Thursday was a weird day in a lot of ways. For one, the students had to come in today for a closing ceremony, and then they could go home. Because our gym is undergoing an earthquake retrofit, they decided to hold the ceremony out on the field. Since it has been cold, the powers that be said that the students could wear jackets out there. How nice.
I walked to school in the cold and wind, but there were no clouds in the sky and it seemed like just another cold day. About thirty minutes after I arrived, we looked out the window and could see drifting flakes. Suddenly, it started to dump snow. There was snow everywhere, and it was coming fast.
The students had already mostly arrived, so they huddled up in their classrooms and listened to the closing ceremony over the public address system. Then, they told all the students to get home as carefully as possible.
I walked around and took pictures, and I put some of them in the photo gallery. As usual you could tell that I was a California boy – taking pictures of snow… what a freak.
The snow was everywhere, not just in Takasago, and it was affecting trains and traffic. Cars were skidding all over the road, and my teachers were making arrangements to go buy chains for their cars to get out of there. Around noon I told the vice principal that I had better leave before they shut down the Sanyo train line, and he said no problem.
I walked out to the station, and they were only running local trains. They were coming and going on weird time frames, so luckily I wasn’t going too far. I had originally planned to see King Kong with Antoine in Kobe, and Kuniko was planning on attending a year end party for her school, but both events were cancelled and we ended up staying home, staying warm, and eating tacos.
