Singaporean author Clarissa Goenawan only saw snow for the first time when she came to Japan last year to celebrate her and her eldest daughter's birthday.
The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida, by Clarissa Goenawan.288 pagesSOHO PRESS, Fiction.
"We traveled in mid-April to avoid the cherry blossom crowd," Goenawan recalls. "But we ended up catching both the peak of the sakura (cherry blossom) season and the snow too! We were in Nikko and the whole area was blanketed in white. We were not suitably dressed — walking around in snow-soaked canvas shoes wasn't fun — but the view was breathtakingly beautiful and more than made up for it."