Wintery Conditions and School Happenings

We said we wouldn't have much to say for the next couple of months and we weren't lying!  It has been a colder than usual winter here, coldest in ten years, so we've gotten a lot of fluffy snow instead of heavy, wet slush, sleet, or what passed for snow our first winter here.  We've been doing a lot of work (at least, Lee has), had some winter colds (Ana) and enjoyed the snow and warmth where we can find it.

The main roads and many parking lots are still regularly being cleared with water.  This leads to very treacherous terrain at night, after the sun goes down and the layer of water on the pavement freezes.  I've nearly gotten hit a couple of times from cars being unable to stop when coming down side streets.  One other somewhat odd winter weather norm here is that residential back roads have no snow removal system.  No sprinklers and no regular plows, so unless it's really bad and they send out the tractors (can be days before your street gets done) you're on your own. The residents are expected to shovel the road in front of their house.  You can tell where the likely retired (therefore highly conscientious and free-time-possessing) neighbors are because they have a perfectly clear roadway across the length of their property, with sharp lines between their frontage and that of the next house down.  Non-retired people have to shovel when they can, and for men who leave for work around 7 AM and return at 10 or 11 PM the shoveling can occur at hours that would be unusual in the states. The scraping of shovels has both kept us up and woken us early, including on weekends as the Japanese work Saturdays.

We're pretty sure this is the emergency backup plan.  Plan A involves it not snowing.  Plan B is, just drive over it, wait for a citizen to shovel it, or pour water on it.  Plan C involves people with not much plowing experience manning a not-very-large fleet of tractors, and they only come out when it gets deep enough that cars are becoming unable to drive in it without becoming stuck

See that road on the right? Hand-cleared in the wee hours by people with shovels.  This was taken on a Sunday, which is the one day of the week when most people can shovel during daylight.

Some amusing things in and around the school:

The school is really touting its recent joining of the CDIO Initiative.  Thus far, there has been a lot of talk and boasting of their position as the first Japanese institution to join, including this sign loudly proclaiming their membership in the global group of schools, which incidentally is probably breaking international trademark regulations by using of the logos of the other schools involved without their permission.

The architecture students have displays up every so often in one of the buildings I have a class in.  I found a model of the house from the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro, along with adorable needle felted Totoro and the little soot fairies hanging out in the front yard.

Next month will be the final presentations of the robots in my fourth year class (2009, 2010) and we have one group that is making a Cat Bus robot, also from My Neighbor Totoro.  It's shaping up quite nicely, and I cannot wait to see it run!  This year is one of the better groups of students, and I'll post what they've come up with sometime next month, when they've finally finished them.  Our next post will be up shortly - a festival came up that sounded too interesting to miss (sorry, not the Penis Festival) so we'll end up have one substantial post for January after all.