Snow!

When I got here, I was told that it really didn't snow too much around Tokyo. So far this year, I've seen it snow at least three times. The first time, nothing stayed on the ground and it all melted immediately. The second time was last week and the snow stayed on the grass, but melted on the pavement. Then Friday evening and continuing into Saturday, this happened: the most snow Tokyo has seen in 13 years.

Now, I've spent my entire life living in a place that has some idea of what to do with snow. Where snowplows are numerous and on-call (though their efficiency varies from city to city); where people own snow shovels and/or snow blowers; where you can find bags of salt at the grocery store from about November until March or so. I've never been to a place that rarely experiences a proper snowfall when such a snowfall happened. So naturally, I wanted to see how people who rarely see so much snow react to the existence of this much snow.

Umbrellas in the snow...

Apparently the answer is "with umbrellas".

I'm not sure if this is only a Tokyo thing, but umbrellas appear to be the answer to every weather problem (as helpfully illustrated by daid here). I'm also not sure if it's clear from the photo, but the woman on the right is also wearing a poncho.

Now, the snow was a little wet, but it was easy to dust off and the umbrellas were definitely overkill.  It's a bit unusual though and something I've maybe seen happen in Canada once ever.

Umbrella and plastic
bags as shoes...

There were a few people wearing rain boots, but that's a bit more understandable (if you don't own winter boots, wearing the only boots you have makes sense). There was at least one guy who was wearing plastic bags over his shoes, which is just a little odd. I kinda get where he's going with it, but I'm a little impressed that he didn't fall down constantly.

Perhaps stranger than people using umbrellas to combat the snow were the people who had put chains on the tires of their cars. The roads were never especially bad since people had been driving on them as the snow was coming down so the snow didn't accumulate much. At most there were about five centimetres of snow in the middle of the roads where nobody was driving.

Why?

Granted, chains on tires at least serves a practical purpose, unlike lifting the windshield wipers on a car while it's parked. I have no idea what people thought this would accomplish, but people did it like it was a perfectly normal and sensible thing to do.

Maybe it's because people don't necessarily own things to scrape the snow and ice off their cars or they're worried that the ice will stick the windshield wiper to the windshield. All I know is that this is the only place I've seen anyone do this and I have no idea what it's supposed to accomplish.

Now, there were definitely some people who were totally dealing with the snow in a way that made sense. The people who presumably owned a store around the corner had cleared the walkway leading to the door and made a pile of snow for their kid to sled down. At the park, there were more kids tobogganing and some parents were making snow ramps for their kids (which is a total necessity for sledding). There were teenagers who had eschewed their umbrellas having snowball fights (though they were doing this across a street which was probably not the best place for it) and people who seemed to be lending each other shovels to clear out walkways.

Granted, the snow had started to melt by Saturday evening and by Sunday evening, the lack of salt on the sidewalks made everywhere a bit of a death trap. Now the roads and sidewalks are mostly clear again and everything seems to be back to normal. It was definitely fun while it lasted.

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Update: It seems that putting windshield wipers up before it snows isn't just a Japanese thing. In fact, googling it turned up a lot of people from the US discussing or complaining about this phenomenon. There's even a facebook group dedicated to complaining about this phenomenon. The theory is that putting your windshield wipers up before a snowfall will keep them from sticking to your windshield and make it easier to clean.

I definitely disagree with this because it's just going to mean that snow and ice will get to coat your windshield wipers on all sides and if they're lifted off the car, they can't be heated by the car when you turn it on. If the blades are stuck to the car when you come out in the morning, the easy solution is to just turn on the car and let it warm up (with the defroster on) while you clean the snow off your car. Then the windshield wipers will become un-stuck as the car heats up and the ice melts.