Sutorenjaa In Japan

Winter Wonderland

It is now Thursday in Fukui, and the snow has showed no signs of slowing. It's been snowing non-stop, day and night for the last 4 days. It is actually quite beautiful to see it coming down. At the moment it is pretty light, but still falling. Earlier there were bigger pieces falling. It's actually very nice to watch from the comfort of a heated teacher's room! But then I look down (my office is on the second floor), and I see all the teachers' cars buried in snow. At least my arms are getting a good workout from all the shoveling.

It is the new morning ritual. Get ready for school, go outside, shovel some space from the exhaust, start the car (it takes forever to defrost the winshield) and then let the shoveling begin. I think I'm getting the hang of things. I shovel away from the tires as best I can to give it some traction and then try to get out. Bah. I have been told that it is a character-building experience and that it may help me become a bit more hardy. We'll see. There is too much snow for me to NOT complain at this point! Its just a bit of an annoyance really. I think if I could get out and play for a while in the stuff i might like it more. Right now its just a bother having to shovel to get in and out of my spot (and no, the building land lord has not made ANY attempt to help clean the lot), and being scared of driving.

In Fukui the "system" of snow removal is far from adequate in my opinion. I'm not trying to bash on Fukui or Japan but in this aspect in particular, its just insane. There are no plows. They use bulldozers to scoop up snow and move it somewhere else. Many businesses and schools have their own bulldozers so, those aren't so bad. But for some reason, maybe because they're too big, but the small residential streets do not get cleaned... so aside from the narrow roads with gaijin traps on either side, there is the added threat of sliding on the layers of packed snow/ slush. The roads are not salted but instead, some of the major roads have little jets in the center of the street that squirt water onto the road to melt the snow. This sounds crazy but apparently it doesn't USUALLY get cold enough to turn that water into ice... again, we shall see. This is also not foolproof as when it snows a lot (like oh, say... 4 days solid) the jets get covered with snow and can't shoot water anymore. So, we are stuck with gigantic puddles and snow on the sides of the road. Traffic is a mess! It took me forever to go to the post office & train station and then another 30minutes just to get back into my parking spot (I had to shovel a space).
On a lighter note... the sun is actually out in patches today so it looks really cute with the snow and the sun. :)

This is the last week before the break. My teachers are in a frenzy writing up final grades (Yay me! I finished already!) and dealing with the snow and students. Classes started at 9am today instead of 8:40 because of the snow. Lots of students were late, but they get to go home at 12:50.

As for me, I was late too. I thought I had left enough time to get to school by 8:25 but there was crazy traffic so I ened up being 10 minutes late. :( The worst part was driving up the hill. Sometime I will video tape the drive for you all to observe. It's crazy & with this stick shift I'm driving, I'm even more nervous. I will say though that I'm happy I can change the gears when I feel like it... I'm loving 1st & 2nd in this snow. On the way up, someone was trying to come down. This was a major challenge. As I mentioned earlier, the buldozers don't really make it to the smaller streets so there was snow everywhere. I had to stop and me & the other car did a sort of standoff. I had a mini-panic attack as I started to roll back a bit (we were on a bit of a steep incline, with snow) AND I realized that there was a car behind me. Luckily I made it by the car (thanks for teaching me about the hand brake dad!) and was back on my way.

The rest of the road to school was equally scary because I was sliding around a lot. Some students were walking (they really don't move or change their directions for the passing/ oncoming cars... its a little annoying at times) and I slowed to let them get ahead, but my car started sliding a bit and almost nudged one of the girls!!! (X_X #) Thankfully I stopped the car in time, and I don't think I actually touched her. The girl I almost 'nudged' didn't even flinch or look back (hence, I reasoned that I didn't actually touch her), but her friend gave me a bit of a look. :( BAD ALT!!! The rest of the drive went without incident... thank goodness!

All I have to say is that I'm going to take the train as much as possible and/ or becoming a winter hermit. Well... not really. That sounds pretty boring.... I'll come out to learn snowboarding & skiing, continue hip hop lessons ("PON" with Fuji-san!!!!!) and maybe make a few snow angels.

posted by KidBach @ 10:42 AM