It is getting warmer day by day, and the snow is melting fast.
Sunny days are noticeably warmer, and the cold nights continue.
Don't remove your winter tires yet.
There are still more snowfalls to come, but many less than during the pervious 4 or 5 months.
Hokkaido, during the the months of NO SNOW, is a totally free nature zone, if ever there was one.
Walking, driving, riding a bicycle, riding a horse, riding anything at all, is much easier and more enjoyable, than it is during the season of MUCH SNOW.
The season of no snow, will soon be upon us.Every Saturday morning starting at about 10:30, I have a private lesson with a very bright and intelligent elementary school girl.
As I was getting ready for the lesson at about 10:00, all of a sudden a big noise that sounded like someone was using a big Wet/Dry Vacuum Cleaner, started reverberating throughout my entire classroom.
At first, I though maybe the heating/cooling AC unit on my balcony was acting up, but when I checked it out, it was working OK.
Finally at about 11:30 when the lesson was finished, I went outside to look and see if I could find the source of the constant noise.
I found it to be coming from the kitchen exhaust fans 換気扇 of the Soba Noodle Restaurant directly below my classroom.
I asked the building manager if she would go into the kitchen and ask about the source of the noise.
She did so, and came up to my classroom a few minutes later to explain that the fan system had started having trouble on Friday night, and that it is continuing still today.
A few hours later, the restaurant manager came up to my classroom to apologize for the disturbance, and to inform me that the fan will be replaced as soon as possible.
It seems that it will take about one week to get a new unit.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of these people.
They are good neighbors.
However, when compared to the noise that I had to put up with during last summer, when the entire outside of this building was being completely redone, this noise is not so bad.
Things could be worse, but they aren't.
In fact, the noise will be gone by about next Saturday or Sunday.
Silence is Golden.
