Snow Storms, snow angles, and plastic food

It has been a cold and snowy week in Sapporo.  Bre is working on her snowball throwing.  I put together a video of the throw.

We went on a walk to the Homac hardware store to buy a bread machine.  When we went outside there were giant snowflakes falling.

 I tried to show here how the snow was falling so strongly that your visibility was limited.  Out on the field to school there was no way to see where you are going.  If you look at the right side of the photo below you can get an idea of what it is like.

 The snow stopped as quickly as it had started and I found this fascinating place where you can see the effect of the heated sidewalks.  In this photo you can see exactly where the heating coils are laid out under the sidewalk.  Heating a sidewalk sounds inefficient, but having tried to shovel the snow out in front of my apartment building several times I can tell you that heating the sidewalk has its advantages.  In fact if you look closely at the second photo of the area where the cars are parked in front of our apartment building you can see that it has been heated and has no snow sitting on it.

I tried this panorama photo in the parking lot by the hardware store.  Just ignore the disappearing cars.

 This is a photo of some of the piles of snow on campus.  The plows push them off to the side of the road.  It gets more tricky where there is a sidewalk.  On our bus ride to the ski area I saw some places that get more snow than Sapporo.  In places they had snow piles as tall as the bus we were riding in!

 

 

From left to right below is a photo of Olga, Valdez (in the sled) Aiume (sp?), Jody, and Bre.  We all went out together to look at the illumination and go to a sushi restaurant.  In the photo we have just picked up Valdez from the day care center and gotten him into the sled that he rode in most of the night.  Jody sang "Jingle Bells" to help Valdez enjoy his sleigh ride.

 The following three panorama photos are taken near Sapporo Station.

If you look closely at this photo you can see where the camera didn't quite get the panorama alignment right, but it still gives you a good idea of what it is like to be here.

 We found the Old Hokkaido Government Building.  It is modeled on the Massachusetts State House. It looks very nice in the snow.

Jody seized an opportunity to test her new jacket by making a snow angel.

Near our sushi restaurant in Sapporo Station we found this place.  Aiume explained that it is a milk/dairy based restaurant.  I was impressed by how good the fake food looked in the window.  If you want waffles, or milkshakes this is the place to go.  If there real food is a good looking as the plastic food in the display case you will be in for a treat.

あけましておめでとう

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)