January 16, 2013 – JAPAN - Heavy snow that blanketed eastern Japan over the holiday weekend left one man dead and 900 others injured, as Tokyo commuters Tuesday took to the slippery streets. A low-pressure system, dubbed a “bomb cyclone” by local press, dumped eight centimetres (three inches) of snow in nine hours, the heaviest snowfall in the region since January 2006, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
It left 13 centimeters of snow in neighboring Yokohama, while mountainous areas around Tokyo saw up to 30 centimeters. A 71-year-old man in Shiojiri city, Nagano prefecture, died after falling into an open drain as he cleared snow around his house, a fire service spokesman said. National broadcaster NHK said at least 891 injuries had been recorded in Tokyo and the area around it, many of them elderly people who had slipped on snow-covered streets or motorists involved in accidents. The operator of the Tokyo Skytree, a 634-metre (2,080-foot) tower in the capital that opened last year, said security guards were patrolling the base to keep people away from possible ice falls.
