Osaka's first snow of the year

I woke up, the room was covered in darkness,it must of been earlier than I thought I couldn't hear any traffic outside so I reached over and fumbled around the floor searching for my watch wondering what time it was. My eyes squinting in the darkness makes out that its 9 am in the morning. 9 o'clock it can't  be  I thought  it's just too dark in here.

I walk over to the curtain and slide it over expecting to see rays of light shine into the room but today there is no sun and all I can see is thick grey clouds, not rain clouds though but clouds full of snow. I open the curtain wider and see beautiful fluffy white snow  floating down from the sky and hit the ground.

In Osaka the snow melts straight away as soon as it hits the ground but this time it was different, it wasn't melting,it was covering the ground forming a beautiful white blanket.

It looked like a totally different place than the day before. The traffic that usually comes past the house was going at a snails pace as it slowly crept by with the drivers being extremely cautious not to slide. I stood on the balcony watching the kids playfully laughing with joy as they had snow fights or were creatively building snowmen.

Then my attention went over to the  rice field that lies opposite our apartment, but I could not see any field it was completely white.　The shop keeper was also out the front of his shop sweeping snow away so his valuable customers could enter the shop. The cars outside in the car park were covered with snow, drivers cleaning the snow from their car, then sitting in and waiting for the motor to warm up before taking off to where ever they were going.For me it was interesting just to stand and watch the outside action.