Friday is the new Thursday

...at least for this week.

For a place that isn't supposed to have much snow, this year has been pretty exceptional. It snowed last weekend and it started to snow again today. This time, we weren't at home when it started because we were out last night and we had to take the train back this morning. This meant that we had the unusual experience of seeing trains run really late.

We didn't exactly plan our departure and just took trains as they arrived so we didn't really know when all of them were supposed to show up (also, some of the signs weren't displaying the times which is unusual). daid noticed that something was off at some of the platforms (like a the absence of times on the signs) and I noticed that it seemed to be a lot louder than usual because of the live overhead announcements (the typical announcements are pre-recorded and quieter).

At one of our transfers, I noticed that the train was seven minutes late because the time was actually displayed (this is unusual for Tokyo) and then just before our station, we had to sit on the tracks for 10 minutes.

The good thing about sitting on the train for 10 minutes while it's stopped is that you can see the other train tracks and you can marvel at how the train had to stop when there is absolutely no snow on any of them.

Anyway, I did learn one good use for carrying an umbrella when it's snowing: If you want to shake the snow off a tree (which you might since some of the trees around here are not the kind accustomed to losing their leaves in the fall) then having an umbrella in hand means that you're not going to dump snow on yourself when you do so.

In closing, here is a photo of someone trying to shove his bicycle through the snow. 

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

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.

Poor weather not dodged

We were supposed to fly back to Japan on Tuesday, but there was a ground freeze at Pearson airport which delayed our flight to Minneapolis Saint-Paul where we were supposed to connect with a flight to Narita. Since flights were doing just fine leaving Minneapolis, there was no way we were catching our flight to Japan so we had to reschedule. The earliest we could have flown out was Friday, but that flight was going to be through JFK and the woman who rebooked us did not recommend that approach.

Now we're flying back Saturday through Detroit, which means that we have some time to hang out here some more. I got my haircut earlier today, which I meant to do and then ran out of time to do earlier. I figure getting a haircut in Japan would be an issue since I don't really know how to describe what kind of haircut I want in Japanese. I also got to check out some of the damage from the ice storm that hit just before we got here.

Trees doing telephone
pole impressions.

The trees all around the city seem to have taken a hit, but parts of my parents' neighbourhood were really bad. There's one street nearby where it looks like "there were telephone poles on both sides of the street, but someone just went down the street and chopped off all the tops" as daid describes it.

According to my parents, the neighbours on that street lost power for more than a day (my parents only lost power for 5 hours or so). That street had much larger trees than the ones on my parents' street, which is probably why the trees did not fare so well, but the power lines run underground so I'm not sure why it was so much worse for them.

The maple tree in my parents backyard took a beating, but it was pretty bushy before the ice storm, so it should hopefully be okay for the most part. 

None shall pass!
(Without ducking)

The entrance to the park was in pretty poor condition, as you can see. The one tree lying across the path in the front had a trunk that was probably about 30 cm in diameter, but it was snapped just like it was nothing.

The trees further from the road (behind the fallen tree in the image) fared better, but the fallen branches still made for a nice obstacle course if one wanted to go to the park.

Of course, we did want to go to the park.

Our reward for climbing over and under the fallen tree and limbs was a wonderful view of a frozen park that we had (almost) all to ourselves. Here, the trees were sheltered by the valley so many of them had escaped major damage (though the forest was impassable).

A winter wonderland!

Sick day

We're still visiting my parents and will be flying back tomorrow morning. It looks like the weather should hold out and if it does, we'll have dodged storms by one day each way (we flew out of Toyko the day after the ice storm hit over here). Our connection in Minneapolis also looks like it should be fine too so we should be able to get back to Tokyo for Wednesday.

As much as I generally do like the snow and the winter, the temperature here has been pretty ridiculous, dropping to -20 C at some points (and it will drop again tomorrow as we're preparing to leave). During the cold snap, the furnace in my parents' house also broke which wasn't especially pleasant (though possibly the house was still warmer than our apartment gets in Tokyo) and I got sick as soon as the temperature started to hover around freezing so we haven't really gone anywhere.

We meant to make a trip to Toronto while we were here since daid hasn't been to the CN tower before and we have this trend of visiting tall buildings/things together. We also wanted to go to Snakes and Lattes to pick up some expansions for Cards Against Humanity, but that didn't really happen. This is perhaps the disadvantage of being in town for only a week.

We haven't quite managed to get all the foods we were planning on bringing back with us either. So far we have 9 kg of dried legumes (4.5 kg each of lentils and chickpeas), but we still have to go find some tahini before we leave so we can make hummus when we get back to Japan. It's always fun to explain what chickpeas and lentils are to the customs officials in Japan. Last time I think I explained that lentils are things that you cook like rice and that seemed to be an acceptable explanation.

Anyway, sorry about the somewhat boring blog today, not much has happened this week and I'm feeling a bit crummy still (but better than a few days ago). Next week should be more interesting.