Ice Candles

Ted teaches in the Outdoor Life Department. In the US it might be called Outdoor Recreation.  It’s a small four year program, with each year’s students doing things together.  One class, called Winter Activities, has the third year students teaching activities to the first year students.  Yesterday at go koume (fifth period – starting at 4:20 pm) the Ice Candles activity was held. I hung out as an observer, taking pictures and meeting students.

It was a very informal atmosphere and everyone seemed to be having a good time.  The class was held in the 1^st year Jikkenshitsu (study room). (Each year has their own room with lockers, tables, food preparation area, etc.) 

Two third year students explained the process, then step by step went around the room helping the first year students with the construction of the milk cartons and coffee cans to make the container for the ice candles. At the end they were taken outside to be left until frozen.

Questions Answered

I’ve been asked several questions, so I thought I’d answer them here.
What is the time difference between here and the US? Hokkaido is 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

What is the size of the reindeer ornament? It is approximately 10 cm x 12.5 cm.

Am I really hating all this snow and cold? Amazingly, no, I’m not minding it.  If I were in Raleigh with a ton of snow and daily highs of 25 degrees F, I would be hating it, but here I don’t have to drive in it and it’s been fun so far.  Every day I think it is amazingly unbelievable to have so much snow, and then it snows some more! Last night it was snowing when we walked over to the ice candles activity.  When we got ready to come home, it was snowing so hard I could barely see ahead of me. Three or four more inches had accumulated in the couple of hours we were at the ice candles activity.  Before moving here, I couldn’t have imagined so much snow.

What am I stitching?

I’m working on this Caterina de’Medici Embroidery kit that purchased from the Italian ladies at Calloway two years ago.  They were taking the Japanese embroidery class and had a table at merchandise night, selling their hand painted silk threads and buratto fabric.  I liked all the colors they had, but with my budget being what it was, I only purchased the blue. The stitch is a double running stitch on the thin, loosely woven fabric.