Winter cometh!

Well, winter has arrived with vengeance, and depending on who I speak to it could be colder or warmer than last year. Not that helpful, really. Regardless, it's damn cold. After three days in a row of finding my shower head cracked, it finally dawned on me to remove it at night and keep it in my bedroom. It quickly solved the problem (I had to repair it three times though), but not the one of the shower itself freezing, unfortunately. Every day I go to it and must "defrost" if carefully before I use it. A burst pipe in a wooden house would be quite inconvenient.


Ajimabashi across the Tenryu river.

My toilet freezes too. And the pipe to my washing machine. I couldn't quite believe it was that cold until I bought a thermometer and realised my bedroom was around -6 degrees every night. Lovely. I had to laugh one morning when I went to the bathroom and found a four-inch icicle hanging out of the tap.




Snow-covered rice fields in my village.

Nevertheless, when it snows it warms everything up, and the snow is, as always, very pretty.