Japanese Priests Collected Almost Seven Centuries of Climate DataA print of Lake Suwa from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Corbis Almost every winter, after Lake Suwa in the Japanese Alps freezes, the male Shinto god Takeminakata crosses the ice to visit the female god Yasakatome at her shrine, causing a ridge known as the omiwatari to form. At least, that’s what the priests living on the shores of the lake believed. When the water froze, they would
