Bloody Hell! That's a lot of snow! How do you get to work? I guess they've got some system worked out.

In Taiwan the backhoes are all out clearing landslides the second a typhoon passes - stuff that would takes weeks or months to do in Australia - is it something like that there?

Well, first I have to dig my way out to my car. Some of the main roads may be plowed, but for the most part, for whatever reason, Japan doesn't plow snow on most roads. This results in pretty wild driving conditions. Every car sold in this region is 4-wheel drive. Even the cheap, tiny models are 4WD.