Towadako: winter wonderland

Lake Towada: Aomori and Akita Prefectures

I have been keeping very busy seeing as much of the Tohoku region as possible before the snow hits. Every weekend has been a new adventure to a new part of northern Japan and I continue to be amazed by the diverse beauty of the area.

Unfortunatley, the weather in Iwate can be a bit unpredictable--

as was the case today.

I awoke this morning to a brite, warm sun - followed by a brief and damage-free earthquake. Then I decided to head over to Lake Towada, located inbetween Akita and Aomori Prefectures (north of Iwate), with Zach and Laura. While cruising around Lake Towada we encountered gorgeous fall colors, then rain, then a calm-coolness before the mini-blizzard hit! Wow, what a day for the record books! Dave, only a meteorologist like yourself could truly "appreciate" such sporatic weather patterns and climate changes!

So the trip started out like this. It is a 27 mile loop around this lake---the 3rd largest in Japan. Lake Towada was created by a volcanic eruption over 20000 years ago...so its technically a "caldron". The deepest part of the lake is well over 1000 feet, making it also one of Japan's deepest lakes in the north (although I have yet to see any of its rival counterparts.) The scenery would have been even more splendid probably 3 weeks ago when the colors were at their peak, but its super cold up in Aomori-ken, and primetime had passed us by. The lake was super quiet and calm and very few people were tooling around the lake. So we were left to enjoy the lake and its misty, Blair Witch-esque atmosphere all to ourselves....well, until -

...shortly after these beautiful fall photo opportunities...

SNOW hits! And we're talking a LOT of snow! Out of nowhere...it just starts dumping thick, fluffy, sticky white snow EVERYWHERE! Go figure--being a Minnesotan, I have yet to get through Thanksgiving without this white stuff. Snow just seems to follow me!

Zach drives a poor man's Japanese-brand-unknown "SUV" (Japanese SUVs are still 25 years behind the Escalade or ForeRunner)...with balding tires, windows that seldom shut and locks that have a mind of their own. The heat works, but the 4-wheel drive was yet to be tested and his snow tires were sitting in his garage in Taneichi. So we geared up, without the proper equipment, for the long haul. We had only gone maybe a 1/3 of the way around the lake, before the snow storm had began. The mountainous terrain had hair pin turns, no shoulders and steadily climbed over the steep mountainside, winding its way along the banks of the lake.

Just then...up ahead we see someone! Who unfortunatley, was not driving a high-quality machine like Zach's said vehicle, and found himself lodged into a snowbank! Thank goodness his car veered off the road where it did, as the other side had no guard rail and would have been quite the tumble toward the lake.

I bounded over to his car to try out some broken Japanese - Do you need help? Do you have a cell phone? Are you sufffering from any life threatening injuries? All of which he didn't seem to respond to, but used a new form of sign language to tell me a tow truck was on its way. Relieved to not have to play volulnteer paramedic and administer first aid, we made the not-so difficult decision to turn around.

A bit of a bummer, but we couldn't trust our means of transportation. With no radio to warn us of upcoming weather conditions, few people on the roads in case of emergency, no extensive guide map to alert authorities if and when we too found ourselves ditch-bound and no smoke signals/road flares, we thought it best to head back around the way we came.

So our first snow of the year was a memorable one at Lake Towada! As we made our way back down the mountainside and out of the snowy conditions, our last sights of the lake were like the one below: a beautiful fall picture to remind us of the erratic, but exciting, weather in northern Japan.