Flat3D

Rusuban

A rusuban is some language’s (probably portuguese, anyone want to clarify?) word for caretaker. The Japanese have taken it on board as a word that means caretaker or house-sitter… and right now it is what I am.
Once more the Elliots have had to head off, this time to attend a seminar in JHQ (OMF Japan Headquarters, but JHQ sounds more James Bondish) Ichikawa, Chiba (near Tokyo) to prepare them for their home assignment that is happening in April, also Angela had to go to as she is going on home assignment sometime before the next workshop is being held. This means that for the past two weeks I have been home alone in Ajigasawa in a way that I haven’t been before.

The time has been fairly uneventful, most of my work has been moving snow around, which has gradually worn me down to wondering if there isn’t a better way.
Now to paint the picture, Masa and I were talking about wind power yesterday, follwing on from discussion about the price of petrol and heating oil. We gradually moved from wind power to other types of power, and then onto as-of-yet uninvented types of power, such as Snow Power. This was followed shortly by automated snow removal devices. So picture now painted in full technicolour glory lets go on…
I am sure that there MUST be a way to remove snow that is worthwhile and cost effective. Current solutions are to sprinkle water on the snow affected area through pipes along the tarmac, this melts the falling snow and, as long as the water is slightly heated and continually flowing, stops ice from forming. But it can’t be cost effective, that much water, needing to be heated, not a chance.
Other ways are to pump hot water through pipes below the road or parking surface. This melts the snow and can reuse water, but it requires much more heat to be effective and has shown to only be worth it for particularly necessary and steep pieces of road that would be undrivable otherwise or on the car parks of particularly rich and lazy people who don’t believe in giving the lower classes the benefit of their cash by paying someone to remove their snow.
Another way would be to have no garden, driveway or roof to clear. This is known as apartment dwelling and the only show that needs to be shovelled is your little parking space, the rest is someone elses responsibility. This works quite well for a lot of people and is quite cost effective. But it still doesn’t come up with an effective method of snow-removal, it just passes the buck onto someone else.

So what to do? Well here are some suggestions by me.
Firstly Aomori, where snow is a big problem, is sitting on a huge amount of under ground geothermally heated water. This water’s primary use is in the onsens of Aomori, as described in a previous post. Now if you go past an onsen you will notice that the gutter is positively free of snow and has steam rising out as the old bathwater, still piping hot, is drained out of the onsen (hot water is constantly flowing into an onsen bath and therefore constantly flowing out of the other end). Now to pump onsen water out of the ground you need to get a permit or licence from local authorities. I think a practical solution would be for the authorities to provide a discount for people who want to open onsens at the top of busy hills and then drain the onsen baths through pipes layed under the roads leading up that hill. The cost of pumping the water up that high would be born by the profit making onsen owner and no water heating would be required. As the water is simply waste water that no one wants, no one loses!
Another thought I have had the pleasure of sharing was an automated roof clearing doodle bug that Masa thought of… A little bar on rails on the roof that rides maybe 10cm up, so when you get up in the morning you hit a button and it swipes down the roof, dumping the collected snow down for easy removal. Sounds like a stupid idea, try climbing about a roof for a few hours digging a metre of snow off!
My final solution to the problem of snow is to move. Move somewhere with less snow. Of all my ideas this one seems the most viable and cost effective…

If you don’t really see what all the fuss is about, you can see photos in my photo album (Ajigasawa - Ajigasawa - Snow). I was thinking about it today while shovelling snow, think about all the rain that falls in Northern Ireland (if you aren’t from NI, just substitute the word “lots” in for that amount). Now imagine if the rain fell, but didn’t drain away. Was strangely solid and white, (just off the top of my head lets call it snow) and piled up around your house and car and on the roof and the only way to get anything done was to shovel it all away… no not away, it doesn’t go away… Shovel it all to a big pile somewhere else… Imagine how big a pain in the rear end that might be…

Having said all that I still like snow. I just don’t like moving it!

On a side track, I think this is quite funny…