Week 28: Nooooo snoooooow!

The snow melted!! I am so sad. I was sure that it was here to stay, but we got some warm temperatures, and slowly but surely all of the snow melted.

It's another long weekend!! Japan is overrun by holidays!! Monday is Labour Thanksgiving Day. I plan to celebrate by doing no labour. 

Despite it being a long weekend, I haven't been up to too much. On Sunday I made cookies and did some little science experiments with my labmate's daughter. I showed her how to make a model of the hand with straw bones and string ligaments, and she was impressed enough that when her friends came to visit in the afternoon, I was recruited as head tape-cutter and needle-threader to help them all make their own. We also made a density tower (although ours were not nearly this involved...) and started some salt crystals growing. It was a bit hard to get her to understand the science in a hybrid of English and Japanese, but I think she sort of got the gist of it?? I think the timeline of crystal growing (i.e. not instantaneous) was a little beyond her, but meh.

I replaced the main overhead light in my room. That is actually big news because the light bulb probably burned out about three months ago. During the summer it wasn't a huge deal, but it was getting to be be awfully gloomy in my room past 4 pm. I actually found the necessary light bulb at the second hand store after buying the wrong bulb from a REAL store. Hooray for second hand stores!

Oh, and I got this.

Why yes, I DID bring this home on my bicycle!

Everything in this picture (boots, board, and carrying bag) came to 4,000¥, which is pretty much what it would have cost to rent it for a single day. There is a small hill just up the street that's tall enough to practice on, and there are a few small, cheap ski hills within the city. So this is my winter goal! I used to play a LOT of SSX so I imagine that I will have a leg up on other beginners. Video game skills like that usually have a high transfer-over rate to real life.