the tall blond guy goes to japan

Thank you so much for coming, please go home now.

Nagano City

The people of Nagano have gone though many emotions lately. There was

• nervousness (will it go as planned?)
• anger (why can't I drive here anymore?)
• bemusement (look at all the silly gaiji-san!)
• joy (Harada-san! Harada-san! Harada-san!)
• wearyness (another rescheduling!)

And now they seem to be tired of it all. The whole city seems weary- and so they should be, I think. They put on a great show and worked really hard at it. They should be proud of themselves. But there's no time to relax, because the Parolympics are coming next. I think they start at the end of this week, and will use many of the same venues that the Olympics themselves used.

Nagano Olympics: It's the Real Thing.

In other news, the train coming here from Nagoya was very slow but beautiful. The train followed a river for much of the way here, and every so often little towns would happen, then disappear.

My idea to ski tomorrow looks like it's not going to be happening. In typical Nagano form, the weather has forced me to postpone any idea of skiing I may have. It's pouring rain here, and warm. Remembering the weather boxes I made for the newspaper, when it's pouring in Nagano City, it's generally snowing up on the mountains. However, it's really warm now, about 10c or so, which means it might be raining up on the mountains too. In any case, the clouds around here are not a good sign. It's not so bad really- I'll have a day tomorrow to wander around Nagano.

Washed up.

This was around a glass in my hotel room. Is it a hint? A warning? The other side says "This paper breaks in water." I tested it, and it did. But doesn't all paper break in water?

I think I've turned into something ugly. I'm roaming the streets of Nagano, searching for anything remotely Olympic. I'm peering into store windows, looking around corners, considering stealing the Visa Snowlets banners that many of the stores have on display ("Yes! We now take Visa, even though credit cards are not very popular in the rest of Japan!")

Aside: credit cards here have the magnetic stripe on the front, making them completely incompatible with cards from the rest of the world. Visa was very embarassed when they figured this one out. Whoops!

There have got to be souveniers somewhere! I have people at home who will kill me if I don't come back with something Olympic!

So I was crossing a street, on my way back to the hotel for the night (evening wandering postponed due to monsoon), when I was accosted by an old Japanese woman with blue hair.

"Got pins?" she asked.

Well, I did have pins, so I showed her my Canada Hockey pins. She was delighted, but had no pins of her own to give- she'd forgotten them at home. Well whatever. I gave her my pin anyway, then asked her if she knew where I could get su-no-le-tzu ("Snowlets", the mascots).

"Oh! I have, I have!" she answered.

Oh- okay, well good. But she didn't have them on her- they were at her house. We now have a date tomorrow morning at 10:00 at the McDonald's up the street where she will probably try to overcharge me on some snowlets.

The quest for souveniers continues...