Canadian Curse?

So I've noticed a strange correlation between snow in Towada and my mother recently.

The first snow in Towada came right when my mom and aunts visited me in November. At the time we joked that they brought the (Canadian) snow with them. In fact, it hasn't been so cold or snowed so much for an extended period of time since their visit.

But that's not the only thing.

Lately, whenever my mother's called, she's asked me about the weather in Towada, and each time my reply has (truthfully) been the same: "It was snowing, but it's pretty much melted recently." THEN the very next day, it gets really cold and starts snowing again!

No joking, it's 3-3 in the past month or two!

At first I thought that the most recent call was going to break the trend since it didn't snow on Sunday, but then I remembered that my mom called after 12am on Sunday, so today (Monday) was the next day, not Sunday. And yes, it did snow! @_@

In happier news, today was Hinamatsuri (Girls' Festival). This is a day celebration where people put up multi-tiered displays of dolls representing the Imperial Court of the Heian Period and eat special foods. Apparently the festival originated from the ancient belief that dolls could contain spirits. Long ago people would send straw hina dolls floating on boats down rivers etc. out to the sea, carrying evil spirits with them.

Anyway, in honor of Hinamatsuri, the special education class I sometimes help with at one of the junior high schools had a mochi-making class on Friday (since only one of the two students could attend class that day). We made kinako mochi and matcha to drink with it. (The mochi looks weird, but it tasted pretty good!)

The teacher also had three other types of mochi purchased for us to eat: sakura mochi, a green mochi that was supposed to be shaped like a bird (I didn't really see the resemblance, though, and I forgot the Japanese name ^^;; ) and sakura doumyouji (still sakura mochi, but Kansai-style). I only got to eat the sakura mochi and kinako mochi while we were there, but they gave me a green mochi and sakura doumyouji to take home. (Sakura mochi is so called because it is pink and it has an actual sakura leaf on it; the leaf is actually quite salty.

For school lunch today we also had "hina cake" which was a pink (cherry?) mousse type cake--yummy!

One of the people from the Towada Board of Education office also brought Hinamatsuri sweets for us to try. It was the green mochi and sakura doumyoji again, but there was also a white bun. I was expecting it (the white bun) to have red bean or some sort of sweet filling in it, but it actually had veggies so it was pretty salty.