Tokyo
Actually, only one of these pictures is from Tokyo proper. Tokyo is a big city and most of the interesting things we saw there were in museums and such, where no photos were allowed.

We did a two-day trip to Echigo-Yuzawa, home of the Nobel-winning Snow Country novel, and one of Clint's favorite non-fiction books, Snow Country Tales. Even though it's only 70 minutes by train from bone-dry Tokyo, it's famous for its massive amounts of snow, due to a variety of geographical and meteorological features. For obvious reasons, daily life here was very different from the rest of Japan until relatively recently, when technology and lessening snow each year have made things more normal. However, keep in mind that these photos are from the beginning of the snow season (which used to run from October to April, or something). Even now, things won't reach serious levels until late February to March! So this is just a little snow, for Snow Country.



On the walk from our ryokan to the Snow Country museum. There's water running through here as almost everywhere in Echigo-Yuzawa. The roads have tiny waterjets built into the divider stripes, as do parking lots and such. Water constantly flowed out of the jets, keeping the roads and parking lots essentially clear, even when three feet of snow seemed to accumulate on the bus parked beneath our window overnight.



We walked to the ropeway and took a steep ride up a mountain. (Naturally, Echigo is mostly ski-resort now.) Here we are going down. I would have loved to take photos on the mountainside, but all you would have seen was a big white rectangle. The wind was blowing really hard, it was incredibly cold, and we were standing on top of several feet of packed snow. We didn't really have any plan in going up there; we just wanted to see what we could see. It was too cold and windy to run around or throw snowballs, but there was a sturdy building serving hot food, so we climbed up there and had some very delicious tonkatsu (pork cutlet). The owner was very friendly, and we watched the snow switch between "snowy" and "whiteout" out of the rattling plate-glass windows.

Halfway through our meal, the emergency ski patrol came in and told everyone that the mountain was being evacuated, because the winds were getting too high for the ropeway to run. It took a little effort on their part and mine for us to comprehend this and that it was okay to finish our meal. So we did, and went back to the ropeway station, where we waited for other people arrive. Eventually, the restaurant owner and all of his staff joined us too. Good timing on our part! Everything was under control and we weren't in any danger, so it was an exciting little adventure.




View into the garden of another nice-looking inn in town.



This is how trees are traditionally protected from breaking under the weight of so much snow.



Me posing by the giant robot replica at the Studio Ghibli Museum. (More photos of that will be in a separate gallery on the eventual web page.)



Clint attempting to outwit an elaborate drinking fountain at the Museum.



Okay. This is a dessert of a type we saw advertised several places, but this one is at Denny's in Ikebukuro, which is so much better than ones in the US. This insane dessert, probably 10 inches or so tall, is essentially topped with other desserts, and features: a cream puff filled with vanilla ice cream, a miniature flan/caramel custard, strawberries, real whipped cream, more vanilla ice cream, pie crust, scoops of strawberry sherbet, sliced bananas, and strawberry pie filling. Good grief! Now that's what I call dessert.

That's pretty much it. When I put the rest of the photos into a website I'll let you know.