Our oven is officially broken. It is supposed to be fan-assisted, but the fan seems to have seized up, so it now takes about 3 hours to bake a potato. For once our landlord has been responsive and gotten someone in to look at it quickly. Many other maintenance tasks have lasted for months before being fixed. It looks like he will have to order a new fan, so we will have to wait for that.

We are gearing up for our trip to Japan. It is very exciting. We have the hotels booked now, so we are pretty much all set. We have been exchanging some money beforehand since the cash machines in Japan are not connected well internationally.

We will visit Tokyo, Nikko, Toyama, Kyoto, and Izumo. We are planning on seeing some new places in Kyoto. There is so much interesting stuff to see near Kyoto that it shouldn't be hard.

Snow and cold weather are the predominant themes in Sheffield right now. This weekend it snowed most of the day on Sunday, but it didn't stick much. Tonight it seems to be hailing, after a day of bitter cold. Yikes! Seems like winter has finally arrived, after much delay. The meteorologists thought it would be the coldest winter in recent years, but it hasn't really snowed or been all that cold. Hopefully the cold streak will end quickly and the warm(er) weather will arrive.

Tonight it started snowing when I was coming home from work. There was a lot of snow, coming down fast. Within one hour it was sticking to the roads. However, it just stopped after that hour, and nothing is left now. I think it is the first time it has really snowed since we had flurries in November.

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, or as they call it in England, Pancake Day. Someone asked me if we celebrated Pancake Day in the U.S. I told them every Sunday was pancake day in my mind.

For Shrove Tuesday there are sometimes pancake flipping races and such, but I don't know of anything like that in Sheffield. Victoria and I did make pancakes last night to eat. The British style pancake is a bit more like crepes than the U.S. style pancake. We had ours with M&Ms, ice cream, and syrup. They were yummy.

We almost didn't have enough ingredients for pancakes, but the day before, the neighbors who live above us brought us a bunch of food. They have their groceries delivered, and there was a mix-up. Somehow they ended up with a lot of food they didn't order. The supermarket gave it to them free, so that was nice. It was too much for them, so they gave some to us, including eggs. Also, Victoria remembered we needed more milk on the way back from Japanese class, so we were able to pick some up at the convenience store.