A stroll in Sapporo

So I'm in Sapporo until tomorrow. It's a curious place for a Queenslander: where winter is the norm and spring/summer/autumn all together last only half the year (if you say that maximums below 16˚C are "winter"). Even now, when everyone is celebrating spring, the temperatures are below average for what we know as winter in Brisbane.

It's a place shaped by its extreme winters and you can tell that just from walking around. I've posted photos below to see if you can "read" the evidence and posted them below, but first, some flowers.

It's about 1,000 km north of Tokyo. So coming here at this time of year feels like stepping back a month or so. The flowers that were out in Tokyo in March are coming out here now. I went for a walk during our lunch the other day and snapped some gorgeous plants amidst the grey of the streets.

Can you name all of these?

And now, for some evidence that winter is harsh. The average number of snowy days in this city is 132, with nearly 6m of snow falling each year!

Can you tell what evidence of severe winters you can see in these photos? (I've put the answers in captions, but you can try to guess before you scroll down to the caption).

Not too much of this left at this time of year, but plants and
small trees are often wrapped up or bound up in
some way to protect them from the weight of heavy snow.

Double doors at the entrance to a house. So that residents can shake off
snow before entering, and also keep "outside' thing still undercover (see the bike here).
These glass doors are often sliding, so that if a lot of snow has fallen during the night, you can still get out the front door in the morning.

Marks like these are common on roads and footpaths.
They are where the snow ploughs have gone a little too "deep"
in their ploughing.

Side view of the above garages. You don't see garages like this
much in Tokyo. An uncovered carpark is a nightmare in a
climate where it snows 6m in a winter, you spend a lot of time
shovelling out the car (and most people have one here). Not
to mention scrapping off the windows so that you can see out.
We still carry a scraper in our car, a habit from our days in
Sapporo, where you often had to scrape your windows even
after a short stop at the grocery store.
The big corrugations here are essential to bear up under heavy
snow building up on top.

Covered external stairwells at entrance. Shovelling stairs is not fun,
nor is negotiating them when they are only partly shovelled.

Can you see the ladder? For shovelling the roof!

The next three photos aren't so much about excess snow, but just showing how spacious Hokkaido is. It definitely feels different to Tokyo. SO much space, so few people.

But wide footpaths are essential for snow piles. In winter the snow ploughed off the road gets piled here. Small ploughs keep some essential footpaths clear. But they really only enjoy the width in the non-snowy months (about seven months of the year).