Last weekend we went to Toga Village again. It's my third time there and it's quite nice. It is really small (under a thousand people), but it holds lots of festivals. Don't know quite how they do it. This was a soba (buckwheat noodle) festival. Toga is famous for it's soba. At the festival, there were tons of snow sculptures everywhere. The biggest snow festival is in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido. It is quite famous and held on the same weekend. The Toga festival is supposed to be a small-scale festival of the same kind. I think Sapporo has ice sculptures though.

The snow sculptures were made my professionals and college students. The professional ones were huge and must have taken weeks to build. One was a huge castle and stage. There was a giant seal for kids to slide on, an Easter Island head, some more buildings, and a bridge. The smaller sculptures done by students included Big Bird, Ernie, Hello Kitty, Doraemon, and other Japanese characters. A bunch of us JETs went up on Saturday and built three sculptures in the afternoon. We built a giant chair to sit in, a shinkansen train (bullet train), and the head of Jaws. It was fun, and they came out quite nice. Unfortunately it was a hot day, and the next day was hot too. The smaller sculptures melted some, but they still looked fine. We are having strangely warm weather (up to 11 degrees celsius) right now. Maybe spring will come early.

On Sunday we went snowboarding at Toga's ski resort, Snow Valley. We got a discount on account of the festival. They had a pretty easy run for beginners, which I did pretty well on. There was also a long 5km path down the mountain I boarded down twice, but it was pretty narrow, so not so much fun. It stinks to be worried about falling off a cliff. The alternative was a very steep straight shot down the mountain. Unfortunately there are only two settings at Snow Valley: easy and really tough. I just did the easy ones. I'm a wuss. I think I bruised my tailbone though, which is no fun. I think it's strange though, since the snow was the softest it has been at any place. It was a little too mushy, but good to practice on.

This weekend is a Valentine's Day formal on Saturday, and a Japanese teacher training lesson on Saturday morning. Plus it's my birthday on Sunday. So it will be a busy weekend.