Hey all, my apologies for the silence over the airwaves these past few weeks; I'm going to try to resume regular blogging from now. To start with, I want to talk about what winter has been like so far: it's dry, drier than in Canada, and sunny most days. The air temperature is cold, probably about 2 or 3 degrees, and so if it's windy, it can be quite unpleasant, but the sun is strong enough that it warms one up so that it feels to be at least 7 or 8 degrees in the afternoon. Nights are cold, but rarely freezing.

Thus when it snowed last weekend, it came as a bit of a shock.

When people told me about snow in Nagoya, they were all but unanimous on the fact that it does snow, on occasion, but hardly ever a lot, and it hardly ever stays on the ground. Well, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas last Sunday, I'll tell you that much!

Ascending the stairs out of the underground

Biking in the snow: people do it here. Badly, but it is done!

Karaoke stops for no-one, blizzards included.

TV tower in the snow!

It was a lot of fun wandering about Sakae, since the whole place is lit up at night and it made the snow look lovely. Also, with the amount of foot traffic, the snow was nicely trampled - my fall boots, though waterproof, are terrible at keeping my feet warm in the snow, and have little to no tread on them. They just don't make things to withstand snow conditions here, unless you buy heavy-duty ski or trekking boots.

Back in my little neighbourhood, things were different - snow EVERYWHERE, and only select people had shovels with which to clear it, so there was a lot of sliding and skipping and jumping, but most of it because I was busy marvelling at how beautiful it looked.

In the neighbours' yard.

Across the river.

 Of course, it all melted away by Wednesday, but it was lovely to have even just for the weekend.