During the night after the day we went to the frozen waterfall it snowed and on Friday morning we awoke to a wonderful sight. The TV news said it was the coldest day in Matsuyama in 26 years. Just like snow in Austin though it was almost all gone by afternoon. I got up early and went shooting to get some photos and here are a few.

Bamboo forest covered with snow



Winter trees covered with snow and reflected in a pond:

Very nice snow scenes Henry. I especially like the bamboo forest. I can't remember seeing a view of the top of a growing bamboo like that before - bamboo images always tends to be close-up, in amongst the stems/trunks. Glad you got the chance to get some pictures before the snow melted .

I went outside a bit after 7:00 AM and walked 10-12km over the next 2.5 hours taking photos in various places. I knew the snow wouldn't last so I wanted to get a few shots before it was gone. Around here there are lots of bamboo forests/groves. This was my first time to see snow on bamboo though.

Here are a couple more photos of bamboo with snow, but not the same location as the earlier photo.



Snow falling from the bamboo

Beautiful! : )

An authentic look with the sprinkled snow dust on the bamboo trees, Henry.


Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

The snow covered bamboo is great Henry, I'm struggling a little with scale though, was the bamboo really tall or medium size?
Greg

Looking at the 3rd shot in the latest batch I am reminded of the stylised trees on some of the old Chinese and Japanese porcelain.

These bamboo are very tall. I was well aware when I was shooting that the photos would give no scale to the height of the bamboo, but there was nothing around such as a house, car, person, etc. that would show the scale. The bamboo is growing on mountainsides. I looked through the photos on my website and found these 3 other photos of bamboo forests in Japan. The first two are in Sagano, Kyoto but the next one is around here. They might help a bit to visualize how tall they are. I am sure I have other photos that are not on my website that probably show it better, so I will try to find one.

These would definitely give a new twist to the phrase "mowing the grass"! I'm sure we've all heard/read many times how bamboo is the largest type of grass on earth, but these definitely bring that home a lot better than a page of dry statistics about height, maximum mass of a single plant, etc.

When I visited Minolta in Japan, one day the coach stopped for a countryside view, and I got out and ran into a bamboo thicket like this. But I did not look hard enough and a huge spider web caught me right across the face, with a giant green spider on it - I ran OUT again very fast!

David

I love those bamboo shots!

I have seen spider webs sometimes in among the bamboo. I haven't run into one yet, but I have seen some quite large webs and spiders in other places in Japan. I have a few photos, but nothing as good as those that Greg recently showed.

Everyday the TV news is filled with video and stories about the huge snowfall, much more than a normal winter, in many parts of Japan. I wish I was in some of these places, especially some of the mountain villages, to take photos. Snow that is 2-4 meters deep in some areas. Lots of elderly people in these countryside locations have died and been seriously injured, new reports everyday, from falling from rooftops while trying to clear the snow off. With a meter of snow on a roof there is serious danger of collapse and little by little many of these countryside communities have lost all their young people who have moved off to urban areas for work and excitement. Many of these places only have the old folks still living there. I see TV news video everyday of people in their 70s and 80s up on a snow covered roof shoveling snow off. One slip or just not realizing where roof ends and air begins results in many falls from one story, two story, or even three stories up.

Around Matsuyama it is warmer than some other parts of Japan so the little snow on Friday was very unusual, didn't last but a few hours, and was not nearly as impressive as many other parts of Japan. One works with what one has though.

Snow covered farm and farming village in the mountains of Ehime-ken:



On the country road I walked on to get to the farming village above:



Here are some waraguro in a snow covered rice paddy:



Well, I think these are waraguro. Here is a photo of some waraguro in another location in December and you can see that the shape is a bit different than the above photo. I am guessing that the snow covered ones still have the same name though. Maybe the shape just depends on the region and tradition for each area. I asked a Japanese person and she didn't know if the above ones are also called waraguro. Maybe this, like the inuyarai, will require further investigation. Several Japanese friends that I checked further with about inuyarai all said that although they had seen them many times they never knew what they were called or what they were for so they learned something also. Japanese friends have told me I seem to know more about Japan than they do. Not true, of course. For years many Japanese friends have told me I have certainly been to many more places in Japan than they have and that is true.

Ah I see how big that bamboo was from those new shots Henry, quite a size; I especially like that first one with the neat hedgy fence along the edge of the road winding through the bamboo.
Greg
Ps btw thanks for the compliment about the spider shot, but now you and David have me wondering what the Japanese bamboo spider looks like.

Pps I think the purpose of the waraguro is feed for livestock; apparently rice straw is reasonably nutritious, besides where better to place the feed, right where you want fertilizer, I couldn’t find any direct reference to the different styles of waraguro though, and they might disappear gradually from the scene in Japan with more modern farming methods replacing traditional ways.

It was haystacks like that I was running to photograph! The bamboo was between them and the road. We used to have proper haystacks in Scotland 40 years ago (I have some pictures) and then in the 1980s I found them again in Austria. I think if you go to Romania now it is still possible to see handmade hay-ricks. But the Japanese, of course, do it so perfectly like a work of architecture.

I must find my Japan slides and get my scanner working again. I have thousands of unscanned slides.

David

What a beautiful thread. Henry, you are superb with your shots.
Getting up early to shoot some snowy scenes... don't count on me buddy. Summer is OK, but winter...
I like the bamboo alley too, the one with the cyclist.
I realize that in different parts of the world haystacks vary in appearance. We like the ones found elsewhere, while someone from "elsewhere" likes ours...
Wonderful shots Henry.