Waking up in amazement.

Last night I went out to a small restaurant bar place with some friends and we sat next to the window where you could see the snow falling quite heavily outside. Still, by the time we left the place you could see that only about one or two centimetres had fallen. So, we drove back and I went to my apartment and everyone else went their own way. I got into bed and fell asleep for about seven hours and woke up and looked out of the window. The amount of snowfall that had accumulated over night was awsome. The words 'holy shit' found their own way through my lips as I stood their looking at two feet of snow. Cars were absolutely buried. I had to trudge knee deep out into the street to even get to my car. The photos don't do justice at all.

Here's one



If we got two feet through the night how much did they get on the mountain? It doesn't bear thinking about. So I looked at the weather log for the previous night and found that 'Oh yuki' was forecast. Oh meaning big, and yuki meaning snow. And now I have to go out there and start shovelling the stuff.

Later this afternoon I'll be going off to Aoni onsen, which is a little hot spring resort a few miles away from Kuroishi, or Black Rock City. Kuroishi is the next town along from Hirosaki and it usually gets hit with even more snow than we do. Part of the deal when you stay over night at Aoni onsen is that they pick you up from the main road by snow-cat. They don't keep their road open throughout the winter you see, and the hotel is set in a valley. I'm just wondering whether the place is going to be functioning properly after last night's dramatic snowfall.

Later in the day I started clearing the snow from around my car and the sun came out.