Yuki

On Friday I came home from work and spent the next hour or so shoveling snow. I didn't mind so much as my neighbor, Taiura-san was out doing the same and it gave us the opportunity to have an intermittent conversion on topics as diverse as nuclear power, the French language and the feckless inability of the municipal authorities to send any snowplows out our way.

As we were finishing for the night, it started snowing again.

And it snowed.

And it snowed some more.

And it didn't stop snowing.

We awoke on Saturday morning to this:

And this in turn entailed a full turn-out of the Gaynor-Takahashi Specialist Snow Clearing Squadron: Cian 'The Scoop-meister', Mammy 'The Grunter', and Daddy 'The Good Jaysus what possessed me to move here'.

Seven feckin hours it took us. Or rather, it took Cian and Mammy an hour before they decided they had better things to do inside, while Daddy ploughed a lonely white frozen furrow alone. Most of the time was spent shoveling the accumulated snow off the roof of our house.
Muroran, as with the rest of Japan, has had an unusually cold winter this year with the result that the show has hardly melted. Throughout Hokkaido there have been numerous houses collapsing under the weight of the snow, along with accidents and even fatalities from people slipping and falling to the icy ground below whilst trying to clear their roofs.
But, as you've already guessed, 'danger' is my middle name - I'll dance that icy roof-top tango with vertigo to a 5/6 beat.


Actually, I won't. And my middle name is not 'danger', it's, ahem, 'Christmas', but for explanations about same, you'll have to talk to my parents.
Anyway, I very gingerly got up on our roof, staying well back from the edge, and shoveled the snow onto the road below. Then, I got down from the roof and had to move the snow off the road and into the bushes. So, essentially I had the shift the snow twice.
Meanwhile two-thirds of the Gaynor-Takahashi Specialist Snow Clearing Squadron were inside drinking hot chocolate and watching Curious George.
I am moving to Singapore.
On my own.