Japan 2011-Snow Scenes

Since it is winter time that I was travelling through Japan, one would expect to see some snow here and there. Especially on the island of Hokkaido on the nearby areas. Below is shot from our final approach into New Chitose airport. It was fortunate that it was not snowing that day conditions were favorable for touching down. Some of our travelmates were not as lucky but managed to land anyway. Their flight's departure from Narita was delayed. Before departure, the passengers were warned that landing conditions were not optimal and they may have to turn back if needed. Well, after being in a holding pattern for a few hours, their plane did land and they made their way to hotel, arriving shortly after midnight.

Sapporo was devinitely blessed with snow. Temps were usually in the minus single digits but at times did not feel as cold as the thermometer was stating. The picture below shows the one-way street just 1 block east of the street that the subway line Nanboku line runs under. I believe this is West 3rd? The first morning, I had watched several snow plows going rhough the area to clear the streets for traffic. Not to say that there was much traffic at 7am. For the most part, I had found the Susukino are to be pretty quiet when we ere out and about during the day. It was a much livlier scene at night after people got off work. The succeeding days were warmer and much of the snow on the ground began to melt away only to refreeze to ice and make walkways very slippery

While on the train Otaru, workers at this station were busy building igloos from the available snow. Two men were building up this particular one. They would then hollow out a cavity. for what purpose, I dont know but it could have been a decoration in preperation for all the people that would be passing this way the next day when Otaru would be initiating their winter festival

Many many many hours were spend on the train this trip: 3.5 hours from Sapporo to Hakodate, 2 hours from Hakodate to Aomori, and another 3.5 hours from Aomori to Tokyo. This does not include the shorter 1 hour or less trips to places like Kawagoe, Tsukuba, etc. The cars are heated but I tend to think they are overheated. So, I spend alot of time standing in between cars watching the scenery pass by through these smaller windows. Alot of the landscape is harder to capture through these windows as you dont get to see much of what is coming up. this leaves little time to get out the camera, get it ready, then compose your shot.

For things in the distance like mountains and shorelines, its not hard to get the camera up to the window and zoom in for the shot to avoice the frame of the window. I saw alot of mountains and coastline as our extended train rides whizzed by many moutains and hugged the coastline on many legs of the excursion