shougatsu

And so 2010 has begun. As is traditional, we went down to Sanae's mother's house where we, Sanae and myself, enjoyed a blissfully 'hands free' couple of days. Sanae's mother and Cian get on like a house on fire (principally because she indulges his every whim and caters for his every need, particularly his strawberry needs), so we can wander off for hours on end and not be missed. Initially a rather bewildering experience as the ingrained assumption of planning our days off around what Cian will / will not accept or put up with is hard to ignore. But it didn't take us long to adjust, nor did it take us long to discover that there is not much to do in Memuro in the middle of winter besides shovel snow. And there was plenty of it to shovel. Close on half a metre fell on the night we arrived. I awoke the following morning to find Cian's 85 year old great-grandfather already outside clearing the snow. I think he did it to deliberately shame his foreign grandson-in-law. It worked. I bounded out of my beseeching bed ("Stay, stay a little longer, stay, its warm here, so warm, and cold, so cold outside"), fumbled into my clothes and stumbled out the door just in time to see him start clearing the snow off my car.

Arse.

Wrestled the snow shovel off him and started shoveling. Two hours later was still shoveling. The great-grandfather came out for a cigarette and a once over of my progress. "Not bad" and he went back inside. It took me to lunchtime to finish.

The next day, I had to re-shovel all the snow I had spent the previous day shoveling, in order to make room for the next winter storm and the snow it would bring. This is pretty much par for the course in this part of the world. I did the same when we returned to Muroran yesterday afternoon. First I cleared the snow from the driveway and then this morning, I shoveled the cleared snow around to the side of the house so there would be space for the next big fall of snow. Which we are due to get tomorrow.

My ever alert readers will of course notice how I use 'I' and not 'we' when it comes to shoveling snow. Cian comes out occasionally and displays his god-given gift for getting in the way. Sanae stays inside and claims to be 'cooking' or 'cleaning' or whatever, and is only by sheer coincidence taking a coffee break whenever I look in the window.

And that, apparently, is how marriage works.