How to make a snowman / At Shinjuku Gyoen La Bohème
I said it was around Friday afternoon, but it was Saturday morning when the white stuff began to fall. .
Why does it feel so special when it snows? Is it because the temperature is going down, so I instinctively move my body and try to burn fat? "I feel nervous."
Because I'm from Nagaoka, I have a feeling that snow inevitably fills my surroundings in winter. Still.
One day in November, during Japanese language class in junior high school, a bored student casually looked outside and shouted, "Oh, it's snowing!"
Then, the entire class of 40 members roared with excitement, leaving their classes behind and gathering at the window. Teachers who were left behind at the lectern still came to the window with their textbooks and chalk in hand, and made comments such as, "This isn't going to pile up!"
Nagaoka in Niigata is an area where it never snows all winter. There are years when there is no snow on New Year's Day, but it is not uncommon for the snow to fall to about 1 meter in late January.
Even though it's something that comes every year, even the most mischievous guys look at the white thing with a mysterious expression.
When a "daruma stove" is installed in the classroom and the duty carries coal every morning, snow is not uncommon.
The whole town fell silent, as if it had been warned, "Be quiet!" Out of the box, everything is pure white. Even though the sunlight is blocked, the indirect lighting system makes the pure white snow a soft natural footlight.
It reminds me of a virtual substance called "ether" that was thought to fill all the spaces in the universe (*).
In 1963, when I was in elementary school, it snowed heavily.
I don't know how much it rained in the record, but in one night, the first floor of our house was completely covered with snow.
When I woke up in the morning, the entrance was pitch black, and the snow had piled up so fast that it covered everything, even the "snowy" fence that surrounded the house just outside. Since the first floor is covered with snow, I will go in and out through the window of the children's room on the second floor.
I remember being unable to open the door near the front door with the strength of a child, probably because of the weight of the snow on the house.
The snow that falls in Tokyo has a different nuance.
Because it only accumulates once every few years, the familiar scenery is covered with a thin white layer, and the perfect expression is just like snow.
And, unthinkable in the snow country, "snowmen" of half-baked shapes and sizes, made by gathering as much snow as possible, appear here and there.
Usually, by the afternoon of the next day, it will have lost its form and become a fuzzy object with a touch of whiteness mixed with dirt and dust.
Here's how to make a real snowman.
First, scoop the snow roughly with both hands to make a snowball about the size of a baseball. Throw it in the fresh snow (yes, the snowman looks good in the fresh snow).
Gently roll it around to make it about the size of a dodgeball. If you've come this far, it's already here. Just keep your hips as low as possible and push hard. A turning moment acts, and the snowball grows just like a "snowball". Perhaps this is the “best part of the snowman”, and the expression of the person who rolls it looses. I also like the feeling of leaving traces (spurs?) on the smooth surface of the snow to the right and left. At the end, I will roll it to the planned construction position of the snowman.
Once you have created the "body", make a "head" in the same way (slightly smaller) and place it on top of the "body". Once the snowman is shaped, you can pat the surface with something like a small shovel. This makes the surface of the snowman harder and less likely to melt. Technically, it can be brought to a certain level of smoothness, although it is not a "mud ball".
After that, you can make a face with "charcoal" or put a "bucket hat" on it.
Smoothly reminds me of a story about a university courtyard in Ochanomizu more than 10 years ago where there was no snowman, but a "snow art" with a certain theme. Once the snow has melted, it hardens again, and when the temperature drops, it hardens. The male student must have hardened it many times. It's a somewhat problematic subject, but it seems that it was already in a state where no one could easily get their hands on it.
By the way, the snow that should have been glimmering outside wasn't falling at all.
Weather Forecast Lies!
* Ether: A virtual substance established by Huygens in 1678 as a substance that transmits light and electromagnetic waves. In the world of chemistry, it is the ether of organic compounds, and is said to date back to the Greek view of nature, which does not accept a vacuum. English reading of ether.