We are into week three of our Japanese road trip and wherever we go in the countryside (incl Fukuoka and all over Hokkaido and Tōhoku) we see these metal fences(?) which we've never seen in our home country of Australia.
They are all-metal and look like they might be galvanised steel. The uprights are up to ~3m (10ft) tall and the horizontal sections are ~2m (7ft) long.
The horizontal components looks like louvered slats up to ~60cm (2ft) wide. Sometimes the slat frames secure perforated sheets and sometimes they are repeating rows of 90° angled strip. There's usually 5-7 of these slats per section of fencing. Sometimes they are angled. Sometimes they are flying flat.
It's always crops – never animals – behind them.
Can anyone solve this mystery for me? We've still got another 500km of driving ahead of us and I'd like to know what the heck I keep driving past. 😊 We've seen them alongside major roadways as well as on unsealed roads where we were in the only car meandering though.
The attached (snapped yesterday along National Route 13 near Kitanaraoka) photo is an example of a particularly fancy one, which had some additional solid things at the top.
Thanks in advance.
by BJPHS
10 Comments
I imagine those are noise barriers.
My guess is wind brakes
Probably for noise, although from this angle they look perforated. So maybe not.
Snow barriers to stop snow drifts in winter.
They are wind/snow barriers. Keeps good visibility during storms or high wind.
Wind and snow barriers… seen mostly in Hokkaido and northern Honshu.
I live in Hokkaido. They are for snow.
Have you run into Scott Neylon over there?
(It’s a case of running into someone you usually see on one sub in a different sub).
Land slide fences?
I’ve lived in southern parts of Japan. They have similar looking fences in urban areas for sound mitigation too.