{"id":268,"date":"2023-01-13T20:20:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T08:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/?p=268"},"modified":"2024-03-22T15:22:55","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T03:22:55","slug":"12-months-in-tenkoku-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taliskersh.com\/?p=268","title":{"rendered":"12 Months in Tengoku – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Winter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Roche sat at her desk and stared out the window. The snowy deluge showed no sign of stopping. Scores of thick clumps fell in an endless barrage, covering everything under the sky in a bulging carpet of white. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She expected to hear at any moment that school was closed, that she was being sent home, or any kind of response to the act of God unfolding outside. \u201cThere was no such announcement,\u201d said Jennifer, \u201cthat was just kind of what every day was like for the rest of winter.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mountains surround J\u014detsu on three sides. In winter, they block Siberian squalls from the west, directing their moisture back up into the sky and down onto the city. The result is a disturbing amount of snow. In January alone, J\u014detsu receives an average of four meters of powder – that\u2019s almost two Shaquiel O\u2019Neil\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A row of buried inns outside Ikenotaira.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe most surprising thing was hearing that that winter was normal,\u201d said Jen who, like me, experienced her first apocalyptic J\u014detsu snowfall in 2022. By all accounts, that year\u2019s bombardment was mild; although the city\u2019s bar for \u201cmild snowfall\u201d is still far higher than most places on earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The previous winter, however, was a different story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takuma Kobayashi, a J\u014detsu resident of some 30 years, witnessed the winter of 2020\/21. He recalled, \u201con the big road outside my house the snowplow couldn\u2019t come for one week, you couldn\u2019t see anything. (…) Tsune (our mutual friend) came to pick me up from Kakizaki. It\u2019s usually a 30 minute drive but it took him three hours. His landcruiser got stuck in the Aoki parking lot and many other cars were stuck on the road.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2021, the city designed to weather two Shaq\u2019s-worth of snow per-month ground to a halt after 3 meters of powder fell in one night. Residents couldn\u2019t access roads and some could barely leave their homes. According to local news, four people died and 33 were injured. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n