It’s really cold today!! I woke up and it was supposed to be minus two degrees or something like that! No wonder I didn’t feel warm even with the heater on. All I wanted to do was to stay under my heated blanket and sleep.

And it basically snowed on and off today, which, coupled with the subzero temperatures, meant that the snow didn’t melt. It means we have scenes like this:

Near Muromi Station

 and this:

Church 😀

While people like my brother might be very happy (and he asked me to go play with the snow while on FaceTime), I’m sufficiently old and have too little energy to keep warm. I spent the day just shivering in my clothes.

At least it’s an excuse to run a hot bath! Hopefully tomorrow clears up.

Visit to Japan Self Defence Forces (JSDF) Camp

On to warmer topics. On Friday, which was a 3-9 degrees day (and which sounds absolutely warm by today’s standards), my sub-zemi went on a field trip to a JSDF camp!! The first time I’ve ever been to one too, so I was pretty excited.

Except about the having to wear a suit part. Good thing suits have a pants version for ladies, so I could wear my heat-tech tights underneath.

The first part of the visit was a lecture on Japan’s Peace Keeping Operations. Since the current active mission is the one in South Sudan, that was the case study. As someone who used to do MUN, I found this really interesting, and it brought up the old “do PKOs/UN resolutions help?” question that I used to have (after realising how little resolutions actually do). But the JSDF do a lot of humanitarian work – road building, training, etc, which is really cool.

The second part was the fun part! We got to go see some equipment, THEN TRY ARMY RATIONS!! No photos allowed for the most part, but we were allowed to take photos of the food.

By the way, do you know the SDJF has a vehicle-like thing that can cook rice and soup? So cool!

Beef Stew Packet

They actually gave us a variety of rations + onigiri, so we could try a bunch of stuff. Kinda fun, like a picnic 😀

This was some sort of rice. And the smaller container was pickles!

So apparently all the food was really high in calories, which makes sense cause they need the energy. And the flavour is stronger, which actually suits me better, because Singaporean here hahahaha. The food was honestly very good, and I wouldn’t mind having a few packets lying around the house. But according to the soldiers, you can get sick of this after eating it for many days straight, especially if you have to eat it cold!

Beef Stew

The last, and final part of the tour was a lecture on the budget of the JSDF and how they work in general. The last time I was in a similar tour was when we went to see the Officer Cadet School in Singapore, and we definitely did not get to hear about the inner workings.

Not too sure what this had to do with telecommunications (my zemi topic), but it was a super interesting trip all the same.

Now, I really, really hope there’s no more snow when I step out of the house tomorrow, because I have to be in school for first period.