Where I live in Japan, winters are quite mild. In fact, in sharp contrast to the blustery cold and mountains of snow in Michigan where I grew up, they are almost identical to winters in Portland, Oregon, my last permanent home in the U.S.
Thus the temperature hovers right around freezing, occasionally dipping as low as -2º or -3º C (26-28º F), practically t-shirt weather back in Detroit. Similarly, it might snow three or four days over the entire season, an inch or two at the most, with the snow typically melting within 24-48 hours.
Well . . . it was not business as usual this past week. I believe that new records were set for Tambasasayama in both departments. The temperature plunged to -13º C (8º F) and it snowed four days in a row. One day we got almost a foot of snow and you can see what the pergola I built a few years ago looked like the next day in the photo at the top.
This might be a major inconvenience for most of the residents — our city has none of the necessary equipment or manpower to deal with this kind of storm, so getting around is very challenging — but I’m not complaining. I loved it! The landscape, which in my view is exceptionally beautiful to begin with, became a ‘winter wonderland”, which just happens to be the motto that appeared on all Michigan vehicular license plates when I was growing up. Thus this week brought back heartwarming — if bone chilling — memories of skating, sledding, snowball fights, snowpersons [note the nod there to political correctness], frozen toes and fingers, runny noses, snowdrift diving, blizzards, ice storms, frozen ponds and lakes, skiing, snow saucers, and everything which arrived with the beautiful brutality of Michigan winters.
I’ll stop sentimentalizing now. Enjoy a few pics I took during a 30 minute walk right after the big snowstorm ended and the skies turned sunny for a couple hours.
