Tourist are traveling to central Japan to see a natural forming wall of snow in central Japan nearly as tall as a six-story building.
Hundreds of tourist have traveled to see the 56-foot wall of snow at the Tateyama Kurobe Alpin Route connecting the prefectures of Toyama and Nagano in the central region of Japan. The route was closed for five months due to impassible conditions but reopened Sunday.
This enormous corridor of snow is located in Murodo — the highest point of the route at an altitude of more than 8,000 square feet and is known as a “yuki no otani,” or “snow walls.”
The height of the snow is six feet lower than the previous year, according to Tateyama Kurobe Kankō, the company managing the route. Tateyama officials are expecting more than 1 million people to visit the area before the end of June. Their goal is to surpass the 930,000 people who showed up in 2017.
They are always in awe of the landscape, locals said. “The walls are different every year. This year they are very beautiful,” Naito Itsuo, a neighbor from a nearby village, told a local Japanese news station Monday. It’s been a harsh winter across the world, especially in the portion of the Northern Hemisphere that shadows North America.
Arctic blasts pelted much of the U.S. in December and January. Snow covered approximately 49 percent of the northern section of the country leading up to Christmas Day of 2017. It made a “White Christmas” for almost half of the country, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. Snowmelt in recent days across reduced the percentage, but not much.
Snowstorms and frigid temperatures relentlessly pounded the Northeast and the Midwest. Pennsylvania county, for instance, was clobbered with 60 inches of snow in two days following Christmas day — the storm shattered records and required the national guard to help keep the roads clear and residents safe.
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