Snow, snow and more snow

Sapporo, the city where we live, is famous for several things: the Winter Olympics in 1972, the annual snow festival, delicious ramen (a large bowl of noodles with meat and vegetables in a soup) and Sapporo beer to name a few.  It also has the distinction of being the snowiest major (i.e. population of over 1,000,000) city in the world with several metres of it falling every winter between about December and March.  Living in a city set up for snow is great.  Come October people tie up the plants and bushes in their gardens to protect the branches from the weight of the snow.  Special shovels of all shapes and sizes are sold in the shops.  Cars change their tyres to winter ones with a thicker tread and don special windscreen wipers.

On a snowy morning everyone gets up a little earlier and goes outside to clear their car and the pavement area in front of their house.  People then get to work earlier to help clear the areas there too.  "Snow moving" becomes a major focus for the city authorities.   An everyday sight is lorries full of snow driving to one of the dumping grounds.  One place is beside the main river where tons of snow are dumped and then in spring gradually put into the river.  There are other empty plots of ground which gradually become filled with snow mountains too.

Driving is an interesting experience.  The roads are not salted, nor are they cleared as such.  Rather the snow is flattened down so that you are driving on top of the snow and ice.  On a warmer day though this might melt a little and then freeze again, likening driving conditions to a rally driver.  2 lane roads become one as snow is piled up at the side, and pedestrians are often found walking down the roads as the pavements may be impassable. 

Schools build their own snow mountains in the playground where they teach beginner skiing, with the older children being taken to local ski slopes for lessons as part of PE.  This mountain is also great for sledging with homemade sledges consisting of a cushion taped inside a 10kg empty rice bag.

1st graders learning to ski in the school playground

One of the displays at the Sapporo Snow Festival

And the snow is beautiful.  On a sunny morning it sparkles as if with diamonds, sometimes almost too bright to look at - a great reminder of the promise that we will be washed "whiter than snow".

Let it snow, let it snow

Today we discovered something. It seems Sapporo can be classed as the snowiest city in the world (counting major cities with a population of over 1 million). Snow is just a feature of life here from November through to March. An overnight snowfall sees an early morning stint of snow clearing outside so that people can walk along the pavement. The car needs to be cleared. Occasionally (like today), snow needs to be cleared off the flat roof. Everywhere you go snow is piled up at the side of the roads. Although the snow is cleared away now and again, the road surface gradually gets higher and higher with packed snow. The roads of course get narrower too as the snow mountains at the edge of the pavements encroach on the road. Sometimes you can have a milder day like today resulting in the snow on the roads becoming softer and the outcome can be large (and deep) ruts in the snow - fun to drive through (if you have winter tyres and four wheel drive) until it freezes again. But life goes on, just at a slightly slower pace and you always need to allow a bit more time to get from place to place. And of course it's great fun for the boys - and good exercise and a chance to meet the neighbours as everyone goes out at much the same time (often very early!) to get rid of the white stuff. We do enjoy (most of the time) living in the snowiest city in the world.