What will happen when the sun finally comes out and the snow stops and the ice melts and the whole landscape is transformed into spring and stuff is blooming and farmers are running their gigantic combines up and down the long rows?
Such festivities are tinged with more fervour in the spring, when the Japan Meteorological Agency tracks predicted blooming dates of cherry blossoms across Japan.
"Spring is a time for new beginnings and new life, yet the juxtaposition between a literally blooming world and the barren inner life of the clinically depressed is often too much for them to bear, " he said.