Winter Wonderland

Who'd have thought that there could be anything better than lying on a Sydney beach on a hot summer day, slowing cooking yourself, and turning over like a rotisserie sans the stick up the arse - but there is! It's the first snow of the winter in Tokyo - and there's lots of it.

I woke up this morning, in a hurry because I was trying to get to the movies on time, and I needed to iron my new favourite shirt, so I was running down the corridor in my underwear to get to the laundry on my floor. I wasn't worried because it was reasonably early on a Saturday morning, and I was on the guys floor, so if I did encounter a girl who was horribly offended at seeing me half-naked (and they never are... ), I could come back with a retort like "Well what are you doing on the guys floor this early??? HUH!?!", but probably something wittier than that.

Anyway, I was rushing down a very cold corridor and I saw something out of the corner of my eye... a snowflake! Actually, there were more than that - millions in fact, all clumped together on the window sill, and falling out of the sky... SNOW! I was giddy excited, and I couldn't think what to do first - iron my shirt? call everyone I've ever met? take photos? So I went to get my camera, and took as many photos as my camera's battery could handle, and while it recharged, I was getting ready to go out - the friend I was going to watch the movie with (Aunty I) would just have to wait if I was running late... it was snowing!

And then getting to the local train station even took a lot of effort - I kept stopping to take photos. Everything looks better when covered in snow - train lines, road signs, the carcass of the dead crow that's still lying in the garden out the front of my dorm, even the freaky spider statue at Roppongi Hills (see below).

I got to the cinema, and as I wait for Aunty I, it dawns on me - in the similarly inspired way that an apple falling gave Newton the idea of gravity - a clump of snow that fell from the roof onto my shoulder convinced me that a snowball fight with her would be an utterly brilliant way to herald in the snow season in all its snowy goodness. I prepared my arsenal (left), and when she turned up, I started pelting her with them... She tried to retaliate, and she put up a good show, but with a ready-made arsenal, the wisdom of Sun Tzu, and an umbrella to deftly deflect her attempts - I won.

Of course people were staring at us, but I'm kinda used to that...

Here are some more photos from today. I'll try and get some more tomorrow.

------The Gauntlet (here is what it looks like in summer)------




-------------------------The Backyard------------------------


-------------------------Train lines------------------------


--------------------A pathway to nowhere-------------------