It snowed a little, and the forecast says snow storm will come tomorrow.

  It was cloudy in the morning. After posting the New Year cards at the Sakuragi post office, I walked south to Kawazoe. It was not snowing, but in the afternoon, it began to snow and there is about 5 cm snow on the ground. I sent an email to Tomoko in Sendai, and she answered in the evening saying she is in hospital again. She is suffering from serious lung disease, so when it is severely cold, she must be cared in the hospital. She says she is suffering from drug side effect.

I wrote New Year cards all afternoon.

  There are only ten days left for this year. Time really flies !  As we grow older, we feel as if the same kind of hings happened repeatedly. Nature changes in the same way every year. In spring, snow melts, and fresh leaves come out, and the same flowers come out in the same places. Summer comes, and it gets warmer, of course, and the mountains and fields are covered with green all over. In autumn and winter, the landscapes look the same as in the previous year. Now, it is December, and people are busy preparing for Christmas and for the coming new year. Every kind of stores are struggling to sell as many things as possible as Christmas and year end sales. It was the last day to buy the year-end lottery, but we had forgotten to buy them. We had bought them every year, but had never won.   

It was hard to stand at the crossing when the temperature was -10 degrees.

  Every Tuesday morning, from 7:30-8:10, I have to stand at a crossing as a crossing guard. This morning, the temperature was -10 degrees Celsius, so it was hard to stand there for as long as 40 minutes.
  TV reports repeatedly stories about Kim Jong Il. It had been decided before Kim Jong Il's death that his third son, Kim Jong Un, would take over power from his father. But Kim Jong Il's death came so suddenly that it created more uncertainty about the stability of its new regime.  

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died.

  It was a very cold,but sunny day today, too. I left home at 9:30 for my usual walking exercise, and on the way, I dropped in at the post office to buy 30 New Year cards. I had printed about 40 cards at home, which I am going to send to my friends and old students, but found I needed some more.
  At the news hour of NHK at noon, big news of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's death was reported. Kim Jong Il was 69 years old. He was traveling somewhere, and, on the way, he seems to have died all of a sudden. He was suffering from diabetes and had been attacked by stroke twice before.

Heavy snowfalls in central Hokkaido,today,too.

  It was fine here in Tomakomai, but in Iwamizawa and many other places in central Hokkaido, it has been continuing to snow heavily for couple of days and nights. My sister, Kazuko, lives in Iwamizawa, and she sent me an email yesterday saying she was quite tired of heavy snow. She works as an acountant for a little company there, and commutes to her office on foot, but she had to come home by taxi because of heavy snow. She says the snow on the ground is as deep as 1.5 m.
 I watched succer matches of Toyota Cup. In the 3rd -place match, Kashiwa Reysol was defeated by penalty shoot out. In the Cup final match, Balcerona from Spain won the victory over Santos from Brazil by the score of 4-0, and became the champion.

The coldest morning for this season－10.5 degree below freezing point !

  In the morning, it was very cold. The temperature was minus 10.5 degrees Celsius, the coldest for this season !  But it was sunny, so I went for my routine walking toward the Tomakomai river. The number of water birds seemed to have increased.
  In the afternoon, I enjoyed watching succer games of the Emperor's cup. Kyoto Sanga defeated the defending champion team Kashima Antlers by 1-0 and proceeded to the quarter final. Kyoto belongs to the Division II of J-League.     

Michiko Mokudai, an old student of mine who is suffering from cancer is in a critical condition.

   It took me almost all afternoon and evening to design and print our New Year cards. But in the morning, I, as usual, went out for walking as far as Kawazoe. Ayako went to the hospital to check her diabetes in the morning.
   Miki Takano, one of my old students, emailed me saying Michiko Mokudai, one of her old classmates, is suffering from the side-effect of her cancer treatment. Michiko was diagnosed with cancer, and was expected to live less than three months. First, her cancer was found in her breast, then it metastasized to her lung. In September, she and her husband held their wedding, which they hadn't done when they had got married a few years before, and I attended it. I remember her smiles then. I pray for her and wish the miraculous recovery would happen.