I refuse to call it the International Antarctic Centre. Thank you for understanding.

Christchurch, New Zealand - The Earthquake & the re:START Pop-Up Mall

Over the first few weeks of the school year, Nana and I are reaching back to catch up on some stuff from the spring and early summer . . . at least until we do some more interesting stuff to blog about here in Japan!

In September 2010, the city of Christchurch, New Zealand was struck by the first of a series of huge earthquakes that will change the historic city forever. The worst of these quakes, in February 2011, killed 185 people and brought down the historic Christchurch Cathedral. And they're not over: seismologists predict that moderately strong quakes will continue into the near future, though they do seem to be moving away to the east.

It's hard to overstate the impact these earthquakes have had on the city. When Nana and I visited in July of 2012,  large parts of the downtown area, including the central business district, were still cordoned off as engineers worked to ensure the stability of the buildings inside.

Red = extreme danger.

Several foot and road bridges still haven't been repaired.

At the same time, plans to demolish the remaining structure of Christchurch Cathedral, we learned, were moving ahead, though not without some local opposition.

One of the locals we chatted with basically told us that, for many people, Christchurch is the Cathedral.

Tough stuff for a recovering community. In the meantime, though, the commercial tenants of the red zone are working hard to return to business as usual. Nowhere is this more evident than in the re:START "pop-up mall," a temporary shopping center built out of recycled shipping containers.

On our non-skiing afternoon in Christchurch, Nana and I made sure to stop by to engage in some reciprocal retail therapy - grabbing some books and a delicious pizza while bolstering the local economy, to boot.

Throughout our brief stay in Christchurch, Nana and I were touched by the optimism and resolve of the locals we met. The city is clearly suffering - the population has shrunk drastically, with many young people heading off to Australia to find work - and no one can reasonably expect that things will ever be the way they were. But the city is also taking a clear-eyed look at the future, embracing some clever plans for sustainable regrowth. Obviously, rebuilding will take some grit, but if the handful of folks we chatted with are any indication, there's more than enough grit to go around.

Wednesday Weirdness: Black Mont-Blanc Ice Cream Bars

On the top of Mont-Blanc snow of choco has fallen What a amazing news it is! Mont-Blanc is the highest in Alps. And Black Mont-Blanc is the highest taste of all ice-cream.

Actually, very delicious. The snow of choco doesn't stick very well, though, and soon becomes the snow on the front of your shirt. Perhaps not quite the highest taste of all ice-cream, but still quite a amazing news!

Happy Birthday Moms!

Justin's mom and my mom share a birthday, which was really very thoughtful of them. (Or thoughtful of the respective grandmothers, perhaps?) Justin and I are in Osaka this weekend and commemmorated this auspicious day by mailing Happy Birthday post cards from the 39th floor of the famed Umeda Sky Building.

Happy birthday, Babs! Happy birthday, Kath! We love you both and hope we have sent your most elevated greetings yet!

Sapporo's Unseasonal Seasonal Beer

The Japanese are obsessed with seasons. And the marketing people know it: tons of mass-produced stuff comes in limited-edition seasonal varieties. (We're especially fond of our seasonal wall-hangings.)

The problem is, many of these seasonal varieties are pretty much the same thing you get the rest of the year. Honestly, when you think of "autumn-flavored beer," it ain't straw-colored light lager that comes to mind. This is baseball and barbecue beer I'm talking about. Bad form, Sapporo, bad form - you really ought to change a lot more than the can!

English Lit

Behold the following non-English speaker friendly history class interpretation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:

Nana loves Justin. Then Justin loses his hair, and Nana does not love him anymore.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds."

In other news, have you ever seen a silica gel packet that looked like this?

That's Fukuoka humidity, right there!