snow and city senden

The buzz at the office before going home yesterday was

'be careful on the way to work tomorrow, it's supposed to snow'

Now, being from a place where winter closes schools and bursts pipes, I tend to take most peoples comments on winter with a grain of salt.

But when I woke up this morning, it was like I was in Minneapolis in January. On the way to my station, as Japan has no snow removing municipalities, there were taxi's with snow tires, and people futily trying to move the snow with various different non-shovel things like dust pans and push brooms. I've never seen snowtires except for in the mountains of Nagano and Kumamoto.

Also, to follow on somewhatatlanticpacifics's comments on subway ads There is a great poster series in the subway (sorry the only stuff I could find is in Japanese and has no images) encouraging Japanese people to end their notorious overseas vacations, and spend some time in their fair city of Tokyo. For example one poster says 'I quit going to New York' (ニューヨーク行くのは止めた）and it shows a picture of Shinjuku Gyoen in what is supposed to be a comparison to Central Park. Another one reads 'London pubs are 'cool' (simple and refined?), but Yurakucho's underguard bars are hard to dismiss (ロンドンのパブも渋いが有楽町のガード下も捨てがたい）.

I really enjoy this ad campaign. While not all of it genuinely reflects the reality of the quality of the two things in compairson (I really don't think the Ginza clock tower is comparable to Big Ben, but I do admire them for making the comparison). I can attest to yurakucho underguard. This part of tokyo is mostly patronized by old businessmen, but in an attempt to find a bar that wasn't closed last week, we found a great yakitori resturant, and it's all based on Miyazaki! As one of my American friends who is still in Miyazaki was here, we had a great time! They have fresh grapefruit hi's.