Snow Days

The road out the front of our house that we
walk down to go to school.

In the midst of yesterday's wrestling excitement, I didn't mention that school was cancelled yesterday, as well as the musical scheduled to be performed last night and today, as well as the homeschoolers' event at school today (where my husband was going to be taking a class on hands-on science). 

The snow started really light and it looked for a while like a bad decision to cancel all those things, but the snow kept coming and got heavier later in the day and into the night. We've ended up with another huge snowfall (for Tokyo). For the second time in a week our road is covered with piles of the stuff. Don't be fooled, it is very wet and not too much fun for playing in. It is light on top, but certainly quite heavy underneath for shovelling. I've seen a number of photos on Facebook of carport roofs collapsing. Thankfully our carport is under the house, so no problems there.

This is very unusual weather for Tokyo. We've seen winters where there is no snow, or only enough to dust the ground before it melts. We're not set up for it, so it looks bizarre to those in places like Sapporo in the north, where they almost never cancel events for snow.

Here's what the road usually looks like. Two cars find it
difficult to pass in front of our house where that power
pole is. There isn't much room to pile snow. We only have
enough room to park two small bikes between our house and the
front fence. No room to pile snow inside our fence line.

Today the temperature has shot up several degrees (it about 8 or 9 now the sun's out) and the snow is melting quickly off roofs and dropping on unsuspecting people or gardens below. But there is too much for it to all disappear quickly. We cleared a path to the drain down the road, but I'm not sure how much help that will be.

The space between the front of our house
and the front fence, with two
snowed-in bikes.

This morning I went out and took over from David in clearing at least the road back to the white line you see in the photo without snow. It was pretty exhausting, but then I've done almost no exercise in two and a half weeks due to this cold I'm still recovering from (my left ear is still deaf, I'm not sure the antibiotics have worked their magic, and my asthma is gradually settling, but I'm still on a high dosage of medication).

But I'm not complaining. This storm has given us a five-day long weekend. This weekend would have been four days long and is called "Winter Break". But this storm has cleared the calendar of events, so we only have church on Sunday morning and a family excursion on Monday that you'll hear more about later. Other than that, we're hanging around at home. Which, I have to admit, is a welcome break, after our many busy weekends since Christmas.

Looking right from our front gate.

Our small backyard is drowning in snow.
In case you're wondering, there is not access
from the front to the back (except about
a 30cm wide path on both sides of the house
that I've never tried to go along).

It is surreal to read of people complaining of a 35 degree day in my birth-town. Yeah, different sides of the equator alright!