Going to a Snow Festival

 Yesterday Chris, one of the regular teachers at International University of Japan, invited me to go to a Snow Festival with him and his wife. We planned to meet at Urasa Station at 5 p.m. so I decided to take the free school bus that leaves at 4:01, rather pay for a taxi. The bus arrived early so I got on and sat down, but many of the students were outside in the parking lot taking pictures.

 Since I was about 40 minutes early when I arrived at the station, I decided to look around. One of the first things I found was this rock garden which was almost completely buried under the snow.

 I walked as far as the main road and found that there were few stores. Directly across the street there is a 7/11 and a bit farther down the street you can see the restaurant where Tony and I had lunch just after I first arrived here.

 I found a statue with a roof of snow. I do not know who it is because the snow is covering the inscription on the front.

 In front of the station there is a tower and it, too, has a cap of snow.

 Even the support for the traffic light has a large blob of snow on it.

 I turned and looked in the other direction and found that there is not much more here. Urasa is definitely a small country town.

To get to the inside of the station, I had to cross a pedestrian bridge over the tracks. I was surprised to see that the snow was actually higher than the tracks.