Today Neo JHS and Elementary School had their first snow day of the season, and what a day it was! Neo mura is the proud bearer of the Most Snowfall in Gifu-ken Title. This morning, we weighed in at 126 cm, and it’s still snowing. The kids were safe at home while the teachers had to drag their assess to school, and I was cursing this fact like a semi-retarded sailor when I woke up this morning. Luckily, I wasn’t too despicable as I slept with my denki (electric) heater all night. I hauled ass and left my apartment 10 minutes earlier to meet my neighbours and we proceeded to shovel the car out of the snow. What was normally a 2 minute drive turned into a 15 minute odyssey into the Great White school parking lot. Takayama-sensei was the first to arrive and attempted to plow through the snow with his 4x4 and actually made good headway…until he got stuck. So we had to double back to the jutaku (teacher’s residence) and park in the driveway. We then took the treacherous walk along Route 157 to get to the JHS. It took us about 15 minutes to walk back and then we had to get to the building. By this time, the snow was around waist high and people were falling into the soft, soft snow. Luckily, this fate did not befall me as I was bringing up the rear (heh heh). We finally made it into the building and then left again to shovel a pathway for cars. Unfortunately, things just degenerated into a snowball war between the men (Usami and Moutou senseis) and the women (Kawai and Fukuda senseis, and I), complete with snow jobs, collapsed forts and snowy treason. I failed to mention that Usami sensei is the P.E. teacher, so he kicked our asses, but we didn’t go down without a fight. Obviously, we had too much fun as we jumped into the snow and made each other eat it. I’ve seen these people animated before, but never like this. We returned to the teacher’s room about an hour later, cold, wet, tired, hungry and satiated.
The fun and games didn’t end there as we had to prepare lunch for ourselves. Luckily, Tomomi the homemaking sensei was present and the women (ahhh sexism, so omnipotent!) got down to preparing homemade takoyaki (pieces of octopus covered in dough and cooked until golden brown), onigiri (a triangle shaped rice “ball” with some kind of stuffing), miso soup, skaimono (pickled daikon [radish]) and tea. It was really delicious and it was so fun to cook with these women, even though a few were pissed off when I pointed out the gender inequality…
After lunch, kocho sensei, the science teacher and I went around Neo to survey the awesome spectacle of snow in a mountain village. I think the photos can speak for themselves:
Gosh, you’d think I’ve never seen snow before, but never this much, even when vacationing in Northern Quebec. I’m going to Nagoya this weekend so I will be sure to pick up some decent boots and a snowsuit. Wish me luck!
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