Monday 17 February 2014

Another Night in the Snow

I very much have a favourite among these pictures, but I would be interested to know which of them you find most appealing.  I can't really put my finger on why I like this particular one the most, but it certainly jumps out at me as being the best - there's simply no competition!  These are in no particular order (beyond that determined by blogger) so I hope the sequence doesn't prejudice the results.

So there was another snow event in the Tokyo area (snow event as in weather event, as is all the rage to say nowadays).  I was originally going to wait until the next day to take these pictures, but it started raining around 11PM and showed no signs of letting up.  This would have meant losing the snow, but it also gave a unique opportunity because wet snow has several interesting properties.  One such property is the magnificent roundness everything seems to possess when it gets wet.  I can't really explain this phenomenon, but upon seeing the pictures it was obvious that the flowing curves were missing from my previous set of pictures.  Again, I can't really explain it, but I think you'll see what I mean when you compare these ones to last weeks video.
The rain also had another side effect; that of making the snow exceptionally difficult to navigate.  It became increasingly arduous to maintain balance while walking because the snow wasn't solidifying underfoot.  It became a layer of snow on top of a layer of ice, and even when the ground underneath wasn't frozen over, the snow itself would turn to mush and give way far too easily.  It wasn't as idyllic to walk through as the pictures make it appear.

Having said that, the snow looks particularly snowy because of the rain, so I'm not complaining too much.  When you have buckets of snow it can sometimes look fake.  It tends to look like a blanket, in that the effect is of someone throwing a textured duvet over a surface and being done with it.  The rain really changes the texture into something far more snowy (to look at, at least).


It's absolutely fine to think I'm mad for walking around in the snow until 4AM (truth be told, my battery ran out at 2.30 but I got lost) just to take a few pictures.  I probably am.  Oh well.

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