Posted on March 8, 2013 [Permalink]

It has been pretty cold winter here in Ome this year - and everybody has said the same thing, so it's not just 'this guy' getting old! But we've had very little snow, and the sun has shone brightly day after day, so there is little to complain about.

Things are changing though this week - here's a shot of the little plum tree just outside our front door:

Our town of Ome ('Green Plum') is earning its name over the next couple of weeks, for sure.

The downside of seeing these blossoms is that they are always accompanied by this:

That's the windshield of my neighbour's car, and the yellow powder coating it - and everything else within miles of here - is cedar pollen. I myself seem to be getting less and less affected by this as the years go by, by almost all the staff working here this week are doing so with reddened eyes and runny noses.

It'll be like this for around a month - the inevitable consequence of the post-war 'boom' in planting such trees to provide timber for house construction. But these days, the trees remain uncut, as most residential lumber is now imported from Australian or North America, and the pollen problem has become very acute.

My neighbour Yamaguchi-san came over this morning to tell me that he and his wife were heading off to stay with a relative for the next couple of weeks. It's actually that bad, that people are 'evacuating' ...

Added by: Sharri on March 10, 2013

We have the same problem as we are surrounded by cedar trees. My eyes and nose run all day and everything is a sort of dull yellow if you look closely. This is the downside to sunny days - ;-)

Added by: dustisallthings on March 10, 2013

Thank you David, for this timely post.

Informative, amusing, and so very well foreshadows ...

Trouble Afoot.

Added by: Dave on March 10, 2013

... Trouble Afoot ...

Hey! Have you been talking to Jed? Has he talked too much?

Added by: dustisallthings on March 10, 2013

Yes.. He spilled the Greens... All over the place!

Added by: Dave on March 10, 2013

Update on the pollen/dust situation: here are two photos taken from my upstairs window just about an hour apart this afternoon:

 

And from my newspaper this morning: "Yellow sand blowing from China reduced visibility in many parts of the nation Saturday and will continue to drift over the archipelago through Sunday afternoon, the Meteorological Agency said."

It seems that the Gobi Desert is 'moving' to Japan, grain by grain!