You can't even see the tracks and yet the little two-carriage train chugged its way in and out of each station on schedule - just like clockwork. Local governments of Ireland please take note!
By the way, I am pointing to the main road that had just disappeared under a fresh fall of snow. And yet there was a woman out jogging - they build them tough up here in the North of Japan.
This was the first training course that I organised alone with no real input from my colleagues. It was a lot of stress, especially because we have been so busy with other more serious matters in work. I hadn't been able to give it much attention in advance. Thankfully it all went really smoothly - without a hitch - and the feedback from the people that took the course was extremely positive.
It was blooming cold, though. Minus fifteen at one point. I tried to appreciate the beauty - the glitter of the freshly fallen powder, the crunch of the snow underfoot - but really I mostly wanted to be going to the factory dressed in this.
Kind of knocks the old American "slanket" (Tina Fey!) right out of the water, eh!
Japanese people can be so kind. I tend to forget this living in the big, anonymous city. But while up on the training course, the owners of the ski lodge where we always stay decided to hold a calligraphy lesson. No charge or anything; they just took a few hours out of their hectic high-season schedule to share a bit of culture. I decided to write 志 (kokorozashi). It's one of my favourite words in Japanese and it means something like aspiration, vision, or sense of purpose. That's what I'm all about these days.
I'll teach you another few words that have been coming up a lot with colleagues:
One is 甘塩っぱい (amajoppai) and it is really a fashionable word in Japan at the moment. It means sweet and salty and is used especially for the flood of new snack foods on the market - salty caramel, chocolate with sea salt and, of course, Royce's chocolate covered potato chips, which I have raved about at length before (http://digitalsocks.blogspot.com/2007/02/so-wrong-but-yet-so-right.html).
The other word is 親父ギャグ (oyajigyagu). I am the king of these. It means a rubbish joke that makes you groan. It's the kind a dad (oyaji) tells his children thinking it makes him cool. They go down like a lead balloon and are along the lines of the rotten puns and that that you find in a Christmas cracker. The other day I was having lunch with my colleague and she was struggling to decide what to order. She said how she liked tempura but how it can be really hard for the cook to get the batter right . This was the perfect set up for my mother of all oyajigyagus; "oh yes, you have to watch the batter, it can be very tempura mental!" Boom boom! and very much wakka wakka! as my heroes Basil Brush and Fozzie Bear would say.
I was speaking to my mother on the phone the other day and apparently my family (minus my Dad who was too truculent to get up off the couch) were moon-gazing - a favourite hobby of mine. A few hours earlier I had been doing the very same thing. I thought the moon was so beautiful last month that I braved the cold of my balcony to snap these pictures of it in its full, milky glory.
I still can't quite get my head around the fact that I was enjoying this view practically a whole day ahead of my family. The idea has that whole Fivel sings 'Somewhere out there' quality to it which kind of breaks my heart.
Oh, and I also wanted to keep you apace of progress with the new Tokyo Tower. As you can see, we're up to 281 metres and counting. I love the detailing on the structure - I think it's going to be mega.
And for the heck of it I'll throw in some more weird roadside plants. Can anyone tell me what it is?
And check out the pretty covers they wrap trees in to protect them from the snow.
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