Monday 14 January 2013

Snow in Tokyo

Today it snowed in Tokyo.  The rain turned to sleet and the sleet turned to snow. And then it snowed, and snowed and snowed.  We went to Akabane.  The trains were chaotic - not running.  There seemed to be a lack of understanding from some Tokyo-ites that snow tyres are required to drive in snow.  Rear wheel drive cars with no snow tyres... I can't imagine that insurance would pay for their misadventures. 




Today was coming of age day - not a good day for walking
around in geta and tabi.

No trains

The worst job in Tokyo today - I think this constitutes human
rights abuse

The whole  JR system was in chaos

The subways were doing a bit better

The Catholic Church in Akabane looked
rather European.



Trains were out most of the day




It's amazing the way some cars think they are invincible to snow....

Tokyo is ill-equipped to deal with snow.

3 comments:

Rurousha said...

Is that Ōji Jinja's torii? Who ever said it's a meh shrine?! :p

Great photos!

It's the heaviest snow I've ever seen in Tokyo. I went walking in Yanaka Cemetery this morning. Gorgeous white solitude, crunching snow, silent stones; but the best part was laughing at the cemetery cats trying to walk on the snow. Or rather, trying NOT to walk on the snow. ^^

Stay warm!

SomedaysSarah said...

Yikes! I am glad it was a holiday yesterday and I didn't have to commute on public transit! It is very pretty, but when people don't know how to deal with it...!

Cecilia said...

Oji jinja ... indeed... the back stairs were shut off.
I'm so glad you got to Yanaka in the crisp snow. I toyed with going to Ueno on Mon - see the park, Yanaka, Benten (somewhere in the deep recesses of my non digital photos I have Ueno park in the snow pictures) nothing like this though. The trains put me off though - I don't get it why the Japan Sea side can run trains with snow but Tokyo can't...
We opted to go to Akabane by subway - I think it was about a 4-5 hour stoppage in trains. When we got to Oji JR there were only southbound trains running - must have led to overwhelming constipation in the system somewhere...

On the way back, the Saikyo sen was running northbound, but not southbound (a train sitting at the station). I'm not clear on why the system requires such delays. There were 4 JR staff in the conductors cabin on our way back - they might have been better utilized to run other trains.