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White/brown/black colored one from my photos is Miuku, he was born to feral mom out in wilderness, but as I started feeding her she decided to move with two of her kittens to my warehouse as weather started to get cold, they came and go freely during those times and learned how to survive in snow and cold from their mom.
Miuku then has taught other two to survive outdoors, except he is doing poor job about getting wet part of that, they are usually soaked wet when they want to get indoors, not quite sure how they manage to do that, maybe they go to swim at small stream nearby, anyway they are not afraid to get wet or snow, but all the noises are scary.
However they know that when it gets dark they are let in, when sun gets up they are let out, I think that only few times they have missed that time, always having a mouse or similar to steal their interest in very nearby area.
All of them are fixed so they don't wander too far, I think that about 200m is furthest I have seen their tracks.
They mark verical surfaces, trees, bushes, everything they go past, they rub their cheek to bushes and claw trees, to tell that is their area and also that is how they find back. Also black one climbs up to tall trees and in theory could scout further, if only they could see well past 20 meters or so.
But of course we get snow quite gradually, so landscape does not change too much also most of the things stick out from under the snow most of the winter so it is very much easier here for them to keep track of where they are.
Also we don't have lot of houses at this area, to one direction around 1km until there is another house, to other direction 4km until house, there are few summer houses before that, to one direction there is house in about 400m, but there is road and forest between here and there and cats don't like to go to road as it is bit scary, which is good for their health.
So one could say that we are living at forest instead of village.
I think it was less than 2 people living within 1 square kilometer at this location, if my understanding from geography of Japan is not very badly a miss, I would guess your location is about 10 times more of population density (very low for Japan), which means much more buildings and I'm not too sure how well cats recognize buildings, especially when there is winter and lot of snow changes all the shapes at their height or higher, then they might have more difficulties to tell where they are if not scent marking is as much possible.
But I'm not sure if those are real reasons behind that difference, maybe with experience they do change.
