Winter pictures

I guess in follow up to the last post one of the impetus for this blog was that ofoto or kodak or whatever had changed the policy of posting photos to that service which I had been using to post photos. I also for the longest time have not been happy with the service and had been thinking about moving. Talking with my friend Scott he mentioned that blogger allowed you to post photos in the blog for free. In some ways this is better than the ofoto method because one it forces me to choose only the good shots instead of dumping all of my photos for people to wade through. Secondly I can choose certain photos to discuss or tell the story behind.

In this post I will discuss some of the finer points of living in Sendai during the winter.

First off lets take a look at this picture that I took after or during a snow storm last winter (February or March).





Notice several things in this picture. One there is a road under all that white stuff put is not plowed and probably won't be. The reason is very simply that Sendai is similar to some of the southern states where they will get reasonable amounts of snow but it melts is two or three days. I would not say that all the snow melts after a couple of days rather most of the stuff on the roads melts and foot paths are packed down people to walk on.

The second thing to notice the person on the scooter is still out in the middle of this. This is not uncommon for people to continue to ride scooters or motorcycles no matter the weather. Also some scooters will actually have studded snow tires so that they can get traction.

Winters in Sendai are not anywhere near as harsh as they are in upstate NY. What they are damp which makes it hard to get warmed up, see next section. When it snows which typically is less than 6 inches but could be up to a foot or more (once or twice a year) it is a heavy wet snow and it is not uncommon to have two or three inches of slush underneath. So water proof boots are nice for keeping your feet dry.

A note on most Japanese homes and apartments is they don't have central heating. This means it can be difficult to get warmed up when coming back to your home. Most people use space heaters of some type to do the heating, whether it be gas, kerosene or electric. Personally, at my apartment I have a AC system which can be run in reverse so that it heats instead of cools. This is what I used to heat the apartment. I am a cheap bastard so I rarely turned it on, only when I was going to be around for a while.

The point of this is that you need to dress warmly not only outside but also when you are indoors.

Just so that this is not all warnings the one thing that I really liked this snow for was it made everything white (obvious I know) but when everything had been the dull colors from trees loosing their leaves it added some nice variety for an hour or two then everything was white.

The next post will be on a happier subject of spring and sakura.
Andrew