The past week, even by Hokkaido standards, has been exceedingly cold. The daytime temperature stubbornly refused to rise above freezing, while the winds from Siberia blew and blew, and blew some more. In the center of Hokkaido in Obihiro, where Sanae is from, the mercury dropped to -23 Celsius last Wednesday night. I reckon the only person reading this who can relate to those sort of temperatures is my sister Sue down in Antarctica (though she would probably dismiss them as 'mild'). We have had our first fall of 'permanent snow', only a couple of centimeters thankfully. Further north, up around Asahikawa they already have 50 centimeters and counting. What is slightly troubling is that this type of cold weather, while not unusual in Hokkaido, is highly unusual this early in the winter. Typically a week long spell of sub-zero temperatures such as what we are suffering through, would be par for the course around the end of January / beginning of February. But in the middle of December? It doesn't auger well for the rest of the winter.
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