Yaaaay, it is snowing in Tokyo :-)

I wake up today morning (well, at 11AM, but then it is a Sunday) and what do I see at the window ? Snowflakes dancing around. I rub my eyes in disbelief, jump out of bed and go to the window to take a closer look. Yes, it is snowing. Yippeeeee.

Actually it must have been snowing for many hours now, because already the whole landscape
is a pure white color, with roof-tops, cars etc covered with about few cms of snow. From the
day I landed here, I was hoping that it would snow here, but the weather was slowly changing from real cold to a little sunny over the last week. So, it was a surprise to see snow today.

While a trip to Japan is something that is always looked forward to, this one was supposed to
be a little more special due to two reasons. Firstly, I was supposed to go to a customer location
which is in the extreme north of Japan and where it is snowing right now. Secondly, the mode
of travel to that place would not be your usual flight, but the Shinkansen.

The last time I saw snow was in '98 in Europe. Had been to Belgium on work and one weekend, me and a Belgian friend 'Jo' decided to drive down to Germany. The idea was to spend the weekend at Germany and if possible also drop in at my aunt's home in Dusseldorf. We reach
the border only to see the whole place snowed up, with cars buried under snow. We knew that
it would not be wise to go further and decide to drown our disappointment in some nice Belgian beer (the best variety of beer in the world) and some fine venison.

I run around the whole place clicking pictures (normal film cameras then) mainly because it
was my first snow sighting. However, never got to see even one of them because before I
could develop the snaps, one stupid friend of mine opened up the camera exposing the full
roll of film. :-(

Coming to the Shinkansen, this is what the rest of the world knows as the Bullet Train.
Running at close to 300kms per hour, these trains would naturally be of extreme interest to someone like me, for whom the fastest trains in India do maybe 100-120 kms per hour. Ofcourse, I have also had the pleasure of travelling in the TGV (Europe's equivalent of the
Shinkansen) from Brussels to Paris, though I do not remember the speeds of the TGV.

Ofcourse, there are different Shinkansens plying on different routes and the one we are taking
tomorrow is unfortunately not the fastest. The fastest is the Nozumi Shinkansen, which I think
plies between Tokyo and Kyoto. BTW, I just noticed that the two places are perfect anagrams. Just googled for it and see it already listed on Wikipedia. So much for my thinking that I was
the first to chance upon this. :-)

So, what next ? Maybe get out in the snow to feel it, instead of just watching it from inside
the hotel room. Will post pictures in my next post.