Winter is back 👹🍣🎎 Wonderful Japan

Winter is back. And it is back in full force and with full power. On Wednesday it snowed all afternoon and half the night and the temperatures had already dropped into the minus range the day before. Well, that's nothing unusual for this time of year and even though January was rather mild, you still have to expect winter to strike again in February.

However, as I reported a few days ago, that doesn't really work for me this week. I have important appointments that can only be canceled or postponed to a limited extent. That's why I didn't like the snow at all, even though I was actually hoping for another spell of winter. But just not this week!

Fortunately, it didn't snow quite as much as had been predicted. By Wednesday night, it had snowed around 20 centimetres, which is fairly normal for the region where I currently live. At least in earlier years, people here had to contend with completely different amounts of snow and I also remember over 50 centimetres of fresh snow in a single night. Then it looks completely different in the morning than it does today.

But the temperatures were also below freezing and it also got very windy. As you can see, it was less than 5 degrees in our kitchen in the morning, which is a clear sign that it was still super cold outside.

When I left the house in the morning, the roads and paths were often still frozen and first it was a bit of an adventure to get around by car. But in the end, I got to where I wanted to go quite well and could do the day almost as planned. As the next snowfall has already been announced for the afternoon and actually until the end of the weekend, I have rearranged some appointments as a precaution and will try to stay home as much as possible. You don't really want to go out in this weather if you don't have to.

Wednesday evening, however, it was unavoidable. We all had to leave the house again in a stick snow storm as we had to attend a completely unforeseen event. An elderly relative passed away unexpectedly on Monday and two days later is was time for the wake. At this wake, known as an Otsuya お通夜 in Japan , relatives, friends and acquaintances of the deceased gather together and a Buddhist priest recites various sutras. Depending on the Buddhist orientation, this ceremony can take a slightly different course and vary. The actual funeral usually takes place the next day, when you go straight to the temple and the associated cemetery.

And that's exactly where we were going, and that is why we left house during that snowstorm. The journey would normally have taken less than 30 minutes, but this time everything was different. It was all white and the snow was getting heavier. The traffic on the roads was quite slow and kept coming to a standstill, so in the end it took us about twice as long to get there. It was a similar story on the way back, although fortunately there were far fewer cars on the road by then and we got home safely in the end.

As it's still winter, we'll probably have to be prepared for a few more unexpected occasional surprises. So I may have something to report from the winter front again soon, and maybe we will get to see some new pictures from the winter wonderland...