Snowy Tokyo Palace

Here’s the last of the photos I took on Tokyo’s one and only proper day of snow this winter! It’s been getting warmer during the last week and I for one is not sorry to see this winter go. It’s been unusually dark and cold. On this beautiful morning though, I got up early and took time off from work to go see the Imperial Palace grounds covered in snow. It didn’t last long and most of the snow was gone after a day or two, but it was gorgeous while it lasted. I saw quite a few TV news crews and many other photographers much more well prepared than me. Having gotten enough of snow in my childhood I am not one of the ski enthusiast you see every night in Tokyo, lining up for the sleeper busses to the mountains in Nagano and Niigata. I’d much rather make my escape somewhere sunny and warm. But every now and then, snow really is beautiful!

More Imperial Grounds in Snow

Here’s a few more photos of the unusual snow in Tokyo the other morning. The first is a panorama of the moat near Sakuradamon, viewing north, and the following photos is a few that I snapped on the way from the “Cherry Field” gate to the front of the palace grounds. There’s a subway exit near the gate and city workers were busy shoveling away the snow and ice to make it easier for pedestrians to pass. There must have been a shortage of snow equipment because I saw some workers hacking away at the ice with crow bars! I still have some other photos to show, but I’ll post them some other day. I hope we can get one or two more days of snow like this before the winter is over!

The Imperial Palace in Snow

Yesterday I woke up to see even central Tokyo covered in snow! Snow like this doesn’t happen very often in the capital and it is usually all gone by noon. I went to the most photogenic place I could imagine, the Imperial Palace area to see what it would look like. Here’s a few pictures from yesterday morning. It’s the first snow photography I have done in more than a decade and it shows! I really need more practice with this subject.

As I was snapping away and stumbling around the palace grounds (it was really slippery) more and more tourists arrived to take pictures of this rare scene. Even a few News crews were unpacking their camera gear and in the afternoon most newspapers had a photo like this, of the palace in snow. Once in a life time, maybe?