Soft Drink Vikings and 65 degrees to snow in one day?

I went skating again this afternoon in beautiful, mid-60 degree weather (that's 18 degrees for the metric readers). I was comfortable wearing jeans and a short sleeve shirt. I was very surprised to see the weather report this evening list a possibility of snow tomorrow! Apparently, there's a cold front moving this way, and even though it says there's no chance of snow staying on the ground, if it snows tomorrow it will be very strange after a day that felt more like spring than a month away from winter.

Along with the usual mix of reactions as I was skating I had one new experience. An older gentleman saw me as he was walking on the bike path. He smiled and asked me if it's fun (in Japanese-I was pretty happy that I understood at least that much). I said yes. He asked if it's difficult, and I said that it's a little difficult. After that, his vocabulary was a little too hard for me, but then he told me "ganbaru!" which means "you can do it / keep at it / go for it" depending on the situation.

The picture? Well . . . all-you-can-drink beverage bars are common in "family style" restaurants here. The word frequently used in Japan for buffet is "viking", possibly borrowed into Japanese in a similar way that "smorgasbord" was borrrowed into English. Put the two concepts together, and you have a "soft drink viking"! (No, it has nothing to do with ancient Swedish tribes drinking CocaCola on their raiding trips.) It still makes me smile when I see that sign in the restaurant.