Josetsu Army -- Mommy, What's a Snow Dump?
When you live in the Hokkaido Powder Belt, you get a LOT of snow. Shoveling around your house and car is a regular winter activity. Since it rarely gets above freezing during the winter, the snow doesn't melt. It just keeps piling up and, boy, do the mounds get high! It makes it hard to drive on the smaller streets. The snow has to go somewhere.
Enter the Snow Clearing Boys (Josetsu) and the snow dumps. Every city and village has their own crew of heavy equipment operators and dump-truck drivers to regularly remove the snow piles from the city streets. Once they start in December, they work Mon-Fri until some time in March going thru every street and neighborhood. Each neighborhood gets cleared out 3-4 times a winter. Furano has three large snow dumps just outside town where the trucks take the snow. Then bulldozers just keep piling it up. The piles don't melt until mid-June.
See you in Furano.