Watch these two guys in Japan remove a great deal of snow from a roof

褒める: homeru. “homeru” means “to praise”. homeru.

ロボット: robotto. “robotto” means “robot”. robotto.

大将: taisho. “taisho” means “overlord”. taisho.

5 Likes

so much for those wheeled shovels getting the back out is disproportional to the task at hand whatever

1 Like

Locks a bit familiar to me.

3 Likes

My Japanese isn’t good enough to understand what he said at the end. Something about his shoulder being bent out and the shovel being aluminium?

First thought: would a coat of that water-repellent paint have helped?

1 Like

Actually fuwa fuwa simply means soft and fluffy

3 Likes

Sometimes that takes some stones.

2 Likes

It looked to me like there were layers to the snow, with dense, compacted stuff at the bottom, and a thick but relatively unpacked mass of snow on top of that. The two guys seem to handle those huge chunks of top-layer snow too easily for it to be very dense.

1 Like

There’s a great documentary that’s been on the BBC a couple or more times (BBC4 probably) about Yellowstone across the seasons and there’s one guy who works there and stays for the winter just to clear snow off roofs. I was gonna say seek it out if you can but lo and behold…

The size of the blocks he moves is somewhat scary.

1 Like

I wonder if a snow shovel like the Japanese guys had would help this guy out.
The way he cuts the snow looks really pretty.

Fuwa fuwa!

4 Likes

More snow removal in Japan (I think I saw this on BoingBoing a few years ago):

also, snow removal by train:

1 Like

You will be when your space probe smacks into a planet/moon instead of orbiting it.

3 Likes

@IpoNokaoi, I saw what you did there! :+1:

It looks like there’s a tan house in the background that has proper slope for an insulated roof in that climate, and a more traditional house to the right that hasn’t had modern insulation put in, so the snow’s melted off before accumulating. These guys are shoveling because they put modern insulation under roof built without it, is what I’m guessing.

I love the “deep eaves, no gutters” tradition in Japanese architecture. So much more elegant than western European roof drainage systems!

Avalanche snow…

I rather suspect that cutting blocks and sliding them off is more efficient - quicker movement of larger amounts with less muscle power. But what do I know, living where it is headline news when it snows.

Intrigued by the two on the far left, and far distance who appear about 6 minutes in, possibly on a cherry picker crane. That looked like an avalanche in the making.

Well, at least you’d fall into snow, so there’s that…

Thanks for the web site tip. Living in Vermont has made my new winter sport snow shoveling!

For sure there were two layers. I’d googled “snow density” and 100-200 kg/m3 for fresh, damp snow came up a few places, so I went with that. That bottom layer (watch out for a slab avy) would be way more dense (though doubtfully in firnification), so the weight would be even higher.