Snow Whaaaat

So it snowed today.  A lot.  Absolutely out of nowhere.

I was hoping it would settle and destroy all the trains like it normally does, alas it was not to be and I had to go to work.  I didn't see the normal bizarre driving that you normally find around snowy days, with no overturned apple carts and cement mixers.

I now know just how cold toes can be, because my shoes haven't been waterproof for five years, which is probably too long to own the same pair of shoes but they are just so damned comfortable.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this today is because I saw this:

I'll have something more interesting to write about later.  Probably.

SkiBoarding

So last weekend I went snowboarding for the first time in a long while.  It turns out that it's like riding a bike, you really can just jump back in and do it again.  There's a ton more technique in boarding though, so I wasn't quite as good as before - I think I've hit my ceiling with regards to snow based sports.

Disregarding ability, fun was had.  The Tsugaike place we went to was somewhat easy - there were only a couple of areas worth a red, and the black was only black because of the intense moguls.  Not that big lumpy blocks aren't worth a black mark, it's just that I prefer variety.

As with anywhere else in Japan, the views were spectacular.

I've only ever skii'ed in Japan and Europe so I can't speak for the whole world (obviously), but the asian mountainscape seems to be unique as far as I can tell.  They just extend forever in every direction.  Korea is the same in many regards, when flying over Korea all you can see is a sea of mountains.

This isn't the best view to show that, but it's a nice picture nonetheless.

These were taken on a phone camera, so I've not bothered to edit anything.  They seem to have come out relatively well though.

We were there during a festival period, for some reason they had this jump set up with dudes doing jumps and whatnot over it, performing tricks and whatnot.  No one managed a backflip although a couple tried it.  Ouch.

Despite the lack of backflips there were some amazing fireworks.  I'm editing the videos to make a quick compilation thing that'll be up sometime in the future, but they were unlike fireworks in England in almost every respect.  There were some enormous explosions, some triple layered fireworks (I've never seen anything explode, grow and change colour, then explode again) and a lot of really cool ground based stuff.

Trying to focus using a phone camera is a nightmare.  Who knows if any of these are going to come out.

They do a really good job of putting their fireworks to music, usually classical, (and with a short enough crappy 'pop,' music section that you don't want to leave immediately) always interesting.  They also layer their fireworks really well.

The Japanese firework game is superb - they're superb at the whole thing.

This is an example of the ground based stuff I was talking about.  They layer these in the same way as the sky based stuff.  English fireworks guys need to take a close look at the Japanese scene.

So as it was a festival, they cut a lot of little spaces like this into the snow.  Every hotel or store has their little area in front filled with mountains of snow, a great way to make a small display like this.

Another small cubby with a candle.  I wonder what the fire risk associated with this is?

The above was one of these.

A rather large hotel had a front that obviously bore the brunt of the snow clearers, but at least they get to have a fun little diplay like this out front during the season.

I tried a small steerable snow thingy for the first time.  They're pretty cool but the one I rode was incredibly slow; the runner were plastic with random flecks of metal sticking out of the runners, screws not fully placed and the worlds smallest steering wheel, none of which add up for speed or control.  If you lived in an area like this presumably you'd have your own and maintain it properly.

The festival itself was fairly low key except for the fireworks (which were dope, so to speak)  but well worth checking out if you're in the area.  We came across a couple of local kids digging in some of the displays (shown above) which was a nice little slice of life, showing how people in the area live.  Worth it!

The Snow

So Tokyo has had a pathetic amount of snow recently, that is to say barely any.  Up in the mountains, however, they've had metres.  It looks like they've not had any particularly good snow this week, but last week they had a decent amount.  Maybe it's time to get the ol' snowboard out and truck around for a bit?

We'll see what the weather is like and have a go.

For the voyeuristic among you, here are the webcams for most of the Japanese resorts.

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.

Barakiyama Myoukouji

So this is a local temple - the name being that of the title.

I took an awful lot of pictures but only a few came out worth the time to view.  Obviously I took them in colour, but for some reason I can't stop making them black and white.  I think they look infinitely better.

This first one is absolutely my favourite.  It's one of my favourite pictures full stop; although the few people that have seen it are only lukewarm towards it.

Both of these pictures are of the same statue, the drinking/cleansing fountain at the entrance to all Japanese temples tend to have an interesting ornament, often somehow including the water itself (a fountain head, for example).

I've been to this place a couple of times and there are always fresh flowers at the entrance.  The one downside of black and white is that you can't see colour; amazingly enough.  Not so great with flowers.

As a side-note, it snowed the other day so I made a little video.

So I DID go Skiing

So I did, in the end, go skiing with dad.  There are a fair number of good photographs, but these ones are the ones which remind me of travelling around and jumping headfirst into the snow.



I have a feeling that those fresh tracks in the background might have been me or dad.


That green jacket is absolutely fantastic.  Before I tried it, I assumed that all jackets had small flaws in their design.  My current jacket is pretty damned waterproof for a ten year old skiing jacket, but the pockets are a pain in the jacksie, and the place where you put the ski passes is inconvenient.  This jacket has it all - it's waterproof to the Nth degree, it breathes really well, and it's damn near luminescent.  What more could you ask for?

I stole dads bright green jacket, so he had this much more modest number.

It's really difficult to appreciate just how mountainous Japan is, until you see it first hand.  Even looking at the interior (which is about 75% of the land in reality) on a map doesn't prepare you for the Alps style perilous drives through the mountains.  There were a few moments where I thought we might void the insurance on our little rental car, but it turned out okay.

Top tip, if you ever need to rent a car in Japan, don't use Nippon Rentacar!  They are terrible.  You aren't allowed to leave the parking area in their cars if you are a foreigner, let alone drive in rain or SHOCKED GASPS, snow.

You're much better off renting from a company vendor like Honda, which is where we got our car from.  The guys were really nice despite my incompetent Japanese, and everything went off without a hitch.  We brought the car back a day early because we forgot which day we were supposed to go back, but that gave us a chance to pick up some souvenirs.  All part of the plan!  Kind of.

The mountains aren't as dramatic as Europe (or I imagine Canada) in terms of their sheer size, but they go on forever in all directions.

Unfortunately I couldn't work out the settings on my camera to capture it, but the snow was melting/freezing constantly which led to a crystalline effect in the snow, reflecting the light in tiny diamond like spots.  It was really fascinating (for me, anyway) because I've been skiing any number of times, but this was the first time I've seen this effect so vividly displayed.  You'll have to take my word for it...

Tiny People

The people here are fucking tiny.

I'm trying to buy shoes online, using the Japanese version of amazon.  No one here has shoes that go over size 9.  No one.  The online retailers literally have no option above size 9.  There is not a person in Japan that has feet longer than 28 centimetres.  Size 9 is the biggest their feet ever get.  No one in the history of japan, its entire history, has ever had feet bigger than size 9.  No one.  Ever.

I went for a run yesterday, and my knee was a little sore.  I'm going to give it another week or so to recover, and instead I'm going to focus on gym work.  This got me thinking about my shoes though, as I've been pounding these trainers into dust for months now.  Time to get new shoes, I thought.

Anyway, I've bought a pair of the biggest shoes I can find for thirty quid, so let's see if A: they turn up and B: they fit.

It's funny, because when you talk to the locals, they will tell you they're drowning in foreigners.  All these foreigners walking around, destroying their ways of life, taking their women and jobs etcetera.  That many foreigners is a hefty market to be leveraged, and if I know my humanity, any exploitable resource will be shanked immediately upon being discovered: therefore one of two things is true.  Either, humanity isn't as transparent as I've been led to believe, and this massive market of foreigners isn't being tapped - or this massive market of foreigners doesn't exist, and the market therefore refuses to cater for them as it would be too costly.  You decide which is true.

It's also snowing a veritable shit-ton, but it's forecast to start raining soon.  Hopefully it won't rain and they'll cancel school (it really is precipitating vociferously).  Of course, now I've written this it'll stop.  Damnit.  I want to run outside and make a snowman, but it's warm enough that I fear it wouldn't last the night anyway.

Oh well...

On a side-note, I have some pictures to upload.  One of them is a picture of me, as drawn in a japanese cartoon style by one of the kids - the other is a collection of more pictures from when I was pelted by beans.

Some Snow, A Lot of Snow

There was a relatively heavy snowfall this afternoon.  It continued for a number of hours, causing the school to shutdown halfway through operations.

Of course, as we were already there, we gained no respite; nose to the grindstone and all that.

For an idea of how much snow fell, check out this not very informative and extremely sensationalist report from the BBC.  Ignore the text, look at the picture.  We've had about two-thirds of that.

If we can't go into school tomorrow, then we would have to make up for it by working on Friday (originally planned as a half day) so I'm hoping that it will stop.

On the other hand, if it carries on this way, we might get all week off which would be cool.  Literally.

Having just ventured out (at eight O'clock) I can say with 95% certainty that there will be no school tomorrow.  It's not snowing, but I've just done a swiss cheese job on my hands from falling over on the ice.  The middle of the road is like a third-rate ice-skating rink, and the less well trodden paths are glacial standard ice.  If school does go ahead tomorrow, there will be more car crashes than I dare imagine.

Snowtastic.

There's been a reasonable amount of snow here; around five centimetres or so.  For a single snowfall that's pretty amazing, for England anyway.  Way back, when men were men, and slavery was rife, people used to ice skate on the Thames quite often.  This gradually declined in frequency, to create the balmy clime we now experience.

Interestingly, as the planet warms up, (and snow melts elsewhere) England will become colder.  The warm ocean currents that power, or more accurately, comprise the warming phenomenon are driven by the salts present in the sea.  As the concentration of salt lessens, due to increased volumes, the warming effects will lessen, because the currents will grow less strong.  Trace your finger, from London, around to the other side of the world following the same latitude.  You'll find we are pretty much level with Canada, and you know how warm it is there.

It will be interesting to see how much the sea shields us from the extreme weather they have, as it acts as something of a hot water bottle in Winter, and a cooling mist blower thing in Summer.

I waited until well into the darkness to take a couple of photos.  The snow was five (Planet Earth) centimetres deep.  I think I've already mentioned that.

Anyway...

I waited for dark so I could use the flash, and take pictures of the thousand snowflakes falling.  If the snow if heavy enough you can generally do okay without a flash, but it wasn't that heavy.  Like all things English, it was simply persistent, and despite an hour of simply muddying the ground, this snow finally found some legs and settled.

Look at all that snow.  It's like being a kid at christmas.

This kind of mid-air snowfall is worth literally (some amount of) money in Hollywood, as producers and directors strive to get this effect.  The Matrix designers took three months to get the right sized rain droplets for the final scene.  Madness.

Taken from the relative safety of the little porch out-back.

This is not to be confused with the Australian outback; which is somewhat colder than here.  What  with all the super-chilled Fosters and accompanying ice cubes and whatnot.

And herein lies the problem with snow in England.  It happens once, maybe twice a year; and for an hour it looks fantastic.  You have that one hour window to look at the snow, and take pictures of it looking pristine, before it's swamped by footprints and mud.  Only, it's usually not mud, of course.

The trees groaning under the weight of the snow made for a far more interesting journey into the town than is usual at this time of year.  The melting snow meant a lump would sometimes fall off the branches, and create the archetypal post-snowfall scene, where a little of the fallen snow hangs in the air for a second.  I would have waited in this exact spot in order to record this moment, but there would have been no point with my current camera.

This picture shows the problem with sporadic snowfall really.  This has already been trodden into an icy layer, with the snow remaining  underfoot only where no man dares tread.  The sides of any path are, obviously, out of bounds for human feet; so the snow remains untouched in these places.

The first witnessed casualty of the weather.  A tree stupid enough to still have leaves.  If the wind and the rain didn't get this thing, the wind and the rain would have.  Stupid thing.

It did create an interesting roadblock though.

This was the second casualty.  I fear the council will take this away, ostensibly for health and safety reasons.  However we all know their real motive for doing this:  The wood burning stove, into which go all the unwanted kittens and puppies of christmas.  The ash generated is then used to fertilise the soils in the gardens tended to by the council themselves.  This includes all school playing fields, and those pretty little daffodil patches you see adorning roundabouts in Spring.

It will be something of a shame to see this go.  I feel there's a romantic sentiment surrounding such things, as it slowly becoming part of the earth that sustained it is an endless theme within our own lives; and this tree mirrors us, as does all nature, eventually.

Apparently, looking at the trees in the area, half of the snow abandoned here, ended up travelling horizontally.

This created an interesting phenomenon, whereby small spheres of snow appear in open spaces of untouched snow.  This happens because an obstruction (this could be anything, from a clump of fallen snow, to a garden gnome) becomes a nuclei, onto which snow sticks.  As the wind blows, it causes more snow to stick, until the obstruction is fully coated.  I can imagine a mystical snowball fight taking place on our lawn, but science explains it away in my mind before each faction is fully realised within my own mind.

And this was the snow we had.  I love the name Yuki in Japanese, which, as I understand it, means snow.  I love that.  I love it so much that simply saying it is a pleasure.