Bi-Weekly Update

I'm back for a few days. For the past ten days I have been helping to lead a group of high-school students from the Hong Kong International School on a winter hiking expedition to Mt. Manaita as part of an OutwardBound Japan course.

I may be off to Otari Mura again later this week to work another course, so I thought I should take a quick moment to check in. Unfortunately I don't have any photos this time, as my "hiking" camera is broken, so the photos above are from last year's course, and those below are from a private snow-country trip Tomoe and I organized the week before I left for some of our Onelife clients.

The Outward Bound trip was great. While it was not as eventful as last year - no one wandered out of their snow-cave in the middle of the night, getting lost in a snow-storm - it was none-the-less filled with its moments. Aside from everyone making it to the peak and back safely, one of my favorite experiences from the week was attending to a young adventurer who was terrified out about not being able to feel or move his hands. I took him into a tent and started a fire (with plenty of ventilation) to warm him up, and feeling soon returned to his hands.

As I talked to him in the tent, I became increasingly jealous - realizing that he had never in his life experienced cold below 10 Celsius. Having numb hands and feet is a well-known, unalarming (though uncomfortable) feeling for me, and not remembering my first experience with sub-zero temperatures, I began to wonder how amazing it must feel to, after 15 years on earth, suddenly have such a new (and terrifying) experience. I wish I could have felt what he felt.

The week before I left we had five guests over for a Japan Snow Country Experience. The three-day weekend started with a visit to Ise-san - one of the oldest residents of Sakae Mura. Ise-san is a 96 year-old woman who survived the worst avalanche disaster in village history. In 19XX, after several days of constant snow, the snow on a fifty-meter high slope overlooking Aokura gave way, obliterating XX houses, and killing XX people - including most of Ise-san's family.

What was supposed to be a thiry-minute visit for tea & chat turned into an hour-and-a-half of listening to amazing stories of how, after the death of her husband, she made a living supplemented by rice and breaking in young horses for later sale.

Her surviving son (an amazing traditional Japanese carpenter) joined us to show some of his handi-work. His craft is all but extinct. While current carpentry in Japan is based on the presumption that the house need only last for thirty years, the houses Ise-san built could last for centuries. He showed us some of the secrets of the trade - how to build a house that can withstand the harsh, heavy winters of Japan's Snow Country WITHOUT a single nail.

I am very tempted to volunteer to become his apprentice - despite my absolute lack of any building skills.

From there we took advantage of good weather to travel into the Akiyamago Vally where we would join a pilot program developed by the Akiyamago Tourism Office. Day one of the event included making a kamakura snow hut, burning a don-do yaki, and making kanjiki snow-shoes under the direction of a local hunter, and (for our participants) a bear-meat dinner at a hunter's lodge.

We had to head back to home that night to pick up two late-comers at the station, but the participants enjoyed a night at the local family inn. The late-comers were forced to struggle through a cold night in our un-heated home.

Thankfully the weather held for the morning, and magnificent views abounded. After a few hours walking with the hand-made kanjiki snowshoes, with a local hunter explaining all the trees and animal tracks along the way, we gathered at the Noyosa-no-sato inn to make hayasoba - a "quick" (hayai) way to make a meal of soba flour. Instead of making noodles, busy farmers in the Akiyama area used to simply boil the dough and eat it in globs - a method I actually prefer to "regular" soba.

By the time we had finished our haya-soba, the fuyugata weather pattern had come into effect, and wind-prone Akiyama Valley was enveloped in almost white-out conditions. We had hoped to visit Kiriake Onsen, where you can dig into the icy river to find a hot-bath, but after only ten meters on the small road leading there, we decided it would be best to head back while the mountain roads were still semi-maneuverable. It was one of the scariest drives in my life, with three to six meter visibility, and huge cliffs on each side.

Despite my desire to get home and out of that storm, we stopped for an hour to break into the local preserved traditional thatched roof house/museum, followed by another hour at the local wood-workers. The preserved house is closed during the winter due to several meters of snow covering the door, but we convinced the local office to let us dig our way in. I was amazed at how warm it was in there, even though there were small snow-drifts on the corners where snow blows in through cracks in the walls. It really makes me wonder why people think they need a fully heated house all year long... what a waste of energy, and even more so, a waste of a life experience that connects us and grounds us to our environment. To live in the cold half-of the year, makes the spring that much more amazing. I wonder why people insist on trying to make their life in-the-middle and mediocre. When it is cold, enjoy the cold. when it is hot, savor the heat. Why did we ever invent the climate control central heating and cooling systems? Why would we choose to dull our senses and willingly miss out on the wonders of life on earth?

We made it home in time for a bath at yuri-onsen (our local hot-spring) followed by a night of drinking and debauchery at our home. The only worry was if we would be able to wake up early enough to visit the local dairy farmer (our neighbors family) to learn about small-scale dairy farming, taste some fresh milk, and have a chance to squeeze a tit.

All but one of the participants awoke in time, and we rushed to the farm, arriving before the morning milking had ended. We felt lucky to find that one of the cows was in labor, and wold likely give birth that morning, but even after stalling and hanging around, disturbing their work for longer than anyone expected, the cow just wouldn't give it up. We left without seeing the birth of a calf. It would be great to have some photos, so I will make sure to ask the farmer to alert me the next time a calf is about to be born.

After a breakfast of local goodies (including hot milk made from the morning's squeeze), we stopped by at the local geta (traditional Japanese wooden shoe) maker. The last in Nagano, we listened with saddness to all the knowledge he had to impart. Again, I feel an need to be his apprentice.

The conversation with the geta maker was fascinating, causing us to loose some time at the ski-hill. Everyone opted for a few hours of skiing on Sakae's village-run ski-hill before a final bath and a bus ride home. The neighbors know us as "people who keep other people's trash" so we had recently recieved a set of vintage 80's style ski-wear, along with an old-style pair of skis for one of out customers to borrow. For some reason, seeing him walk around town in that was my highlight for the weekend.