Today's washing challenge - avoid crashing snow

Sapporo snow. Our car is next to the yellow one.

It snowed a few inches last night. Beautiful large floaty snowflakes. Not something I would have been excited about when I lived in Sapporo in northern Japan for four years, where they get several metres every winter. But having had that experience, now snow not only brings excitement, it brings good (and bad) memories.

Our the back of our house in Tokyo.

The sun is shining this morning and it really isn't too cold - it's above zero. The snow is rapidly melting outside. The walk to school was a mess of mushy, dirty snow. Not terribly pretty, but exciting for our five year old who kicked and jumped and slushed all the way to school.

My washing today.

Our first apartment in Sapporo (in summer).

But today I did something I don't think I did in Sapporo. After a wet weekend we had a sheet back-up and with the sun shining I hung out sheets on the washing line. But I had to be careful to put them in a place where the snow that was rapidly melting on the roof wouldn't drip or crash into them. 

I don't think I've done that before. Neither apartments we lived in in Sapporo had washing lines near the roof edge. One was undercover - so we frequently hung washing out on sunny days when the temperature was under zero (very stiff jeans). The other apartment you hung the washing on the outside of the railing (see photo).

Not something I'd ever thought about before I came to Japan!