Snow in March

Spring is not really with us yet. It had been cold since that morning.
When the meeting was over around noon, the temperature hadn't come up much, although it was the middle of the day. The sky was covered with thick, gray clouds. What's more, it was quite windy.

By the time I got on the train, the sky was threatening.
On the train, I was busy checking my iPhone and not paying any attention to the sight out the window. Finally, when I looked up, I saw there was heavy snow falling.
It seemed that a strong wind had come with the snow.

It was an exciting view to see through the window, while snug inside a warm train.
My eyes were glued on the scene -- the wind and the snow flying chaotically in all directions.

Happy Valetine's day from snow-covered Japan

It's snow again. This time it has been snowing at a wide area in Japan through the Pacific coast of eastern to the western Japan.  In Tokyo it's snowing much heavier than here in Nagoya.
The thing is that once it snows in big cities where snow rarely falls, the transportation gets paralyzed and people have to be patient for the inconvenience.

Staying home is the best choice on such a day------but not quite true for me.  I have to clear snow from the walkway before it gets dark in the evening. 
What a nice way to celebrate a Valentine's Day!

"Happy Valentine's day to everyone.
Greetings from snow-covered Nagoya, Japan!"

A delight in the rain

Finally the rainy season is with us almost everywhere in Japan.

Soon I’ll get fed up with damp and wet climate which lasts about a month. I can’t do without my umbrella all the time.  
Yet one blessing during this season is to see hydrangeas in the rain.  At our back garden, this year too, they surely delight our eyes under a heavy, gray sky.  I'd love to see them especially wear raindrops.  It definitely drags me out of my discrimination against the rainy season.

I didn’t know home of hydrangeas is Japan before I read this on the web a few years ago.

Since they have so many different species throughout the world, it is seemingly hard to state how they were originally introduced at the very first stage.  

Strictly speaking, hydrangeas with round mop heads which are very much popular and  seen at any places in the world are not origin in Japan.  The original one from Japan has fewer outer flowers around smaller tiny inner flowers. 

It is said in 18th century a Japanese hydrangea was brought all the way to Kew Garden, England  by way of China. Soon they started to cultivate so as to meet up with its own condition such as climate, soil. This way they modified flowers to suit their preferences. It is also widely known that in 19th century a German physician and scientist, Phillipp Franz von Seibold introduced 17 species of Japanese plants to a  botanical garden in Lieden, which made it possible for hydrangeas to grow in Europe.

Eventually it was turned to a hydrangea of which head was like a pom-pom. Later a mop head hydrangea was re-imported to Japan.

Nowadays we see mop head hydrangeas at many house gardens or public venues or even at temples and shrines or landscapes in our country. So do original ones with simple frames.  No matter what kind of hydrangea flowers they are, we enjoy seeing a large volume of flowers and amazing color-changes.  They are such a gracious gift in the rainy season.

Celestial Show in March

"Fly me to the moon and let me stay among the stars.
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars"

-----Well, it was not Mars tonight but Venus.
If the clouds were clear, we could have seen the beautiful show of the trio---Venus and Jupiter aligning with the young crescent Moon in the west sky.

Unfortunately the sky in Nagoya tonight was covered with clouds.
I saw only brilliant Venus and the young crescent moon.
Yet I definitely saw Jupiter just below the moon in my heart.
We will enjoy the quartet adding Mars with tonight's three in 2015!
How romantic!

I made it in time

Of all the four seasons, people in Japan get so restless twice----- in spring and in fall. We try not to miss the beauty of the autumn leaves at this time of the year.

There are many good spots to visit to admire the autumn foliage across the nation. People enjoy visiting famous gardens, temples and shrines where they grow old and huge trees like maples trees, gingko, beech and cherry trees. Others prefer making trips to the mountains and forests to put themselves into the grand picture of the colorful trees.

In fact the view is breathtaking. They say the autumn foliage in Japan is most colorful among any other areas in the world. Why? It is said that there are various kinds of deciduous trees in Japan compared with any other spots on earth. Since up-and -down of the temperature in a day is quite remarkable in fall, it makes an astonishing foliage possible.

This year, it is so unlucky for me that I can't make a trip to any other popular spots to see the autumn leaves due to my job schedule. Especially I miss Kyoto where there are lots of temples and shrines of which refined gardens show a beautiful combination with buildings and colorful trees.

Since this morning I've been working for my new class which will start tomorrow regretting why I took this job at this time of the year. (Never do it again for the next year.) Then it rang bells! I took my camera and stepped outside to see how our maple trees in the garden change their colors. There they were! Glad our previous generations left this garden to us. I spent some time to admire the season before I was back to my desk. "How lucky! I made it!" Then-----

I said to myself, "Next year, Kyoto by all means."

Our garden came to life again

They grew too fast during the scorching hot summer. Too fast and too wild for me to control.

Once a year we have the gardeners (we call them friendly "Niwashi-san")come over to trim the trees and clear the bushes. This year too, Niwashi-san did such a beautiful work. Their skills are amazing especially when they work on pine trees. Basically they don't use scissors to trim these. They just pick up excessive tiny pine needles by hands. It's the most delicate work and it is often considered as an ultimate skill for a good gardener. It requires patience and attention to make a whole pine tree into a better shape. They often stay on a tree for hours to pick pine needles in the strong sunlight while others trim trees by scissors and sometimes electric scissors.
So ironically this is often said that a pine tree in a garden is money sucking.

Whatever it is, thanks to Niwashi-san, here comes back our garden of what it is to be. A "real garden" not a jungle anymore. The next thing I am concerned about is how long I can keep our garden this neat and clean after they left. Let's see.

Typhoon Roke is appoaching

(images from the web)

My work today was canceled.

Due to the approaching typhoon, we had a heavy rainfall yesterday and much sooner than we expected two main rivers running across the city were observed to be in a danger of overflowing.

In fact at the upper streams, the water flowed over to the nearby residential areas and fields. The city claimed an evacuation advisory to almost half of a city population. I don't know how many people had actually left for the evacuation facilities, though.

The main roads downtown were covered with heavy rainfall in a short period of time and some of the underground shopping arcades and the subway stations were flooded. The transportation systems were paralyzed in the midst of the evening rush hours. My son was stuck in a traffic jam on a bridge when he drove back into downtown Nagoya.

My area was safe except the fact the typhoon is getting much closer no later than this noon. The rain and the wind are getting worse as the typhoon is approaching. No evacuation instruction is claimed here at this moment but only an evacuation advisory for people at a certain area of the city.

My husband called me from India to check if I am all right. He convinced me that our place is basically safe from flooding. I glue to the TV anyway. It's raining hard and the wind is threatening. Our little pond in the garden will be flooded soon or later. Gee, it is so relieving my son is off today. We’ll stay safe.

We can't miss it

Nagoya Castle is one of the popular spots you can't miss in Nagoya.
It's especially beautiful in spring time when more than 1,600 cherry trees around the castle are in full bloom almost at the same time. All the trees grow blossoms first then fresh green leaves come next after the blossoms fall on the ground. So it is really something to our eyes when all the trees are full of light pink blossoms. It makes a breathtaking view against the donjon.
I drove there for a quick visit the day before yesterday. It took only 15 minutes or so.

(click!)

Since the TV weather forecast reported it would rain the next day, I didn't want to miss the best time. Cherry blossoms are in bloom only for a week and all the petals start scattering onto the ground like snow flakes dancing in the air. We have to enjoy the beautiful blossoms before the rain ruins the best time. For Japanese, spring never comes along without admiring them at first hand. And yes, the forecast was bingo!

Um, it's about snow again

It's really a bad joke that almost every Monday in this January, we have snow. What a nice start to a day. Today is not an exception. When I went outside to see the road condition, it was just a slight snowfall and yet the roads were icy and slippery. Two of our cars looked pretty wearing powder snow so I added some finger touches to look much prettier though mine was just OK in the garage.

Our area is not basically snowy so I don't get used to driving in this weather. Hope it won't snow all day.

My goodness! It's still snowing!

Well, when I woke up this morning, the snowfall was just moderate enough to enjoy the beautiful scenery. However I must say now, "No more thank you." The transportation is getting paralyzed. Trains delayed, cars trapped, people slipping. I don't feel like driving on such a awful day. So here I am sitting at my laptop making the slide show. What a good way to spend the Sunday afternoon.

Too bad, however, there are many senior high students who have been taking the entrance exams across the nation since this morning despite this bad weather.
Some students could not arrive at the exams venues on time due to the paralyzed transportation system so many exam organizations made it possible to give them a full time right after they sit at the desks. That's the way it should be. Yet,I know how much stressing for the students to concentrate on the exams all after the fuss.

It's the season of the entrance exams in Japan for these three months. Two-day unified college entrance examinations, known as the National Center Test, started at 706 venues across the nation yesterday. Today is the last day. It's the beginning of the exams season. With today's results, students are to go on to the next exams at each university which they apply for.

I don't know why but the snowy weather often falls on around the date of the National Center Test. I remember it did snow on the day when my daughter went to take this exams almost six years ago.
No more hardship on them. Hope they will finish the exams making their best.
Their own "spring" will be arriving soon.

Snow!

First snow of the year in Nagoya!

Our garden is just lightly covered with snow!

It's not a heavy snowfall.

But at an area like my city where a snowfall is not so frequent,

it is big enough to make the news.

Have a nice and cozy Sunday wherever you are on this planet !

Typhoon No.18

Typhoon No.18----we number typhoon each year instead of naming them.

The typhoon No.18 was so scary because it was one of the biggest ones for the first time in ten years and it was the first one in two years that landed on the Japanese archipelago. Usually once a typhoon reaches on the land from the sea, its power weakens to a tropical storm and leaves to the Japanese sea. But this No. 18 was different. It kept its power and brought many damages here and there while it were moving up to the northern part of the Japanese archipelago.

It first landed on this Nagoya area early in the morning. It brought with strong wind and huge amount of rainfall. The horrifying sound of wind and rainfall made me awake. Since we closed most of the window shutters, I poke outside from the small window. Jesus, the rain and the wind turned to a huge monster and were hitting all the trees and beating the neighboring houses. Gee, better not look outside. That was terrifying. I turned on TV and watched the weather report and all of a sudden, the electricity went out. It was past five in the morning and still dark. I picked out the flashlight and went back to bed where my husband unbelievably was sleeping without being disturbed the scary sounds. I woke him up but he just spoke to me, "It's all right. We are safe." and went back to sleep. How come he was so confident. I tell you I really felt nervous during the next few hours.

As the rain and the wind got weak, I learned the typhoon was getting away in the distance. I opened the shutters and got outside to check if any part of our house was damaged. I should have taken some photos of our garden just after the typhoon. We didn't have any trees fell down but there were the ponds all over. There were no serious damage in our neiborhood.

Since the typhoon hit our area very early in the morning, the every transportation in this area had stopped from every first train and was informed on every local radio and TV news which helped people leaving home to work from getting into confusion. Then it was really sorry for commuters in Tokyo area because the typhoon hit this area just around the rush hour , that stopped many parts of city transportation systems.

This typhoon brought about many damages to many cities and towns. And I am sorry this typhoon is not the exception that had some people dead and injured. It was so distressing. We are so helpless before the wild nature and who made the global abnormal weather over these years and who should be blamed for and what we should do about it. We've got to think it over before it is too late.

Some photo images from the Mainichi daily news.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/photospecials/graph/typhoon18/

Japan is covered with heavy clouds

By the time every school is off for a month-long-vacation, the rainy season throughout Japan is supposed to be over and we were going to be ready for a sunny summer. But this year something is different. The seasonal rain front normally would have subsided by this time of the year but this time it remains over western Japan.

According to the meteorological agency, the humid and wet air from the East China Sea makes thick and wet clouds over northern Kyushu are and stimulates the rain front. This humid air is blocking a high pressure area over the Pacific from covering Japan. As a result we have a longer period of rainy days than usual and what was worse, the rainfall has been quite heavy and has brought about serious natural disasters such as huge landslides and floods mainly in western part of Japan.


In some area of Kyushu, the rain poured so hard in a short period of time and recorded more than its monthly rainfall.


Nagoya, where I live in, locates just about in the center of Japan but still we've had rainy days over this weekend and it pours so hard all of a sudden sometimes with a thunder.
Many people including me believe this is not a simple matter of natural disaster.
Man has been disturbing the principles of the nature. That brings about crucial negative phenomena here and there on the earth. How far are we going?

We're sorry for those people in Kyushu area who were damaged, threatened, injured and were killed by this wild rainfall. Hope that the weather will be settled down pretty soon. We don't want any more people injured and dead.

(all the images are from The Japan Time on Line)