There are Worse Places than Japan to be Stuck in a Snowstorm
I knew that hoping to see cherry blossoms in the middle of March was wishful thinking.
Karuizawa typically doesn’t bloom until late April, but a full-on snowstorm in the middle of March? Yes, you read that right. Multiple Japanese cities were still coated in feet of snow the day before the vernal equinox for the Northern Hemisphere, which supposedly announced the arrival of spring.
I’m notoriously known in my circle of friends as having an optimal operating temperature of 20-30 degrees Celsius; I can tolerate hotter days, but anything that dips dangerously low starts plaguing me with headaches and ear pains. So here’s a written–and visual–account of what went down in those twelve hours.
On our last night in Karuizawa, we went to bed giddy with excitement when fluffy snow started piling on the sidewalk. By morning, it had turned into a full-on snowstorm. It’s been a decade since I’ve seen blanket snow, and even though snow was the last thing I expected in the middle of March, it still felt like a fun adventure.
Our train was booked for lunch hour, but after an entirely unsuccessful attempt to call a taxi that almost left us stranded the night before, we hurriedly checked out and requested any vehicle at the BEB5 front desk to take us to the station. Mercifully, a taxi pulled up for the short ride, only for us to find the station packed with travellers because fallen bamboo across the tracks had halted all trains. Not trees, but bamboo in the middle of nowhere. Bamboo! By that point, it just sounded like force majeure. I was starting to envy the tourists arriving with snow gear, about to exploit the unexpected snowfall at the nearby ski resort.
Delays grew by the hour, so we resorted to hot coffee and meat pies, an impromptu snowball fight that left me with very much real cold-girl cheeks, and a not-so-reluctant third trip to the outlet mall next door. And suddenly, the blinding white lifted, the snow on the pavement vanishing as magically as it came. You know the grey slush that poisons the sidewalks when snow starts to melt into a dark mess? That never happens in Japan, where most things stay clean and pristine no matter the circumstances. To be fair, Japan deploys a clever mix of warm water sprinklers and heated pavements to get rid of snow efficiently and arid winter climates help to speed things up. Still, you can’t help but marvel at every ingenious thing the country does.
Three hours later, we finally made it onto the Shinkansen, tired and craving a piping hot meal in Tokyo. I was today years old when I discovered that JR issues partial refunds on delays of over two hours; that’s how apologetic Japan is about these things. As luck would have it (or not), our Hokuriku Shinkansen was scheduled for noon, and it pulled up promptly at 2:01 PM, not a minute earlier. It was a minor consolation that our sukiyaki dinner in our Tokyo neighbourhood (utterly delicious, by the way) was taken care of.
Moral of the story: Maybe I don’t hate the cold as much as I think, and there are much worse places in the world to be stuck in a snowstorm than Japan. But no, I hardly want to go through this ordeal again. I’m just thankful I made it through unscathed in turtlenecks (plural) and heated packs.
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