Studless tyres

It snowed on Sunday night and early Monday morning. If it hadn't have been a student-free workday for the teachers it would have been a snow day at school because getting around in the usual fashion wasn't easy. Tokyo quickly gets choked up when it snows.

Front of our house after I shovelled with the help of a
neighbour across the road. Before we started the snow
covered the green and white lines. The puddle that was left
in the gutter was a couple of centimetres deep. No gutter
sweeping possible!

Monday turned out pretty miserable weather-wise because as the day warmed up the snow turned to rain and everything got mushy. Anyone outside was dressed for snow and rain. Three of my guys went to shovel at CAJ and came home soaked. Shovelling wet snow is no fun either, it is very heavy.

This morning I discovered a pillowcase that fell off the
line yesterday. The snow melted and froze onto it.

But the rain didn't melt everything before the sun went down so what was left froze overnight. So we're still dealing with ice on roads in shady spots (like out the front of our house). 

I walked to the station yesterday morning and it was natsukashi (nostalgic) walking on crunchy ice. We spent our first four winters in Japan in Hokkaido, the queen of snowy conditions. I think it holds the record for the snowiest city in the world.

Some small delivery vehicles and vans had chains on yesterday for negotiating the little roads that haven't had sun. I reminds me of this photo I took a while back of a tyre display at a highway stop. The left tyre has chains, I presume one of the middle tyres is "studless".

This word I first encountered as a language student learning the alphabet primarily used for foreign words (katakana). It is a very useful alphabet because many of the foreign words come from English. My teacher had me doing reading practise and I came across this word: スタッドレスタイヤ（sutaddoresu taiya).  My teacher indicated it was an English word, but in the end he had to explain that it is a snow tyre with a winter tread, without the old-style studs that ripped up roads. I explained that it wasn't an English word where I came from. 

Here I posted about some other English words that have been "Japanized".