Tag: snow

Heavy Snowfall

My car looked like Kagamimochi

I live in a country part of Hokkaido, and from yesternight we are getting heavy snowfall for now. There were less snow compared to these years but the time of balance out anyway comes at some point. The point was simply yesterday and today. Such day, I suddenly woke up with a sound of snow plow truck. Hearing it in the borderland of dream and real, I feel like there comes certain amount of snow finally.

The merit of a heavy snowfall is that you can enjoy ski at a ski resort that was in trouble due to the lack of snow. And if you have too much snow and cause a traffic trouble, maybe the school would be canceled (I felt so happy about it when I was a student). The de-merit of it is just you need to clear the snow away with your spade. It is some work.

Have you noticed that the picture above of my car seems a bit strange? There is an orange on the car. It’s a joke for a Japanese traditional culture. In Japan, almost everyone put “kagamimochi” in your house or office (not these days?). It is cute.

Kagami mochi (鏡餅, “mirror rice cake”), is a traditional Japanese New Year decoration. It usually consists of two round mochi (rice cakes), the smaller placed atop the larger, and a daidai (a Japanese bitter orange) with an attached leaf on top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagami_mochi

A Night with Yutampo

Since living in Hokkaido, the next season is coming much faster than any other Japanese places. Winter has just arrived by snow falling in the last week unlike to the other mainland prefectures experiencing the best of fall season. A bit of snow falling is a very familiar seasonal phenomenon with us in November. But the scene I just witnessed after opening curtain in my house last week was a bit surprising. It was like somebody turned on the switch of winter yesternight.

What the hell???!

Anyway, thanks to this message from the sky, we finally made sense that we are in winter now. And that means a lot of people will suffer from getting cold, especially me. Changing season means we have to get used to the new environment as soon as we can. And I am terrible at this kind of transformation. I’d like to keep wearing T shirt and shorts in my room. You need to turn on a heater as long as you stay inside the house, and the room is getting dry, and you find your throat completely like a desert in the morning. Then, you realize soon you will get cold.

That’s why I got a slight cold in the last week. Under this COVID circumstances, we are asked to get rest if you had a fever or dullness. We are totally right and agree. However, there are still tons of Japanese who still don’t want to take a day off to get rest because you would think you are lost (I don’t know what we lose against though). But anyway, I took rest as much as I could, and now I’m almost recovered.

This annual cold seems a kind of ceremony like a snake shed its skin. Now I think it is an inevitable action to live healthily. Sleeping a lot and spending lazy days, my body and mind seemed to have refreshed. Getting a cold doesn’t always mean bad, I sometimes thought.

Anyway, I set Yutampo inside of my blanket. This maybe a Japanese unique traditional culture though (not that popular these days), you put a kind of hot water bottle inside your blanket to keep the bed warm through the night. And you can wash your face with the slight warm water that was filled in the bottle. That’s the beauty of this Yutampo. Further info of Yutampo is here. https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/6244/

Have a great Yutampo night.

You could buy this even in the Japanese supermarket. It’s too hot to use it bare, so usually we wrap with or put in a towel bag.