Yuki Da, De Verdad

遊気 watches over the hood.

Today we got our first real snow, and it snowed all day. After basically hibernating (not sleeping, but watching a lot of downloaded TV shows... a lot...) for the last several days, I decided to get out today and enjoy the snow. I strapped on me boots, threw on my hat and headed down to the local Komeri (home center) that is fortunately located within about a 15-minute walk. I picked up that snow shovel I've been meaning to get for the last few weeks, but didn't want to spend 2,000 yen on (the one I got was 798, and it's a good one). I also grabbed a hand pump for the touyu, seeing as the cold weather makes the batteries in the battery-powered one a little cantankerous. Meaning, it doesn't work if it's too cold. So this one is for emergencies.

All in all we got about 8-10 inches of snow, although it was kind of wet and settled into itself, but that made for good snowman making, as you can see from my poor-man's snowman (no frills, just three big snowballs stacked up). After my walk through the snow and back up the hill, I felt inspired to do some shoveling, and then make myself a little snowman - for the first time in years. You don't have to be an Inuit to know that it takes a special brand to make yourself a good snowman. And that kind of snow doesn't come around that often. At any rate, I named him Yuuki, an actual boy's name, but close to yuki, which means snow. His kanji are yuu 遊 (playful) and ki 気 (feeling), seeing as he and his snowflake brethren brought me out of my funk and made me feel good for the first time in days.

Anyhoo, I also took a little panorama and 'stitched it up for you folks to enjoy the late afternoon cloud and sun spectacular that came through after the snow had stopped and the wind picked up. Click on it for best viewing.



And that's that. Tomorrow is a bonus day off, since before checking my schedule this morning I thought I had to go back on the 8th. Whippee!!! One more day of procrastination for preparing my "speech" for LMS... I have no idea what to tell them about...