Niigata Snow

 The round building is the end of the library and the other buildings house the classrooms, faculty offices, and some other things.

 This was looking in the opposite directions, away from the school. There is a row of mountains in the background, even if you can not see them.

 This is almost the same view as in the first picture, but there has been a short break in the snow so you can see the base of the mountains.

 This is more or less the same view as the second picture and now the mountains are much clearer.

 The first floor of the Research Institute, where I have my office, contains a faculty lounge. I have been told that this is where we will have the graduation for the course I am teaching.

Although it has been snowing almost continuously since I got here, there have been a few breaks. From what I have been able to see, it is very beautiful around here.

International University of Japan

 This is the view out the window at the end of the hall in front of my office. You can see it but there is a row of mountains behind the line of trees. It frequently snows so hard that the visibility is reduced to almost nothing.

From the window at the other end of the hall, you can see the main campus and at this time some of the mountains were visible. The black line in the middle is the path that I must take to get from my classroom to my office.

At the ground level the path looks like this. The top of the snow on the side is level with my shoulders.

 In the first floor waiting room for the bus to town, I found this scale model of the campus. My apartment is in the bottom left corner, the main campus is in the middle and my office is the last building on the leftmost road.

The trees are truly beautiful. Instead of leaves, they are dressed in blobs of snow.





International University of Japan

 This is the view out my apartment window. The building in the background is housing for married faculty and the campus proper is beyond that.

 This is looking out a third floor window at the main entrance to the university. The dark area in the foreground is a roof. It is hard to see, but water is spraying out from the pipe on the wall and there is water spraying from just in front of where I was standing. The water keeps the snow from piling up on the roof. According to the TV news a number of houses have collapsed because of the weight of the snow on the roofs.

 This the view out of another window. The roof on the left covers a walkway that leads to the cafeteria and the student dorms.

 This is my office. It has a computer with an internet connection and I was given all the office supplies that I will need. It has central heating so it is a good place to stay on cold days. So far I have been arriving at about 7 a.m. and staying here until about 5 p.m., leaving, of course, for classes and such.

This is the view out some first floor windows. You can see how high the snow is. In most places it is over my head.

International University of Japan

 After a confusing tour of the campus (lots of round about routes and a huge information overload, I was taken to the place where I will stay. I have a one room apartment that is on campus. The end of the room in the picture contains a bed, open shelves, a table with two chairs, and a TV that gets the regular channels plus the satellite channels.

 From behind the bed, the kitchen area is on the other side of the table. There is a dish cabinet with three sets of dishes and silverware. Next to the stove/sink unit there is a microwave oven and a toaster. There is also a small refrigerator. The blue object on the left is my suitcase. Also on the left is an entrance into the other area of the apartment.

 The other area contains a washer and drier. The door to the toilet/bath unit is on the right beside the washer and on the left there is a large closet.

There is a small entrance hall, so that you can take off you shoes, which are definitely covered with snow.

I had a telephone call from my wife and she said that my camera has been repaird and that it is in the mail. Hopefully it will arrive today so I can start using it again.