Snowy Tokyo 29 Feb 12

[gmat]

It started snowing this morning and by 9:00 a fine blanket of snow over slush covered everything near my apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few brave souls were cycling on the man road, too.

 

Best wishes,

Grant

[westfalen]

Looks more like Sapporo than Tokyo. How unusual is weather like this in Tokyo?

[bikkuri bahn]

Saw the snow on the morning news.  Of course, the reports were mainly from Hachioji, where the snow tends to be heaviest, but this time looks like the center is getting a good amount.  I see you live in Setagaya-Ku.  Lucky you.  I'd love to have the Den-en Toshi Line as my home line, being an 8500 series fan (well, other than during the morning rush...).

[gmat]

Westfalen, it depends. Some years you might get a good snowfall that remains on the ground for more than a day only or twice a year and some years not at all. This is the first one or second one this year but it remains to be seen how long it will last.

BikkuriBahn, alas, what I find annoying about traveling on the Den-en Toshi Line is that if you get on at Shibuya, it's always crowded especially late at night, so I prefer riding the local on the Odakyu Line from Shinjuku.

 

May have to walk to my student's house this afternoon.

 

Planning a Seishun 18 trip tomorrow as I have no further classes this week. I think that I'll hit Kuroiso and Koriyama and AizuWakamatsu. Kuroiso for the D200 diesels, and Koriyama to see which Aizu will run.

 

Update;

Wiki says that the Red Akebe was repainted to cream and red but also that it has been replaced this month with the white and orange striped 485 that used to run to Nikko. So I did ride it but I can never shoot the red scheme again. Bummer.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aizu_Liner

 

Guess it'll be a snow trip then.

 

Best wishes,

Grant

[The_Ghan]

Ah ....

 

Good of someone to remind me of the things I don't like about Tokyo!

 

That's just how the weather was when I arrived in March 1984.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[bikkuri bahn]

We in Sapporo discretely laugh at the confusion caused by a mere few cm of snow that occasionally fall in Tokyo.  That's nothing when you have six to 12 inches of solid ice under an equal amount of snow on the sidewalks for 2+ months like we have.

 

Grant, looking forward to your trip report using the Seishun 18!  And careful walking in those conditions.

[gmat]

The scene outside our apartment at 5:30 this afternoon. Much of the snow on major streets appears to have been removed, but smaller side roads and lanes are still snow covered, as are many sidewalk. Local residents will remove the snow from the sidewalks, but it depends on the industrious of the residents.

 

 

The near cleared sidewalk is the driveway for the car parking spaces.

 

The near patch of snow is in front of the bicycle parking area for our apartment. The snow patch further beyond is in front of an automated  largely unmanned building for the power company. The cleared patch further on is in front of an apartment.

 

The caretaker in our building is less than ambitious.

 

Best wishes,

Grant

[bikkuri bahn]

The evening news has reports about how the sidewalks are slippery- again, funny for someone like me up here.  My apartment has heated sidewalks, but the furnace is often turned off.  In that case, I do all the shoveling of snow- the landlord never does, and the the other residents are lazy sob's.

[cteno4]

I think that's more snow than we got here in DC this year!

 

Jeff

[KenS]

Good pictures.  I particularly liked the ones with the mom and kids in raingear, just taking the storm in stride.  A nice human-interest photo.

 

I'm always surprised by how easily a trivial (to me) amount of snow can paralyze a city that doesn't normally get much snow.  If you don't have the equipment (enough snow plows, snow shovels, a box of sand, etc) it doesn't take much snow to bring everything to a halt.  It doesn't look like Tokyo had that problem here though, although I imagine a weekday rush hour might have been a different story.