Trying to Keep Warm

It may be the first of March but the nights are still a bit cold.  I overheard someone say that temperatures might dip below zero at night this week. 

Last week wasn't much warmer.  At one point I was sitting in our "satellite" office with the heater/air-con unit going at 28C.  It didn't feel particularly warm in the room but I did notice that the pieces of white chocolate I was munching on were just a touch "sweaty". 

About an hour later I collected my lesson materials for the last class I was going to teach that day.  As I stood up I remembered I had one piece of white chocolate left.  So I grabbed the box and gave it a shake...nothing came out.  I thought to myself, "Hmm...I'm sure there was one more piece left".  So I took the inner tray out of the box.  This particular brand's packaging has the inner tray tucked inside a plastic envelope/wrapper.  I pulled the tray out and saw what had become of my last piece of white chocolate...it had melted.  So perhaps the heater was indeed on high enough....

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This year's snow lantern festival was the 40th edition of the annual event.  The older brother of one of my students was a member of the organizing committee.  He was on a sub-committee responsible for coming up with some type of amusement for kids.  In the past the festival has had things like miniature train rides.  My student had mentioned that they were looking into more ambitious projects this year.  The organizers had floated the idea of a maze built out of snow.  But the lack of snow over Christmas and New Years made them decide to aim for a more modest goal.  I think their next idea was a petting zoo or polar animal exhibit.  They had lined up a deal to rent some penguins from a zoo in Niigata but that fell through.  So in the end they decided to set up a skating rink.

Yonezawa is very much in the "snow country", Yuki-guni, of Japan.   So one would assume that there are plenty of winter sports activities.  In fact, there aren't.  People are just too busy digging themselves out of the snow to bother to go out and play in the stuff.  I suppose they get sick of the sight of the stuff.  The city lacks a large enough body of water which could freeze over well enough to serve as a natural ice skating surface.  And the local ice rink was torn down a number of years ago.  Which to me seems peculiarly odd.  After all, it's not often one hears of a Canadian community without an ice rink or somewhere to skate.

Anyways...when my student told me they were going to set up an skating rink I immediately assumed it would have an ice surface.  So I was a bit bemused when I checked out the festival and found the skating rink...and its plastic board skating surface.  That really just wasn't what I had had in mind....