Snowy Day in Tokyo

The weather forecast yesterday said that it was going to snow in the Tokyo area this morning, so I wasn’t surprised by this morning’s snow.

It snows a lot in northern Japan, but only a couple of times each winter in Tokyo. And when it does snow here, it’s normally not very much. I have seen blizzards and heavy snow in Tokyo…but not so often.

Because it doesn’t snow so much here, Tokyo isn’t as prepared for it as they are up north. Most people don’t own a snow shovel here. You can often see people using dustpans to move snow from driveways.

And, the buses and trains will often be delayed when there is a lot (by Tokyo standards) of snowfall. There were a lot of delays this morning.
Though train and bus delays are an inconvenience that we’re not so used to in Japan (due to the extremely punctual public transportation system here), no one complains…everyone understands that the train and bus workers are doing their best to deal with the weather. Better “safe than sorry”.

A picture I took this morning of someone’s flower garden covered in snow.

I saw the Meiji train

It’s not such a big deal but I rode the 「山の手線」 (Yamanote Train Line) yesterday and I finally saw a Yamanote Line train that was painted brown and decorated with Meiji Chocolate ads to commemorate the 100th anniversary of both the Yamanote Line and Meiji Chocolate.

I wrote a post about these special trains when they debuted (click here to see it).

I was glad that I was finally able to see one of these trains because they will only run until next Friday (2009 December 4)!
Unfortunately though, I didn’t have my camera with me…so I was only able to take a photo of it with my cell-phone.

Here’s the photo I took:

盆栽村

Yesterday was my youngest daughter’s birthday.

She’s twelve now. So now my kids are 12, 13 and 14.

She’s the “baby” of the family…and she’s already almost a teenager! They’re growing up too fast!

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I read about a place in 埼玉県 (Saitama Prefecture) out in the countryside north of Tokyo called 盆栽村 (Bonsai Village) that has many Bonsai gardens.

(Bonsai is the art of clipping and shaping plants (usually small trees)).

I never had an opportunity to go there and I didn’t want to make a special trip all the up there just to look at Bonsai. But today I had to go up in that general area for a few hours…so I decided to check out Bonsai Village on my way home.

There were many beautiful gardens with very nice bonsai…but taking photos was forbidden. I was disappointed about that.

They had some bonsai for sale. The prices were between ¥5000 and ¥50,000 (about U.S. $40 -$400)!

I was able to take this photo of a bonsai tree in someone’s front yard in a house near one of the gardens.

This place really was out in the boonies (American slang. “Boondocks, Sticks, Countryside, Rural”).

There was nothing there. Not at all like urban Tokyo.

I saw a convenience store and it had a parking lot. In Tokyo, like many big cities (NYC, etc), most places don’t have parking lots…if you drive somewhere, you have to find a place to park (hopefully) nearby and walk. Most people in Tokyo use the punctual, clean, safe and affordable public transportation (trains in Tokyo arrive every 3 minutes or so).

Here’s a picture of the train tracks in this countryside town. There’s nothing but trees and farmland for miles.

Here’s a couple of trains coming down that track:

Here’s a couple more videos of trains arriving at the 大宮公園駅 (Oomiya-kouen Station). (One going away from Tokyo, the other going towards):