Fubuki

The weather over the past few days has been extreme. On Saturday the weather was bad. On Sunday it was snowy, freezing and so windy that the trains stopped running. Come Monday, it was still far too windy for the trains to run. Apparently there was awful trouble with the Sr. High Schools, the students of which rely on trains to get them to school. It wasn't an ordinary school day, either. It was a test day for the current students, and also for the kids who will be students there from April. I stood at the window of the staff room on Monday, looking out with wonder at the clumps of sea foam that were blowing about in the air and falling onto the school field. The school is not next to the sea.

On Tuesday when I went to Kamagadai I found that a lot of new snow had fallen. The whole time I was there it continued to fall heavily. I only had one class, so after it finished the vice principal gave me a one hour lesson on the koto in the music room. After work, I needed to go into Honjo to take back some DVDs. I hadn't been able to take them back over the weekend because the video store was undergoing a renovation until Monday. So they were due back no later than Tuesday and no earlier either. Unfortunately, the trains were still not running. I told the driver about my dilemma on the way back from Kamagadai, and he took me to the bus stop to check the bus times. We found when the next bus to Honjo would leave, but not where in Honjo it would stop. There are two places in Honjo that busses may stop, one place being a fifteen minute walk from the video store and the other being over an hour away. So I went home thinking that I had one hour before I had to start my horribly inconvenient and freezing trek to the video store and back. But then, I got a call from Machiko-san at the BOE. Apparently, the driver had gone there and told her about my problem, and she (as always) had a solution to it. Apparently her husband would soon be going into Honjo to pick their son up from school because, of course, since the trains weren't running he couldn't get home on his own. So Machiko-san arranged for her husband to come and get the DVDs from me and to take them to Honjo for me. I was so happy and relieved!

I had a very quiet day at the Elementary school yesterday. Apparently on Monday there was a continuous stream of second and third grade pupils going to the sick room with, uh-oh, influenza. All the sick kids were sent home but on Tuesday even more kids were sick. Yesterday, all the second and third grade kids were at home whether they were sick or not in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading, but unfortunately that measure had been taken too slowly and many pupils of other grades were absent too. Out of the other four grades worth of pupils who should have been at school, 56 were absent, 53 of them with the 'flu. Fully half of the first grade pupils had the 'flu, as well as about a quarter of each of the higher grade classes. All together, less than half of Konoura's Elementary school kids actually attended school yesterday. The lunch room felt very empty indeed.

Today the weather is much nicer, although it is still snowy and cold. I hope this cold snap does not bother me next week when I go on holiday to the Kansai area.