Floating on through July

There are currently five abandoned blog posts sitting in my drafts.  Every time I try to write something, my thoughts start drifting in a completely different direction and I can’t focus on what it is I’m trying to say.  I feel bad because I have hardly posted anything in the past few months, and now that the realisation that I have such little time left in Japan is finally hitting me, I’m cycling through feelings of excitement, sadness, relief and regret.  It’s also because I’ve run out of free space for photos, which is a bit boring.

In some ways I wish I had posted more about the little things that happen every day.  Like today when the student who’s a bit of a troublemaker and hates English told me I was good at drawing, in Tsugaru-ben, I replied also in Tsugaru-ben she got really excited and proceeded to teach me more phrases in the dialect.  Or how I tried on a yukata in a shop two months ago and didn’t like it because it was a bit drab and old-fashioned (like the rest of the patterns there) so I didn’t buy it despite the sales assistant really going for the hard sell, then asking me for my phone number and address “just in case I changed my mind”.  Since then she has sent me handwritten letters asking me to come to the store and get a yukata, along with promotional leaflets, and she’s even called me twice asking me if I’m free to come into the store.  Seriously?  I couldn’t believe she was being so persistent.  I was polite the first time she called, and told her I wasn’t interested and not free that weekend anyway so I couldn’t go to the store.  Then I got another call tonight and as soon as she started talking about her effing yukatas I told her to stop harrassing me and calling my personal number, and then hung up.  I actually got a yukata the day after I first went there at a different shop.  It’s cerulean blue, printed pink all over with big slices of oranges, and I got a yellow obi to match!  I may have got the least Japanesey type pattern just to spite annoying Yukata Woman… but I actually got it because it’s so goddamn funky fresh.

When I was finishing university, all the good stuff seemed to happen at once just as my final year was coming to an end, and it feels the same way this time, except a million times better.  I’ve built some amazing friendships here and finally got to the point where I feel like I have a place in the Japanese community and enjoy hanging out with Japanese people instead of just other JETs all the time.  I love the social life I have here, and the fact that there is always some kind of event going on in Aomori that I can go to or join if I want.  I feel like I’m getting better and better at Japanese, still far from fluent, but to the point where I can spend six hours drinking with people from my taiko group and chatting about anything and everything with no struggle, then not being able to sleep because my drunk brain won’t shut up thinking in Japanese.  I am going to miss everyone so badly, and sometimes wonder if I made the right decision to leave when all my friends are staying for another year.  Then I remind myself why I did, and realise that it all comes down to making compromises.

Firstly, I CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING.  This has been my mantra for the past few days.  I had legitimate reasons to leave, and when I think about them, I know a third year here would have dragged.  I’m ready to move on from being an assistant teacher and I’m ready to leave the remoteness of where I live, even if it is ridiculously beautiful and I’ll never get to live with this kind of scenery again.  I am also extremely ready for a winter where I get to live somewhere with actual insulation and I don’t spend half the year worrying that I’m going to crash my car in the snow.  (How’s that for first world problems?)  Even if it makes me sound like a wuss, I’m looking forward to snuggling with my dog in front of a toasty fire again.

Maintaining friendships from the other side of the world is hard, too.  Tecnology has been amazing for keeping in touch, but it’s not the same and I miss my friends from school.  I know another year away would put a bigger strain on that, and even though most people have moved away from home now, I can’t wait to see everyone again.  At some point my friends in Japan will have to move on too, and it would be just as hard, if not harder, for me to say goodbye a year from now.

Two years doesn’t feel like a long time until I think back to what I did when I first got here, and suddenly it seems like I’ve been here a decade.  I feel like I’ve done a lot during my time here, and sorry for getting a bit clichéed, but I also feel like I’ve changed a lot as a person and really discovered what I’m capable of.  I’m singing and playing bass in a one-off show with three friends tomorrow in a bar… I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t have done that two years ago.  I moved halfway across the world at the age of 21 and survived – thrived – for this long.  I admire the ALTs who stay longer, even up to five years, but for me the work would feel stagnant way before then.  I love who I have become and I’m excited to see where my new-found confidence and fresh perspective of the world (I have learned just as much about other cultures as I have Japan, thanks to 99% of my friends here being non-Brits!) takes me.  University was a bit of a disappointment socially; I didn’t make any lasting friendships and I regretted not joining more societies and clubs sooner.  Maybe that’s why I knew I had to make the most of it this time, because I didn’t want to close myself off to good opportunities again.

Next week is my last week at school, so I have to give a farewell speech in front of everyone.  I’m nervous because I hate giving speeches and I’ll probably get a bit teary-eyed, but I have some fun things planned for my final classes and I’m going to make lemon drizzle cake for the teachers.  One teacher has been particularly kind to me since I’ve been here, and hinted that she wanted me to draw a picture of her dog, so I’m going to do that for her too.  She took me to do a glass-blowing workshop with some other teachers, and they paid for me!  I chose to make a small vase with blue and white colouring.  I don’t get to see how mine turned out yet, because she’s making it into a “which teacher made which item?” quiz at my leaving party.

It will be hard to say goodbye, but I still have some more drinking parties,  Nebuta matsuri, then two weeks of travelling and Summer Sonic to look forward to.  I have to keep reminding myself that I won’t be able to go home until I’ve seen Radiohead, and that makes me feel a lot better.  Plus, I might even bump into them at the airport the next day…

An Introduction to Rice Planting

Well, it was really just fifteen minutes of the mayor of Inakadate praising the crowd turnout and good weather, followed by lots of motivational rice-themed dancing with the town mascots singing “kome kome kome kome” (rice rice rice rice) before all 1200 of us were unleashed into the fields.  We had no idea what we were doing, then someone chucked us each a slab of rice seedlings, and away we went pushing them into the lines of holes that had been marked out for us.  The mud was lovely and warm and squishy on my bare feet, but unfortunately gave me hobbit feet for nearly two weeks after, no matter how hard I scrubbed.

When the rice grows, it will become a lovely piece of art!  We didn’t plant the coloured sections because I suspected we as volunteers couldn’t be trusted.  Suspicions  confirmed when teenagers started throwing the mud at each other and got a telling off from sensei.  The tradition of rice art started here in Inakadate about twenty years ago, using different coloured rice strands to create a picture which is viewed from the top of the building next to the fields.  Last year the rice art theme was Star Wars and Gone With The Wind (bit of a random combination), and this year it will be two characters from a Japanese drama I have no idea about, and Godzilla!

Getting ready to go

Cultural challenges

Occasionally I’ll come across misspelled gems when I’m marking students’ work or looking over their shoulders in the classroom during a writing task.  This week has been particularly amusing, starting with Monday when I was marking writing exercises using the passive tense.  Conjugating verbs into the passive is a pain in the arse for anyone learning English thanks to all the irregularities, so I sympathise.   I asked the students to think of a person or object and write three hints about it so others could guess what or who it is.  I’m glad I put my coffee down when I read the last one from my pile of papers, which said, “He was boned by my mother.”  It took a while until my JTE and I realised he was trying to say “borned by”.  The logic was there at least.  やっぱり英語って難しいな～。

Yesterday we were making sentences like “I (do ~ ) when I’m happy/sad/bored etc”.  One student wrote “I crap when I’m happy.”  Of course I never actually laugh at the students, but I can’t help having a quiet giggle to myself.  I feel for them though, R and L are really hard to distinguish from a Japanese perspective.

There’s one 2nd grader (13 years old?) who is hilarious and will always beckon me over for a chat when I’m walking around the classroom making sure people are getting on ok with the task.  He is so determined to speak English even though most of what he says is one word questions or mostly gestures, but despite this we end up having some pretty interesting conversations that usually just result in him asking in Japanese and me replying in English, so at least he can use his listening skills.  Yesterday he asked me what surprised me most about Japan when I first got here, and I said the level of customer service.  Japanese shop assistants treat you like a VIP, from the precise way they handle your money to the honorific language that they use.  In contrast, I told him that shop assistants in the UK might have a little chat with you and ask about your day or even compliment you on something you’re wearing.  Both countries have their negatives though; in Japan I feel like I’m being served by robots because everyone says the same few set phrases, and in the UK sometimes I just get completely ignored throughout the whole transaction.

I love these little exchanges of culture because it makes me appreciate both sides instead of just taking one for granted.  It still makes me sad though how most Japanese people I’ve met, including the students, have never left the country or just have no interest in going abroad.  We actually did a lesson on opinions the other week, and one question was “Do you think English is important?”.  I was a little disappointed to see that over half the class wrote that they didn’t think so.  The majority of the reasons were along the lines of just not wanting to go abroad, but one student simply wrote 日本人だから。　(because I’m Japanese.)  Cue eye roll.   This lack of open-mindedness does make me realise why foreigners get such bizarre treatment a lot of the time in Japan.  Yes, Japan is a special country full of interesting food and culture, but internationalisation is a thing, even if it happens more in other countries than here.  One thing that stands out is the NEVER ENDING COMMENTS about how amazing it is that foreigners can use chopsticks or eat sushi.  One of my principals spent half the evening at a teacher’s gathering asking me if I could eat such and such Japanese food, then practically wetting himself when I said yes.  He couldn’t believe it when I said we could easily buy soy sauce, noodles and tofu in UK supermarkets.  He leaned over to the other teachers and exclaimed how miraculous it was that I could eat rice.  He brought a bowl of a variety of spinach to school once, slapped me on the shoulder instead of using my name and told me to try it.  He stood behind me as I ate, saying “How crazy is it that foreigners can eat this stuff?!  She probably won’t like it.” while the teacher next to me said, “Actually, I’ve never tried it either.”

Of course not everyone is like this, and this is probably a more extreme case of alienifying foreigners, but even in a subtler form it puts me off staying here long-term.  I love my life here, but I’ll be relieved to be back home when I can blend into the crowd again and not feel like a special snowflake.

First bike ride of the year

Went for a 26k ride last weekend up to Ajigasawa and back, taking a couple of photos of near where I live along the way.  I know you probably think I’m a wuss for only just getting out on my bike at the end of April, but road biking in Aomori weather right by the sea just isn’t worth the pain!!  Even on the way back, the headwind was strong enough to make me want to just finish the ride already.  The big fat beautiful cherry blossoms and blue skies made it worth it though.

Iwate Roadtripping

Not wanting to waste the few 3-day weekends I have left in Japan, a friend and I decided to spend one by going on a road trip around Iwate prefecture.  After Hokkaido, it’s the largest prefecture in terms of area, but its lack of any major sightseeing spots means it’s not exactly number one on the list of places to visit in Japan.  It does however offer a stunning coastline and a few really interesting touristy places that we planned our trip around seeing.  Recently I’ve started to appreciate just walking or driving around an area and taking in the scenery, pausing to explore off-road if something catches my eye.

Over three days we spent about 12 hours driving (not including the 7 hours of driving to and from Alyssa’s house that I did!) so we definitely got a good feel for the area.  Our impressions were that Iwate seemed a lot tidier than Aomori; even in the depths of the countryside, the houses were decorative and built in the traditional Japanese style, with neat thatched roofs and sturdy-looking wooden features.  In Aomori, there is a significant amount of abandoned houses, or ones that are in desperate need of some love and attention.  (I may or may not write a blog post about this, so just in case I don’t, this article explains the housing situation in Japan quite well: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-architecture/)

On the first day of our journey we went to Goshogake Onsen up in the mountains.  We were going to go for a hike too, but the path was closed for winter due to snow, so we just spent extra long in the onsen.  The baths were fantastic, but the highlight was the volcanic mud bath, where we sat on tiny slippery stools in the water while some nice old ladies treated us to a lovely muddy massage.  We left with skin as smooth as a baby’s bum.

There was a lot of driving done that day, so we finished up in Morioka, Iwate’s capital.  There wasn’t really anything we wanted to do, so we had some dinner at a cute Hawaiian restaurant and set up our car hotel for the night.  It was my first time sleeping in a car, but with all the duvets and futons and pillows we piled in there, it was super cosy and way more fun than sleeping in a bed!  We made the mistake of parking in a car park outside the mall, which I realised after coming back from a toilet trip to see two security guards making their way over to the car with torches in hand.  We moved swiftly on to a conbini car park with no problems.

We woke at 6 and headed out straight after we bought some breakfast from the conbini next to our car.  The great thing about sleeping in a car is that you don’t have to wait  for people to get ready or pack their stuff, so we were continued off in no time.  We drove a couple of hours south to Geibikei Gorge, stopping on the way to check out an interesting shrine that Alyssa spotted, and then hopped on the first boat tour of the day.  Our tour guide was hilarious and worth the trip alone, but the only disappointment was that we came at exactly the wrong time of year, as everything was a bit post-winter-dead.   March is unfortunately too late for seeing the magnificent icicles that drape down the sides of the gorge, and too early for any greenery or flowers to give the rocky surroundings a sense of life.  I did get to try wasabi ice cream though, which I debated for a while.  Would a spicy radish really make a good ice cream flavour??  We asked the tour guide, who said he had tried all the flavours on offer, and that the wasabi’s spiciness was choudo ii – just right.  I can confirm that it was!

Our next stop was at Tono, a folk village, on the way to Miyako city.  It was interesting, but all the little reconstructed houses started to look the same after a while.  We drove on through the windy mountains before dusk towards Miyako for dinner, stumbling upon a nice izakaya where we sat at the bar and were treated generously by the master.  He tweaked various dishes for Alyssa, who’s vegetarian, and even gave us dessert and some plum liqueur on the house, because he said he was happy we came all this way to his city.  At night we drove down in the dark to the beachfront of Jodogahama, where we could just about make out the rock formations in the water in front of us.  We laid out the futon in the car and set our alarms for sunrise.

We woke at 5:30ish, grabbed a hot drink from the vending machine and found a good spot on the beach to wait for the sun to rise.  It was gorgeous and well worth the early start!  The rest of the day was spent winding along the coast, stopping at Ryusendo Caves, where we got up close and personal with some bats after I nearly bashed my head on one under a low passageway.  Driving the scenic route highlighted just how much construction work was still going on five years after the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami disaster.

Our trip ended with the nicest weather we had all weekend, perfect for the gorgeous cliffs at Kitayamazaki and some delicious cliff-shaped curry and rice for lunch.

Kameido Shrine

Last week I went to a conference in Tokyo for JET participants who are finishing their contracts this year. As well as making me feel pretty good about the skills I have to offer from spending time abroad and generally realising I’m an alright person, I got to meet a representative from the company I really want to work for.  I sent off my application yesterday, so fingers crossed!  (The position is Travel Consultant at InsideJapan Tours.)

The conference was all day Thursday and Friday, so I had a full Saturday to kill in Tokyo before I got the night bus back to Aomori.  I didn’t feel like going to any major sight-seeing spots or wandering around the crowded touristy areas, and going shopping was a definite no,  so I did a quick internet search to see if there was anything special going on nearby.  It turned out that February to early March was plum blossom season, so I decided to hit up Kameido Shrine （亀戸天神社） and then go to the Pixar exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It took about 45 minutes by subway from Shinjuku, then a bit of a walk as I followed the blossom banners leading me to Kameido Shrine.   It always amazes me how quiet some parts of Tokyo can be, despite only being a subway stop or two away from the giant hubs of the city like Akihabara.  I found the garden entrance to the shrine, where an old lady was selling a variety of dried fruits just around the corner, and before I knew it I was 500 yen down and munching on a bag of figs.

I hadn’t realised that the kame in Kameido means ‘turtle’, which was obviously a fitting choice because, to my joy, the garden had been built over a pond full of terrapins and carp.  I spent a good while on the bridge taking photos and watching the terrapins climb all over each other for the sunniest spot on the rock.

It was almost the end of the plum blossom season so a few of them were looking a bit withered, but it was beautiful nonetheless.  The sun was shining and I WASN’T EVEN WEARING A COAT and spring just makes me so happy I could feel myself practically bursting with endorphins.  I am so ready for winter in Aomori to be over.  From the end of April, the wooden trellises are dripping purple with wisteria, so I might have to come back again for that!

After probably one of the most pleasant afternoons I’ve spent in Tokyo, I headed off to the museum.   I didn’t see another foreigner the whole time I was at the shrine, or when I was walking around afterwards.  They’re missing out!!  There was no convenient subway route to the museum, so I strolled through the neighbourhoods of Koto for the next hour, crossing through parks and playgrounds, over bridges, down alleys behind houses tucked away from the roads, past highschoolers playing baseball until I found somewhere I wanted to go for lunch.  I was really glad I didn’t take the subway – you see so much more of a city just by walking around it.   I was in the mood for something with rice, and stumbled upon the perfect place: a little shop where you could choose your own onigiri (rice ball) filling! I got a set with 鮭といくら親子むすび　(salmon and salmon roe ‘parent and child’ – how cute!) and a bowl of hot soba noodles.  Perfection.

The Pixar exhibition was much better than I thought it would be, despite being overwhelmingly crowded as it was the opening day, and it made me really appreciate the effort that goes into 3D animation. They had videos of the process of making each individual muscle of a horse’s leg move so that it ran realistically, and even that was hard to get my head around, so next time I watch a Pixar film I’ll probably spend more time marvelling at the animation techniques than what’s actually happening in the story.

I accidentally bought a ticket to the other temporary exhibition, which was a bit too contemporary for me… no I’m not going to climb a fence in the middle of the room or bang on a wall because someone made a sign telling me to and called it art.  I drew the line at a room full of square wooden planks that had been hung all over the walls.

I consoled myself by buying The House at Pooh Corner in Japanese from the museum shop, then walked to the subway.  My day was topped off by an encounter with the best dog I’ve seen in Japan, a massive Akita being pulled along the road by his bike-riding owner.  We felt a connection that only a dog and a dog-lover can have: it looked into my eyes and I said hello, then it immediately tried to run towards me.  After checking it was ok with the owner, who warned me it might be a bit boisterous, I went closer and it jumped up to give me a big cuddle.  It was so fluffy, like a giant bunny rabbit.

I love that even though I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary that day, it will probably become one of my favourite days spent in Japan.

Sakura buds just starting to appear!

My best friend

 

Random Photos from January and February

Frozen river in Ajigasawa

Walking around Aji with Lauren after a day of snowboarding.

View of Iwaki-san from Ajigasawa.

Surprisingly good chips we ordered whilst karaoke-ing after the formal.

Enkai with fave school teachers.

What you get when you go to a doctor’s with a cold.

Earl grey tea waffle and a cafe mocha.

Making healthy Japanese food.

Rice, spinach and tuna, chicken with vegetables, tea, carrot steamed bun, pickled vegetables.

My valentines gift from Lauren.

Dinner and film at my place!

Oden

Oden menu.  Some items include: daikon (giant radish), konnyaku (devil’s tongue), boiled egg, Japanese omelette, fried yam, processed fish in a variety of forms, processed sausage, gyoza, burdock root, fried tofu, fish meatball, chicken kebab.

More oden

Cuban music and salsa night

Kimchi nabe

A chocobanana eel gacha toy

Another gacha toy, I have no idea what this is but I love it.

Fish set meal at my local restaurant.

Tanjoubi

(A month late… I will get back into posting, I promise!!)

Last year I spent the evening of my birthday drinking wine in the bath.  This year I sat in a jazz bar eating sushi and being charmed by a drunk Japanese businessman.  Both years were enjoyable, but I think I can look forward to my birthdays again if they all turn out to be as fun as this year’s!

Every Tuesday I meet my barber friend for English/Japanese practice, so I was planning on just going out for some food with him and my friend in the next town over.  At the last minute he suggested we go to his sister’s bar in Hirosaki, I imagine because the restaurant I originally wanted to go to is owned by his wife and he’s probably sick of it!  We picked up Lauren and drove over an hour through a snowy blizzard to get there.

Like a lot of bars in Japanese cities, it was situated down an alley underneath a building full of other bars; the inside was only big enough for a handful of people but didn’t feel cramped at all.  There were five or six bar stools of the worn-out suede variety, surrounding a sunken bar area where the mama in her black crochet shawl and red lipstick stood puffing on a cigarette.  She welcomed us in, chatting away as she poured us some whiskey and the other lady pottered around in the kitchen out back, bringing us little dishes of food one by one.    We had sushi, nabe, pickled vegetables and a little bowl of pork soup, followed by a kind of fruit pastry cake.  I wasn’t expecting any of it, so it was a lovely gesture and truly appreciated!

Toshiya said he wanted to hear me play something on the piano, so I brought some music just in case because I am one of those people who lack the ability to memorise any music worth listening to.  The time came, and I played my failsafe Nocturne No. 9 by Chopin; probably not the kind of thing that they hear in a jazz bar very often, but it was fun to play for people again.  When I finished, I saw that we’d gained an audience member in the form of a rather drunk salaryman, which explained the distant cheering I heard halfway through playing.  He proceeded to entertain us for the rest of the night, despite repeating half the things he’d already said, and gave the other bar mama some money to go out and buy me flowers from him.  Lucky me!

It makes me so happy to have friends like Toshiya; it’s thanks to the hospitality of Japanese people in the community that let me do things like this.  Even though I find it hard to befriend Japanese people in my tiny town, I’m glad to have met the handful of friends I do have.

Japanese Guys

Introducing my first comic drawn on my graphics tablet!  It’s taken a while to get finished, due to having to restart it a couple of times because A) my cartoon style sucked and B) I recently upgraded to the full version of the software I was trialing and learned that there is such a thing as LAYERS which made drawing this kinda thing a billion times easier.

To distinguish English dialogue from Japanese, I wrote what would’ve been said in Japanese in the slightly thicker ink pen style.

The older folk make enthusiastic conversation partners, but the intensity of topics tends to escalate rather quickly…

 

Goodbye Car

(Monday 26th January)

In other news, I was on my way home from evening taiko practice thinking how great it was that I hadn’t scratched my car yet this winter, when I skidded on the ice and collided with a snow bank on the other side of the road.  It was dark and the ice had refrozen into a sort of cheese-grater fashion, so this jolted my steering wheel and caused me to lose control; the already terrible breaks did nothing whatsoever, so my only choice was to let the snow bank take care of the situation for me.  It was over very quickly and there was no time to swerve; I just remember veering off to the side and thinking “Oh shit”, then hearing and feeling an almighty bang as I was bounced up in my seat upon impact.   The airbags burst out and my hip got bashed up against the steering wheel, but I knew I hadn’t hit my head.  As the car started filling up with smoke I wasted no time trying to get out, panicking slightly as my door was jammed and wouldn’t open, but managing to crawl out the passenger side instead.  The smoke smelled really bad, and after remembering that the engine was in the back of the car, I knew it was just coming from the airbags.  Upon realising I couldn’t see anything, and in no apparent danger, I popped back in to retrieve the glasses that had flown off my face.

An old lady came hobbling out of nowhere to see what had happened while I was on the phone to my neighbour, and her Tsugaru-ben was too heavy for me to understand properly so I passed her over to tell my neighbour where we were.  Luckily we were only 8 minutes from home so it wasn’t long before they came over.  Meanwhile a family from the house right by the scene came out, whose 12 year old daughter had heard the crash from her bedroom.  Even though it was bloody freezing, they stood outside and waited with me, bringing me a cup of tea and generally being lovely to me.  Then we looked up and realised the concrete telephone pole had cracked so that it was bending slightly from the waist.  Oops!!

When the shock started to set in, I started thinking all those horrible ‘What if’s, like if there had been a person or car there, would I have injured them?  What if I’d hit the pole harder and it fell down?! But there was no pavement, and I knew that I always slow down if I see another car or pedestrian coming, so I hoped that wouldn’t have been the case anyway.  I was going between 45 and 50km/h, which is probably the fastest I should have been going on icy roads (even with winter tyres), but luckily not fast enough to do myself any injury.  Even my supervisor said he drives faster than that on the ice.

So it turns out that despite me thinking that I wasn’t allowed to use the town car for anything except work, this evidently wasn’t the case as my supervisor appeared to have no idea why I had rented a car at all.  To cut a long story short, there was a misunderstanding and I can actually use it to go anywhere in Aomori, as long as I don’t have any passengers, I buy my own petrol for long journeys and I don’t leave it where I can’t get to it easily in an emergency.  I already understood this, but the difference was I just thought I couldn’t use it outside work whatsoever.  Oh well!  Saves me a few quid.  I had to spend the day at the BOE giving a detailed report of the incident.  I didn’t get any points taken off my license because I didn’t do myself or anyone else any injury, wasn’t speeding or driving irresponsibly, and it was clearly the ice that caused the problem.

The man I rented the car from was so kind though and was barely making any money from me using it.  It had to be scrapped, and I felt so bad that I wrecked his car not even having had it for a month.  I made him a cake.  I also felt a bit better when he said that I was his third customer that day who crashed one of his cars.  A teacher at my school also wrecked his car that morning on the ice.  It was clearly a bad day for driving!!  Naturally, the next day was gloriously sunny and all the ice disappeared off the roads.  At least this time I got myself in trouble I was only eight minutes from home, as opposed to 4 hours away by train in another prefecture.