what do you see?

Since then it warmed up quite a bit, over zero in the day a few times, including yesterday when it was up to 7. We went skiing, finally, from 9 til 1 at Tanno again, really nice and sunny but getting a bit slushy because it was so warm. We managed to cope without injuring ourselves, and I think we're confident enough now to try some other places.

So March dawns chilly and sunny here at last - it feels like a psychological barrier's been broken now as we enter what should be the last wintery month here!

Happy St David's Day to everyone in Wales or of proud Welsh origin!!

Good news, we just got the computer back from being fixed today, a few days earlier than expected, so we're out of the computerless doldrums and back in business!

Another day off yesterday, as another blizzard dumped a couple of feet of snow on us. We spent most of the morning digging out the car again, and we're OK now. I'm working tonight only. It was a third of what we had last time, but still bad!

Hope everyone had a happy Valentine's! We went out for dinner last night after eating lots of chocolate during the day, and finally went skiing this morning! Had a 2 hour lesson which went well, we really enjoyed it! Pretty mild here, about 0 or 1C, above freezing which is rare. It was only -2 last night having been -17 the night before! It's snowing a bit and we're expecting maybe 50cm overnight...here we go again...

Sorry again! our keyboard's still not fixed but we should get it fixed soon - we hope our insurance will pay for it.
We hope to go skiing tomorrow. still trying to summon up the courage!

Had Wednesday off and went for a drive to see some favourite plces in the snow, and walk on Lake Akan...oh yes, I took a Japanese test on Sunday morning by the way...results in 3-4 weeks...

sorry about the lack of updates to the blog, as always we've been very busy. the snow is still well and truly on the ground although we haven't had much new snow for quite awhile. yesterday and today we tried cross country skiing for the first time - there's a place in Abashiri where it's free to use the course and rent the equipment. it went pretty well!