Okay, I just had a fairly strange conversation with one of my teachers about using a VCR in class. The teacher told me that we can't use a VCR during tomorrow's class because it is snowing outside. She says that you can't use VCRs if it is too moist. However, I don't think it's really any more moist now than it has been at any other time in Toyama. It's just that it is snow instead of rain. I told her I didn't want to use the VCR outside or something. She said that in Japan things don't work if it is snowing outside. Strange....

I did finally get her to agree that if I took the VCR into the teacher's room tomorrow and let it heat up, that this might be an acceptable solution. Also, I said I would make a back-up plan just in case that fails, for whatever reason. It was snowing yesterday and I managed to play the video for all my classes then, so I don't really know why it wouldn't work.

I find that Japanese people have an attitude about things that is often similar to this. They like to say "that's just the way it is," then not deal with something. Hopefully I haven't written about this yet, but here is another example, one of the ALTs here got a car recently. He decided he wanted to drive to school. His vice principal said that he is not able to because of city hall regulations. So he talked to the supervisor at city hall, and he was told that he can't drive to school because of the rules. Apparently the JET program says the supervisors can't give JETs extra money for transportation. So to get around this rule, our city hall made a rule saying that every day all the JETs report to city hall and then go to their schools from city hall on official business trips, which means they can pay us back for transportation costs. However, there is another rule that says you can't take a personal car on a business trip. When they discussed the situation with the JET, it was like there had always been these rules and that the rules couldn't be modified at all. However, they obviously created this one rule about the business trips (which is a complete fabrication of course) just to get around some other rule. So they should be able to create another rule to get around the no personal car rule, right? Anyway, I think this JET finally decided to find a parking place near his work and park there and walk to work every day. That's apparently not against the rules.

So anyway, it's been snowing here a lot. Tokyo got hit by a snowstorm a couple days ago, and it seems to have moved to Toyama. We have over a foot of snow, and it's still falling. The snowstorm is quite a shock. It really got cold and wet quite quickly. The Japanese teachers all have rubber boots, which I desperately need. I need to go to the store and see if I can find a size 30. I wear size 30 bowling shoes, and that's a pretty good fit. For anyone with larger feet than 12/13 U.S., you'll need to bring your own bowling shoes in Japan. I've thought about just buying a pair of shoes, because bowling is quite popular in Japan, and a little expensive. So far I've played 4 times, and gotten 104, 105, 106, and 92 as my scores. On Sunday Victoria and I went bowling with a bunch of high school students from Elita's English club. It was fun, but they didn't practice their English as much as I hoped they would. I was looking forward to talkative students, however her high schoolers were just like my junior high school kids.