I walked half a kilometer underground from Nagoya Station to an office building the other day. It was nice because I didn’t have to go outside in the hot weather. Large cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya all have large underground areas with shopping streets and passages to buildings. Even on extremely hot days, you can keep cool moving around underground. Although these underground areas are big, the biggest underground street networks in the world are in Canada. Montreal and Toronto each have more than 30 kilometers of underground streets. Why? Not because of the heat. Both cities have extreme weather in winter. In January, the average low temperature is -13 degrees Centigrade, and in some years, it can go down below -30 degrees! Without underground streets, these cities would probably shut down in winter.    (135 words)

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