Day 146 in Japan - Cooold Night... Frooozen Night (sing to "Silent Night")

On my bike ride to work this morning, all of the puddles were frozen. It definitely dipped down into the negatives last night, and the weather website says that it was about -2 degrees in downtown Akashi. Brrrr.

Today at school, we had another day of disaster prevention! Although, I’m pretty sure that at Shimizu yesterday, the focus of the day was on Earthquake Drills, and today’s Akashi kita even was definitely a Fire Drill. I was really interested to see whether the students would be asked to take their shoes to go outside – normally the students and staff all wear “indoor” shoes, and it’s frowned upon to go outside in your indoor shoes. Thankfully, common sense prevailed, and we didn’t force 1000 students to change shoes in the middle of a mock emergency. All of the staff put on their thickest coats in preparation for the drill, and the students were all wearing scarves. A few of the staff were unhappy that the students weren’t in full uniform (scarves aren’t allowed in school), but thankfully, they were allowed to wear them! It was about 2 degrees outside, and we were out there for about an hour, in the end. It was very exciting – the firemen came and gave talks, and then 3 students and a lovely teachers (she is so cute and hardworking – Yamada-sensei?) got to give demonstrations of outing out fires with a chemical fire extinguisher. The fire extinguishers spat out pink powder, which surprised me. I am used to using the CO2 extinguishers, so the ammonium hydrogen phosphate extinguishers were new to me (I had a talk with my school principal about why it was pink. He is an ex-chemist and he wrote out the chemical formula on the ground for me.).

Don't let the blue sky fool you - it was 2 degrees in the sun. 

FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

The aftermath - pink powder everywhere - (NH4)2HPO4

With my ESS club, we watched the 2009 CGI version of “A CHRISTMAS CAROL”. It was very faithful to the books, which is another way of saying that it confused the crap out of my poor 15-16 year old students. There were a lot of points of ye olde English language and culture that we had to clarify afterwards (“But WHY were there coins on the dead man’s eyes?”).

Sam and I actually both had a night off together for the first time since Sunday, so I saw him for more than an hour. And he had very big plans for tonight – McDonalds has released an “Icons of Chicken” box here, so you get nuggets and breast pieces and some dipping sauces and stuff. We had a great night of playing Sam and Max (episode 202 – something about Christmas), listening to Carols and eating McDonalds chicken.

Food Highlight of the Day: McDonalds has a “Sour Cream and Onion” dipping sauce which is surprisingly good.