Famous

While I don't want to break any copyright laws by posting these photos, we are excited to be in KURA magazine already. (We knew the day would come sometime, but thought/hoped it would be a little later, after we had gotten our stuff together and were a little more organized with the business. The only thing I am not happy about is how his photos are so much better than mine - and he was only here for a half-day.

We were also featured in the chunichishinbun recently (no photos), which has been running a weekly series on Sakae Mura and an life based on something other than money. The part about us is short, and they somewhat twisted our conversation to fit their theme. According the article, we worried about money when we lived in Tokyo, but now we don't. It's just the opposite. When in Tokyo we had jobs (most of the time) and didn't have to worry about money. Now we have to make our own money, rather than relying on an employer to give it to us, and I worry a lot more. BUT, we are way happier, and don't need as much money. The money we make here is really to fill any basic needs (inluding happiness), but the money we needed in Tokyo was basically to pay for the "privilege" of waking up and going to work everyday so we could make more money to afford to get up and go to work every day to make more money... you get the picture.

We spent the morning practicing with the avalanche beacon, although the possibility to actually getting to Naeba is pretty much nil, now that we have had two days of fresh snow - probably over a meter in Akiyamago, where they had white-out conditions last night (and probably today). Still, we will head up to the trail-head and take a look before giving up. There are some other less-intense routes around here that will be just as challenging if this heavy snow keeps up.

The photo above is Tomoe searching for "me" (my beacon). With this small photo if is difficult to notice the lack of determination on her face...