Not a Snow Town
Well, Friday brought quite a bit of the white stuff into town, though the weekend-long storm predicted fizzled out in the end. But we did get a few inches all over town, and for Tokyo that’s quite a bit.
This city is not really geared up to handle much snow. I remember back in the countryside, where we got real snow, meters of it, things would run relatively smoothly. Trains would operate. Business would go on. And in the evening we’d watch the news shows with images of a few inches of snow in Tokyo and people slipping, sliding, and waiting for late trains, and we’d have a good laugh. Of course, it’s not the people, it’s the city and its readiness. Even several hours after just a light snow, the trains were still running late.
One small note–they’ve added wooden planking to the railroad tracks next to the platforms at stations, at least some on the Keio Line. I have no idea if this is a snow measure or not. If it is, it doesn’t seem to help the trains stay on time in bad weather.