Tokyo had some unprecedented snowfall yesterday. Ended up getting stranded and didn’t get home until 6am this morning. What a long cold night it was.
It snowed all day in Tokyo yesterday. Some workplaces declared snow day. All we got was a 5pm earlymark.
When I left the office a little before 6pm, here is what it looked like outside my office building:
It wasn’t too bad. Subways were running (although a few train lines were down).
I headed to Shinjuku where we boarding a bus bound for Hakuba for a weekend of snowboarding.
Our bus left Shinjuku at 7:30pm and we hit the road. It took us an hour just to get out of the city and onto the highway.
We then spent 5 hours on the bus only to travel 50km and we were technically still in Tokyo. Traffic had been diverted off the highways as the highways shut down due to the snow. We just crawled along.
At about 12:30am the decision was made to head back home to Tokyo. By this time we were outside Takaosan train station. There was no way we were going to reach our destination. Snow trip officially cancelled.
Stopped in the middle of the road, where we walked to the nearby train station to use the toilets:
Here are some pics in the middle of the night at the pit stop:
We made it back to Tokyo where the bus dropped us off in Shinjuku. It was now 3:30am and we were stranded in Shinjuku as no public transport was running. They close during the night. Not a single taxi was available either. We tried to hail over a dozen taxis. They were either all full or no one wanted to pick us up.
By this time, we were super tired, freezing cold and wet. Ugh. Sooo cold.
These were the conditions trying to cross the roads in Shinjuku:
With no way to get home, my friend and I camped out a ramen shop where we ate a bowl of ramen at 4am. Even the 24 hour Maccas was closed! They had decided to close at 4am and were only doing takeaway to stop people from camping out inside.
Cars struggling in the snow in Shinjuku:
I finally got home at 6am this morning, once the trains were up and running again at 5am. Had a long hot shower to thaw out, and crawled into bed with my hot water bottle.
There was so much snow for this weekend, but ironically no one could get out to the slopes to enjoy it. All the highways have been shut. Quite the adventurous weekend so far, and it’s only Saturday morning!
Am now settled in for having a bludgey day indoors. It’s freezing though and super slushy outside. although it has stopped snowing.
Here was the view from my balcony this morning:
Memoirs of Aleisha 
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