Disguissing Santa Clause...

.... enabled them to get 1 day ski passes for Hakuba Goryu and Hakuba 47 for free today. I told the information to them yesterday, then they got the costumes.

I asked where they got Santa costume, they said Hakuba Goryu ski slope sold some.
Blah blah blah..in front of our place, very outstanding with Santa costume. People yelled a lot!

Informations described in Japanese don't reach foreign people because of the complicated "alphabet" kanjis which came from China more than thousand years ago.
It's one of important job for an innkeeper to make customers' day enjoyable.

Hayaokidori website

Hakuba Goryu, Hakuba 47 available all over now!

The subject line says it all, now entire Hakuba Goryu and Hakuba 47 ski slopes are available. Ready to go!

Gerande report (Japanese)

I have not hit the slopes yet this season, probably after the busy period around new year's day.

Hayaokidori website

Bonnet express "Hibari (Skylark)" arrived at Fukushima station.

I took this picture at Fukushima station when I traveled around Tohoku region with friends in 1977. Platform roof, overbridge etc show us some railroad structures of the good old days :-)

Hayaokidori website

Candles in the snow

I can enjoy this only in winter!
If you see this scenery when you are in Hakuba Goryu, you are absolutely in front of our place :-)

Hayaokidori website

Replacing a cleaning car.

Maybe I had used this cleaning car too much. It went dead. Now I got a new one to replace it. I just tried to overhaul it.

The reason why this cleaning car was dead is one of the hook to hang the pad below the floor was broken. It's a plastic one, so does not survive long :(


Cleaning requid seems to be stored in this parts. Have to check if it works to solder them when I have some time.



The old cleaning car parts are now in a box to be used in the future when some parts are needed to repair the new one.

Hayaokidori website

07-08 first snow removing

We got a bunch of snowfall after a long interval.

I saw this scenery early in the morning. Maybe a bit hard to say we got a bunch of snow with this picture though.





My wagon. Hum..... tyres are not enough visible..... lol





I have to drop the snow on my snowblower off first to start the work.



Rosemarries also got some snow.





What I call "Josetsu(snow removing) set". I need to have this when I remove snow.
When any bolt is gone, I have to screw there with new bolt.



Anyway I started removing snow with my snowblower. It went good for the first time but finally I did it!!!
When you crash big stones, bricks whatever hard, a lot often bolts that fix the shaft and auger wings are gone. You need to screw them with new bolts which sucks especially when it snows hard :(
The left side of this wing hold so much snow because a bolt was gone. When a bolt is gone, the wing does not work, so snow stays there.



I pull the key out of the snowblower when I need to stop its engine while I am at work to fix the bolts because if any strong windblow suddenly get branches off from trees to turn the engine on, I will be injured. I know I worry about it too much. But when I survived winter with the previous antique "buddy da snowblower", I had an accident that I stiched 5 at my index finger of my right hand. I thought everything stopped when I slide my right hand into the shooter to check something but a wing there still worked!!!! OUCH! Accidents always happen when you lack a tiny bit of attention. I might be a person whom anesthesia does not work good enough. When I was in a hospital to stitch the index finger, it hurt a lot. I don't want to experience it again. This might be tiresome to get the key off everytime, but I would choose to do it instead of having another accident.


Need to get the snow on the roof of our cars off. But I am not tall enough to reach the center roof :( Wish I were 180cms ( 5'11" ) tall! A lot often snow around the center roof stays there as it's hard for me to reach there to get them off.




It took 3.5 hours today to complete this snow removing job. It makes it easier to make a snowblower work later if you get the snow inside of the auger when you complete the job. As the snow on the roof didn't drop that much, that's why I just needed 3.5 hours today. If more snow on the roof dropped off, sometimes it needs entire day to remove all of them. Now the battle with snow just started for this season :o

When I drive a snowblower, I am always careful not to hurt others and myself. But snowblowers are very noisy and give us vibration when we drive them. This disables the driver to hear someone talking to the driver. Maybe that someone might slightly touch the back or hand of the driver to get his/her attention, but it surprises the driver too much while s/he is very nervous. This might be a bit selfimportant desire but if I could say, please get close to a snowblower driver when s/he is at work except when there's something urgent, so that everyone is safe from accidents with snowblowers.

Hayaokidori website

Giving some oil.

When I drove a long American steam locomotive in my layout, it made some noise as if it needed some oil. I made it upside down.





Oops, a cover is there. I have to unscrew some bolts to take it off. I don't like this kind of tiresome thing!!!! lol....





Anyway, I unscrewed the bolts to open the cover. There is a black gear there. It seems it's only one but looks like a plastic gear, not a metal gear. I gave a tiny bit of oil at it.





Whoah, each wheel could move sideways independently like this. This is perhaps like "independent suspension" for cars? Wonder how spokes work with this.





Tried to pull the wheel to the opposite direction. This is why even long foreign locomotives can turn curves of small radius. Japanese locomotive do not have this kind of wheel set. They are reall fixed, can not move this way at all. That is probably one reasons why Japanese modelers have to give up to make fixed layouts if it's HO scale because not so many Japanese houses have enough big rooms for it.

Hayaokidori website