Life in the World's Snowiest City Part 1 | Aomori, Japan

hello world i don't know why this surprised me but japan is a snowy place like it straight up has the top three snowiest cities in the world i'm from canada and i was so used to hearing that we're a cold and snowy country that i thought we'd have japan beat i was wrong at least about the snowy part although we do have two cities in the fourth and fifth spot so not completely wrong but i want to be clear aomori is the snowiest city with over 100 000 people in the world but there are plenty of areas that get more snow it's just that they're not major population centers how you deal with the snow when there's over 100 000 residents can be quite different from what you do when there's a hundred or a thousand so how much snow does aomori city get well this is a tricky one and if you look at articles you'll get numbers that range from 6 meters or 20 feet up to 8 meters or 26 feet they're all kind of right that's because aomori city covers a large and geographically diverse landscape first off you have the bay area which tends to be warmer and wetter along the west and the east there's not many people living there trust me i went by train just to see but in the center of the harbour lies the main part of the city where the majority of people live as of march 1 2022 it had snowed 579 centimeters then you have the airport which is nearly in the mountains at 198 meters above sea level it receives the most snowfall out of any airport in japan as of march 1st it racked up 634 centimeters but if you really go up into the mountains like mount hakoda at 1 584 meters you'll get way more snow as in 1 306 centimeters or 43 feet and yes this is still technically the city of aomori so when you say aomori city it really depends on what part of it you're talking about however i think it's safe to say that whichever part of the city you measure it's a lot of snow and i i really wanted to know what life is like in the snowiest city in the world to find out my sister-in-law ako and i traveled to aomori on january 9 2022 when we arrived it was roughly halfway through the snow season and not quite yet at peak snow and to my consternation it was a sunny day with no snow falling how can you show the snowy city in the world and not have snow falling but there was a lot of accumulated snow already i mean the snow banks on the streets were already higher than people's heads in lots of places they were easily taller than the vehicles [Music] since it was a sunny day i made the snap judgment to head right to the top to mount hakoda because i figured i wouldn't be getting any sunny shots if my plans for snowfall worked out [Applause] [Music] to my delight chasing the sun worked and i was able to capture the scenery under a blue sky of course this lasted all of a minute while i was disappointed the stormy weather totally makes sense you don't accumulate 13 meters of snow by being nice and sunny all the time the reality is the conditions on the mountain are mostly cloudy and windy and snowy just look at the trees they are constantly blasted with wind and snow to form jujyo on english snow monsters it was amazing how fast the light could change it felt like it went from the middle of the afternoon to the evening in the span of a few minutes it wasn't hard to imagine how in 1902 japanese army soldiers got lost in a blizzard here and 199 lives were lost that's why if you go skiing our snowboarding here a local guide is recommended foreign if throughout the video you notice ako walking around oddly she watched some tv program uh teaching her how to walk in snow [Music] is foreign on the way back down we were able to catch a brief glimpse of the sun setting which was much more beautiful than this video can even begin to [Music] capture cause i want you [Music] on day two to my dismay it was forecast to rain not snow i thought aomori city would be colder but for the main city area it doesn't seem to ever go much below minus two or minus three degrees celsius in the winter and it often goes into the plus ranges during the day so in fahrenheit what i'm saying is that the temperature usually hovers around 32 degrees just around freezing thus you get a mix of rain and snow that's also why a lot of people had lightly insulated rubber boots versus heavily insulated but non-waterproof boots that i was expecting so while these 20 boots i picked up at the workwear store in tokyo did unexpectedly well with the snow and ice they eventually got soaked through by the slushy snow i'd encounter today's main goal during the day was to see how the city buses handled the snow [Music] i asked about special equipment and was surprised to hear that there really is none beyond snow tires i was expecting chains but that's only for buses going up the mountains basically what it feels like is that the priority is on keeping the roads clear if you do that then all the vehicles can operate with snow tires if you're not going up the mountain four-wheel drive isn't necessary i was expecting a bunch of special snow gear inside of people's everyday cars but nope not much to talk about but back to the buses we were able to score a front seat ride to see how the driver navigated his route into the main station we arrived at the start of the route a few minutes early which gave me the chance to check out my surroundings at the entrance to a buddhist temple the signs warned about falling snow from the roofs falling snow from roofs is in fact a major cause of deaths when it comes to clearing snow so you do have to be careful on some roads you'll come across wind fences set up to stop drifts of snow from piling up on the roads and the large amount of snow piled up alongside the road creates snow banks so big that they narrow the roads in certain parts of the city a two-lane road will act more like a single lane one and either the bus or the oncoming traffic will have to yield and let the other pass sometimes there's so much snow at the bus stop that a little spot needs to be carved out so that passengers can get on and off here you can see that the bus stop isn't even cleared passengers would just get on and off a little bit past the stop in this case this stretch is one of the narrowest along the route it could get quite bumpy i think it'd be fair if the city started advertising free massages during bus rides in the winter you can tell the drivers were used to dealing with the snow especially the speed at which they'd pass when there was space to do so the traffic must flow in some spots though it was so narrow that all the drivers could do was slowly pass and trust that their vehicles wouldn't slide into the bus i was going to say that in the main part of the city it was cleared more but if you look at the road you can see how an entire lane was swallowed up by the snow bank over here the snow bank has only overtaken half the road i love how the snow banks are so high near the main bus loop that you can barely see the buses behind it upon arrival i was actually surprised since there was no snow on the ground the previous night i had seen that there was a decent accumulation of snow i only realized just now while editing that the reason the bus loop was clear in the morning is because snow clearing by the city is mainly done at night [Music] foreign so tonight we had an appointment with the city to watch them clear snow and i was extremely worried the shoot would be ruined since it was forecasted to rain but snow clearing was necessary as the snow banks that had built up on the side of the roads needed to be broken down and hauled away so whether it snows or not there's always no clearing work to do we started off the night a bit in reverse where we went to one of the snow dumps along the seaside i never lived in an area where it was possible are practical dump snow in the ocean so it was eye-opening for me to see you'd have small little trucks where the only way to dump the snow was the old-school way with the shovel then you'd have bigger trucks with a hydraulic bed that lifts up that's still sometimes required manually having to shovel the snow out you'd also see one of the city's snow plows come by and work on rearranging the snow and pushing some of it into the ocean soon i would see even bigger trucks dumping their load and then the really big trucks would come along and show everyone up so satisfying and even though i was merely filming i saw some situations like this where i felt as if i were backed up like you just wanted the snow to come out but it just wouldn't it must have been more frustrating for the drivers as they'd have to get their shovel out and clear it manually however we have to keep things moving and thus we're off to our next stop which was the start of the official nighttime snow clearing at a parking lot of a home improvement store even though the operation was being done at night so as to minimize the disruption to traffic the roads were in fact not closed off i was surprised with all the different types of vehicles involved all with a role to play the first i came by was scraping the ice and snow from the street your standard snowplow tractor after that it was another snowplow tractor but this time it had a larger and directional cloud tomorrow the dump trucks are so important to the operation because there's simply nowhere for the snow plows and snow blowers to put the snow that's why if you take a look behind the snow clearing equipment it's dump trucks all the way down this duel of machines work together to clear a smaller side street i noticed that as the snow plows work some residents would get out and start shoveling this is because the leftover snow in their driveways and sidewalks can freeze fast and be very difficult to clear afterwards so even though it was past 10 pm at night it was the best time to be tackling the snow left by the plows so as far as i understand the crews go out every night clearing snow wherever their services can best be utilized if there's a lot of fresh snowfall the main routes of the city are cleared when those priority routes are clear then the other streets can be cleared as well as snow banks after all that filming it was time to head home it felt like i was in another world since i couldn't see the street accounting for the large snow banks flanking me on either side although i lied because we were actually returning to a snow dump this time one that was on land there are multiple dumps throughout the city while dumping into the ocean is very convenient when it's close enough over here it was better to make snow mountains on land and then i really did go to sleep after this finally when i woke up it was snowing even though nighttime is when the city does the majority of its snow clearing during the day you'll still see snow clearing equipment operating everywhere while the city does operate the largest network of roads the prefecture which is similar to a state in the u.s and national governments also have their own roads and thus their own snow clearing operations additionally private roads and parking lots will be cleared by those individual owners or businesses during the daytime i stumbled across a fascinating snow clearing tactic the temporary blockading of streets they dump tons of snow at both ends of the street in order to create a snow clearing work zone residents who are lucky enough to have free time will quickly try and dump their snow into the street so that it'll be taken away free of charge this is in fact why the city doesn't post in advance the areas they will clear a city worker told us that if they did so residents would just dump tons of snow out into the street causing problems one thing that certainly helps snow clearing crews is that there's basically no on-street parking allowed in japan so no pesky parked vehicles to work around while all the operators do work hard at this job in the winter this is not their full-time job so that was a small peek into what my sister-in-law affectionately calls jose tuccianomachi snowplow city while i think i covered so much in this video there's much much more to life in the snowiest city in the world so join me in my next video for more fun in the snow [Music] so [Music] hey thanks for watching see you next time peace if you live in a city with snow how do they clear it where you're from

Channel: Life Where I'm From

Views: 272,762

Keywords: snowplow, aomori city, snow japan, snow clearing japan, snow city, lwif, life where i'm from, world's snowiest city

Id: qqerKWp1kqs

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 19 2022