Since this is my last article, I want to talk about something fun--snow! This past week it snowed three or four days in a row and everytime I looked outside it was absolutely beautiful! All over campus, snowmen popped up (even mini ones on cars) and snowballs were thrown. Two of my professors stopped class out of nowhere to make us watch the falling snow the first day. The snowflakes are so huge here, and there are so many of them! Often they were big enough to easily catch on my phone camera.
A few weeks ago, I noticed these red and white poles popped up around campus and I could not for the life of me figure out what they were for. I was later told they are so drivers can see where the curbs are when it snows--and it did snow quite a few inches. In Akita and other parts of northern Japan, the streets are actually heated from below so snow can't accumulate.
Unfortunately, this does not include the streets of my university. This is great and all when you want to walk through snow, but with snow also comes ice. Any walkways through the snow immediately turn into ice and only another layer of snow would give any traction.
