Last night was the first snow here in Takefu! It was really wet, slushy snow, plus hail, but it was really awesome! Also, it came with LOAD snow thunder, which was really exciting — although, all my kids got pretty scared. You could even feel the reverberation of the thunder through the ceiling vents — that’s how powerful thunder here is… really, it’s not like any thunder I’ve felt before! So here’s a crummy nighttime photo of the snow, taken with my cellphone:

In Japan, they don’t salt the street to keep the ice melted — they spray warm water on it constantly. It seems to work, but all I can think is how back home the water would freeze and we’d have a much, much worse problem.

The feeling of Christmas is everywhere here — well it has been since Halloween, considering there’s no Thanksgiving buffer between the two holidays — but I’ve only gotten around to writing about it now. Christmas in Japan is weird… just like Halloween, it has no meaning, although Christmas seems to be a little more important here than Halloween did. Actually, the main difference that I’ve seen is that now, instead of the stores being stocked with costumes of sexy witches and devils, they’re stocked with costumes of sexy elves and reindeer.

I wanted to post a couple more pictures from your amusement. These are from the teachers’ guides for my books. First:

Usually we either ask, “What day is it today?” or “How’s the weather?” I guess the author couldn’t make up his mind.

And second:

What would you think if you overheard this conversation in a locker room? It sounds like Masato should see a doctor…

Oh yeah, and this week, my manager began telling my students they’re not allowed to take me to see ghosts. Both my Japanese teacher and my manager told me some creepy stories about curses and ghosts nearby after I told them about my Tojinbo trip, and I guess I said I wanted to go see… So now my manager is trying to protect me.