Well, it's stopped snowing (for now). Very strong winds persisted all night through to this morning, leaving very clear skies, and very cold vegetables.
Frozen Veg
There's quite a large amount of destruction to some of the less-stable structures around the area, due to the immense weight of the snow. It's really rather easy to go walking, though, as people (i.e. not me) have shovelled snow from the pavements into mounds out of the way. I don't own a shovel, so don't think I am just being lazy.
With full winter gear on once more, we set off on a journey to nowhere in particular.
Sakura Latte - only in Japan
I don't really drink Starbucks for its coffee, though that's probably just because I'm being snooty about coffee. I buy a Starbucks every now-and-then, usually when I fancy a coffee flavoured beverage of some description. However, in the image above, said beverage is the Sakura Chocolate Latte. New for 2014, strawberry chocolate and sakura (cherry blossom) flakes sit atop this creamy calorific beverage. Yum.
Before moving to Tokyo, I wasn't aware of the sheer number of temples dotted around Japan, mostly in residential areas. Of course, the super-famous temples in Tokyo and Kyoto (here and here, respectively) are tourist hotspots. This is both good (amazing things to see) and bad (lots and lots of people). I'm grateful to have seen many famous landmarks throughout the islands of Japan, but it's the quiet places that I love most. Is it funny to hear someone living in Tokyo say they enjoy the peace and quiet, or natural given the size of the place? Either way, stumbling upon this temple today really made me appreciate what's just around the corner.
The more eagled eyed of my frequent readers will have noticed something of a redesign of this site. I'm continually tweaking various bits of code related to the site, but I fancied a larger change. The "blog" feed should now be cleaner and easier to navigate through (though I am working backwards through my posts to make the necessary changes). Also, there's now a "search" feature at the very bottom of the blog. I figured that this was perhaps the best way of quickly finding a post related to a certain activity, place, food, or other keyword. Give it a try - any feedback would be appreciated.
I hope that you enjoy the changes to the site, and that they improve your overall experience. First and foremost, however, I'll try to keep learning and improving my photographic eye.
I hope you've enjoyed my photos from today - we originally planned to attend the annual CP+ Camera & Photo Imaging Show, but it was cancelled on Saturday due to the snowstorm (trains to Yokohama from Tokyo were not running), and rather than going to look at hundreds of expensive cameras and lenses (as I have done years past) I decided to take my current camera out with me... and use it.