snowfell

It’s been 109 years since the last snowfall like this, or so was the longest estimate I heard through the grapevine. There is certainly no shortage of the aged on this island who would know someone who was alive around then.

Well, the rubbish bin's full.

This oddity occurred back in early March, actually.  My apologies for being so slow to write, nay absent, of late.

Lucky for me after deliberation and waiting, cold sweat, I succeeded in avoiding having to take a paid holiday to be able to stay home.  The Board of Education eventually decided it just wasn’t practical for me to go to school that day, when we couldn’t even reach the flooded phone lines of the taxi companies.

It surprised me that any of them had chains for tires to begin with, for an island that never gets snow like this.  Apparently one taxi company does, for the next day I unintentionally intercepted a fellow ALT’s ride to work in my effort to get myself to work.  Normally I’d bike to the school in question, and I didn’t think to make a reservation in advance.

Later that week I heard about a rather zealous elementary school teacher from his wife, who explained that he walked four hours through the snow to get to his school since it was impossible to get there otherwise.  It seems all so illogical, too, for either school was cancelled or lasted just half a day.  He had to spend the night in the principal’s house, lest he walk another four hours home in the dark, but he earned his obsessive compulsive, blind feeling of obligation and duty Japanese cred.

Well, the rubbish bin’s full.

Japanese-style snowmen by the main road.

Bow before the snowlord of Tsushima!

Just tell me this doesn’t look like a deserted tundra…

Three days hence, the big snowman still stood there in partial form, the rest of the snow all but melted.