Posting On Friday

The arch of a slow week is almost at its terminus. Only two classes this whole week. In my free time at the office I tend to write or study Japanese. I offer to help out but there seems to be less-than-enough to do most of the time. Each changing of the seasons in Japan draws out very different behaviors in the people. This week there was a flurry of activity as people got ready for winter. Our activities in Hokkaido even made the national news; getting winter tires on our vehicles, putting up snow poles, putting up the wind barricades. I will take a picture of the wind barricades because their hard to picture without having been to Hokkaido. Basically, the wind can get very bad on the open road so barricades are installed permanently that can be cranked up for winter, this makes it less dangerous, furthermore it stops snow drifts from developing. I took a picture of the snow poles near my house, they went up this week all around Shikaoi, their purpose is to mark all the curbs that will eventually be buried under a biblical amounts of snow. The snow tires, that I should be getting sometime today, are pretty self-explanatory. Also, about twelve shovels appeared in the side entrance of office. Winter is most definitely coming.



The first snow I saw was this week was on Wednesday. It was a bit disturbing because, though it was snowing relatively hard, it was very bright and sunny out. Is this a bad omen? The snow, however, did not stick around. Yesterday - Thursday - it snowed again, this time not in the town proper but further out at a town I teach out, Urimaku. This is where the picture of the tree was taken. Do not be mistaken and think the picture was taken in the evening. This was taken about 8:30 AM. Don't you think it's dark? This snow, also, did not stay. One great thing about living in japan is the ability to get sweet Christmas Oranges six months of the year, until early spring. They are from Shizokuka and are dirt cheap. I eat two or three a day. I will switch back to delicious Fuji apples in the summer, although regular and Christmas Oranges (called mikans here) as still available (but less sweet).



I got an interesting note from my good friend Drew in China in regards to Blogs, since he is denied access to reading my site. I thought his not was very insightful to the situation in China right now and is especially significant in regards to the upcoming Olympic games. I will not analyze it to absurdism, as I have been known to do on other topics, and will let the reader make their own deductions.

"One thing that surprisez me about China is it's Govenments ability to be almost completely invisible. Blogs are, however, one major exception to this rule. China's govenment has decided that BLOG websites might be harmful to their continuation, so unfortunately I can't go to your web blog site."

I will be posting again later today in regard to my progress in NaNoWriMo.