Is it fruit? No, it's a Japanese cake

I saw these in the office kitchen and thought there were fruit. Alas, they were traditional Japanese cakes, filled with a strange bean paste. This paste quite commonly pops up inside a variety of sweet and savoury foods (dumplings, bread, the fish biscuits you see below) and I can't say I'm a fan.

Skiing in Japan

On the weekend, I hit the slopes in Japan for the first time. I went to Ishiuchi Maruyama, which is 1 1/2 hours from Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train). Here are the pics:

The same night I got back from skiing, there was no snow in Tokyo. I got back to my apartment at 3am and there wasn't a snowflake to be seen. Fast-forward eight hours and this was the view from my window: