snow plow NOT

Here in the great white north of Japan, you might think these folks would be prepared to deal with lots of snow. How very wrong you’d be, you weeniehead. The motorists of Misawa have never seen a snow plow, or any evidence of one. The Japanese are great at digging up roads and repairing them again, but it has apparently never, ever crossed their minds to plow the snow off their streets. They just drive over the snow until it becomes ice, and they drive slower and slower as potholes the size of Montana open up through the ice. The manhole covers are the worst. Whatever goes on beneath manhole covers is warm enough to melt the ice to slush. It gets pushed to the sides, where it freezes into a solid ring of ice around the edges of the manhole, so that you get a kidney-punching jolt every time you drive over one. There are lots of manholes in the streets of Misawa. No wonder everybody has 4-wheel drive cars.