It's late January in Tokyo, and a rare 6-centimeter snowfall plunges the city's famously efficient transport network into chaos. Train lines report delays of up to four hours, leaving snaking lines of frustrated commuters steaming, despite the freezing temperatures.
Days later, a minibus in the far north winds its way through channels carved into the snow banks near the village of Nakatsugawa, in Iide, Yamagata Prefecture. Here, as in Tokyo, the weather is abnormal.
"It makes a nice change to see so little snow," says our driver, with a chuckle. "We'd normally have about three meters piled up on each side of the road, but this is less than half of that. When we see the news from Tokyo, we wonder what all the fuss is about."