Lockdown 2025

We got back in the afternoon having spent several days in Osaka – for the centre of Hokkaido it was a reasonable temperature, around 9 degrees (48 in old money), but in the evening the weather was horrible, heavy rain and a storm. The house was cold and I wasn’t happy. Osaka had been a perfect 24 degrees (75) and sunny, 20 degrees (68) at worst. I definitely wasn’t expecting, nor was I prepared for what greeted me when I woke in the morning. I wasn’t alone: the larch tree in the garden was still green, the silver birch trees still hadn’t lost all their leaves – indeed some were still green. Nature is confused. Summer had been ridiculously hot: typical Hokkaido summers used to be low to mid 20s with the odd day approaching 30. We’d had nearly three months of temperatures around 30 occasionally up to 34. The (sweet) pepper plants had been prolific, most fruit had been cropped and sent or used over the previous month or so but last minute cropping by the worker (aka wife) had brought many immature fruit inside to ripen before we left.

Anyway, after recovering from the shock of the unanticipated scene I grabbed my smartphone (Pixel 6). The film camera had been disgorged of its film and I needed to move quickly just in case the temperature picked up and everything melted. (It didn’t, but the coming snowstorm blew snow off the branches and produced white-out for several hours, so it was right to move quickly.) All shots were taken from the balcony and through very briefly opened windows – I wasn’t going out there. 25 or 30 years ago we went for a one hour walk to a hot spring when the temperature was minus 30 (minus 22) – it took about a minute for my moustache to turn into a block of ice. We got a lift back. No, that sort of thing is for young people.

I had pre-planned my escape this winter with a flight to Europe booked for early November but winter arrived early. Fortunately, if the weather forecast is right, after a couple of days it will warm up and this lot with melt, allowing us to venture out to the shops to get some food, but for the next couple of days it’ll be emergency rations only. (Just as I wrote this the worker turned up and asked if we could go shopping. After a brief amusing conversation she graciously agreed we did not need to go.)

I’m not a big fan of using smartphone cameras primarily for reasons of ergonomics (screen visibility can be bad) but I think the camera has done a reasonable job of reproducing the subtle colours here.

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