For a few weeks after the alpine route opens, the highland-bus outside Murodo Station runs between walls of ploughed snow, fifteen to twenty metres high. White on both sides, like an icy Backrooms corridor with the sky as the ceiling. It is not a separate place on the map: Yuki-no-Otani is the cleared section of the Tateyama Highland Bus road at Murodo, the high point of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route.
The full route is a chain from Toyama to Ogizawa, closed by snow from about November to mid-April. Before reopening, ploughs cut the Murodo approaches, and what they leave is the wall – like something out of Game of Thrones. One side of the road is for buses, the other is for hikers. The height of the walls changes ever year; by July they are gone, and the same road is as ordinary as any other. During this small window of time the walls appear is like a portal, and are one probably one of the only semi-natural Backrooms corridors to exist.
Photo credits: ““The Nippon” landscape at Tateyama – Kurobe Alpen Route.” by skyseeker, CC BY 2.0 , “Tateyama Kurobe 立山黑部” by Ming-yen Hsu, CC BY-ND 2.0 , “Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route” by Diana Norgaard, CC BY-ND 2.0 , “Tateyama-Kurobe Alpen Route #2” by つだ, CC BY-SA 2.0
