Warm Winter

When you’re coming from sunny San Diego, where it’s often above 70° Fahrenheit/20° Celsius in the winter, just about any other part of the world is going to feel chilly. Japan’s winters are usually very hard on me, thanks to the combination of cold temperatures, the biting kara-kaze winds that blow down from the Japanese Alps, and homes that aren’t well constructed because you’re expected to tear it down and build a new one in 15 years anyway. But this winter has been an incredibly warm one, with temperatures more like March or April than February, and I haven’t needed to put on multiple pairs of long underwear to keep from freezing to death even once. Every year in our prefecture there’s an ice fishing event held on Mt. Haruna, when the lake at the top freezes, but yesterday it was announced that the event would be cancelled this year due to the warm temperatures keeping the lake from freezing completely. The warm summer is even affecting the Sapporo Snow Festival going on in Hokkaido right now, where hundreds of beautiful snow sculptures are displayed. The warmest winter temperatures in 18 years have made the snow watery and difficult to work with, which forced the city to truck in extra snow for the event.

Beautiful snow sculptures in Sapporo