First Winter Storm (始めの冬の嵐)

The terrific storm that landed the other night remained all of yesterday, gradually moving from depositing cold rain, onward to some sort of strange frozen precipitation that wasn`t quite sleet, snow, or hail (I`d volunteer "sky poo" to fill this lexical gap- the stuff was heavy and miserable), to a heavy wet snow. People have generally said that the first snow would be sometime around the end of December, so you can imagine how well prepared I was in terms of snow boots and the like. I also tried to ride my bike to work this morning in order to stay above the slushy roads- this proved to be both comical and hazardous, and I won`t be doing it again.

Sakamachi and the surrounding land actually look quite fetching with a layer of snow on them- which is probably just as well because the stuff never melts during the long winter months. Here are some pics-