As the title suggests, yes, there is (was) snow in Matsuyama, quite a bit too. We woke up to just a blanket of white on the cars, streets and mountains near by. We woke up super early and took a walk around the neighborhood, snapping photos and enjoying one of my newest hobbies; foot onsens! Within a 10 min walk of Sen, there are 10 public, free, hot spring water fed foot baths at various hotels and other places. In the morning, nothing beats sipping on a coffee, pants rolled up, sitting in a nice garden with you feet in steaming hot water (helps if there’s snow around too). In the evening, one of Nori and I’s favorite pastime is drinking some umeshu (Japanese plum liqueur) with our tired toots in one of these foot baths…definitely some of our best ideas have come from these epic sit-downs.
Of course, it hasn’t been all foot baths and snow around here lately; we’ve been working. God, some days seem like we do SO much, others will be spent on one small detail, which we end up changing the next day. Really taking on a “2 steps forward, 1 step back” kinda progress lately. Things are coming along and (happily) we will soon be getting out of this phase and into the next, which is being dubbed (right now, as I’m writing) the reconstruction phase. As you guessed, that means our contractor and construction guys will be here for the next week putting in our flooring, cleaning our carpets and changing our toilets (sorry all you lovers of squat toilets). Before I sign off, I wanna show you to projects that are near completion: the dorm partitions and one of the cafe tables.