Fuyugata

Tonight's weather map is one of the most exciting i have seen since we have been here! Finally, we see a true "fuyugata" (winter weather pattern). When the air-pressure contours are standing straight north-south, with a low-pressure system to in the pacific and a high-pressure in China, it means lots of snow! As the cold, dry air comes across from Siberia, it picks up a lot of moisture from the warm (especially in recent years) Japan sea. When the pressure systems are right, it smashes into the mountain range just a few hundred meters from our house, forcing the moist air higher into the atmosphere, where it cools and dumps on us as the famous Sakae-mura snow.

This is actually the "yama-gata" pattern, which should mean more snow in the mountain areas, as opposed to the "sato-yuki" pattern, which means more snow in the lower villages. Either way, it is great for us too. I have been quite bummed out to only have two meters of snow this year. Somehow, I feel like this is our last chance.

I wonder what this will mean for our Naeba hike this Friday... Ooooo! eeeeee! My body itches with excitement!

Despite mounting stress over the lack of "getting things done" in preparation for the coming spring/summer/fall, Tomoe and I spent most of the day in Nagano city at the "Green Tourism Symposium". I do feel batter that we were lucky enough to catch a ride with a local officer (who was also in charge of the kids snow country), and a Kyoto University professor who now lives in Sakae and is working hard to promote the village. A one-way train ticket to Nagano is 1,100 yen (about $10). Although the meeting was slightly informative, it would not have been worth $40 for the both of us to attend.

Basically, we heard a discussion between people from neighboring Iiyama (which has a very well-run "country experience" program) and Hakuba, which is considered a success, partly because of the "gaijin (foreigner) boom". The Hakuba speaker correctly identified the foreigners as a big opportunity, and the Iiyama folks know that what visitors want most is to experience the "country life" - things that locals take for granted.

What I have doubts about, is the scalability of a "simple experience" model. Iiyama has a lot of opportunities to try your hand at making soba noodles, or planting rice. These are things that we definitely are eager to use in our own tours, and we are very lucky to have local villages spending their time to organize it (so we don't have to), but I wonder how villages, such as Sakae, will be able to differentiate themselves once "the soba-making experience" becomes even more of a commodity than it is.

When we first dreamt up One Life Japan, we wanted to do bike tours, because we love touring ourselves and can't think of a better way to get close to the "real" life while on vacation. But we also wanted to make sure that our bike tours are less "tours" and more "learningful programs" - an extended experience that helps people draw the connections between the "soba-making experience" and the "rice-planting experience", the geography and history, helping them to see how this exotic country life relates to, and effects their life. Once we get great at doing this, we will be a step ahead of the "soba-uchi taiken" (noodle making experience) programs that will, in the next two years be even more commonplace in very small, struggling village across Japan.

While Sakae will have it's day in the "green tourism" sun, it will be short lived as small villages around Japan jump on this bandwagon (as many already have). Our biggest strength at this point, is that neighboring Iiyama's program is getting bigger, and the village itself is quite "modern" compared to Sakae, where there really is nothing but country life. There are also plans to extend the shinkansen bullet train from Nagano to Iiyama, meaning that Iiyama will probably loose most of what is still great about it. I worry about the effect on Sakae as well (only an hours drive from Iiyama), but by the time that happens, there is a good chance that our village will be forced to merge with Iiyama anyway.

Planning ahead, we are starting to think even smaller - while Sakae is awesome, once Sakae is part of Iiyama, there will only be our shuraku (hamlet), and those around us. We will loose the "Sakae Village" brand, and most people looking for the "Iiyama Brand" will not travel as far as our area just to make soba noodles. We have to start learning how to promote what is great and unique about this area.

We have recently been spending time with a local who spent many years as a guide in this area. The plan is to get Tomoe, myself, and select locals well trained and able to explain Tsukioka (our hamlet) and Sakae Mura, so we can start a group of on-call guides, ensuring that there is always someone on hand to lead a tour when customers show up. Above that, Tomoe and I continue working on making a more holistic program, so that when soba-making is a dime a dozen, we will not be a part of that dozen.