Joetsu, southwestern Niigata Prefecture, is snow country.
It may be a mild, mid-autumn day as I walk around the downtown neighborhood of Takada, but its specialized infrastructure is already poised in anticipation of the year's first big snowfall, as it has been for generations.
Local community leader Hajime Kobayashi, manager of Musashino Shuzo, a family-owned sake brewery with over a century of history, points out several architectural and technological quirks.