Sam's Boyfriend Asahidake

Alright. I retconned this into my post about Asahidake after the fact, but the video is so fine and Sam did such a good job that I need to give this thing a post of its own. This is shot on the highest mountain in Hokkaido, and one of the finest mountains I've boarded on in my time here. This is one of the reasons I stayed in Japan for two years and why I'm fortunate that I get to leave this place in the summer. Were I to have to terminate my contract in the deep, fluffy, white of February, I'm not sure I'd have the strength. To be able to leave this place, I've had to ready myself for the possibility that snowboarding will never be this fantastic in any other part of the world.

Oh, and Sam's the one in the blue pants, green pack, and white jacket.

This is Where I Live

Taken from my front door before heading out to work at about 7:54am

The currently vacant teacher house behind mine, belonging to the high school. Notice the kind of damage snow build-up can do along the side of the roof. Roundabout the same time as the previous.

An Odajima construction worker, working to clear the huge buildup of snow from my elementary school's roof on Friday. These guys were very securely tied off to shovels embedded in the snow further along the roof. I'm not sure how much good that would have done should one of them have gotten lost in the world of white ground and grey sky on that melty Friday.

All in a night's work. These are taken just over an hour apart on Tuesday night, out my back sliding door. I had been away all weekend, it had kept snowing, and I had to clear the build-up of snow that had avalanched down from my roof. What you see in the lower picture is the meter of solid snow that has accumulated since I had a guy in to remove all the snow from behind my house on January 19th, which I can't be bothered to dig out as the wood across the glass of the sliding door does a good enough job of holding it back. With the amount of snow that has been coming down this winter, I've had to dig out the back of my house for at least three hours every week: not because I actually use the back of my house but to make sure that the snow doesn't build up to the point where it blocks my heater exhaust, threatens to break my windows, and keeps aditional snow from sliding down off of the roof.

A Winter Weekend

Determined to make up lost time on this slow season, Mark, Lindsay and I hit up Grand Hirafu on the Saturday of this past weekend, and then Lindsay and I hit up Annupuri on the Sunday for our first Niseko boarding weekend of the season. The conditions at Hirafu were both beautiful and fantastic in a sun-and-cloud-and-snow kind of way…though it got a little windy higher on the mountain. The snow persisted well into the night, and I think it helped me fall in love with night skiing a little bit. It was my first time doing it since something like Blue Mountain back in Ontario in the tenth grade, and Hirafu was a helluva place to do it as the portion of the mountain that is open for night skiing is bigger than some of the full areas other skijos open for day skiing.

The conditions on Annupuri on Sunday weren’t as hot (I’m used to the place being covered in amounts of fluffy white stuff that are best described as “obscene”), and it was very clear that we were still boarding in the early season. Still, it was really good to be able to work with Lindsay on getting better, and there were delicious burgers to be had, served hot and fresh out of the back of a Big White Pedophile Van. There were also onsens after, where the old insides were absolutely rotten with mineral deposits and the beginnings of moss, while the outsides were perfect rotenburo pools of hot situated between snowy waterfalls and snow forests. And then there was Lindsay driving into a ditch when a douchebag refused to yield the road. But there was also a hero of a Japanese guy who dragged us out of the ditch using a hook and a cable and his Toyota SUV, saying only the word “neutral” to us in the whole exchange, despite my I’m-sorry-we-killed-your-mafia-dog bowing.

Enough chatter, though. I actually brought my good camera with me for the first time, so here are some of the photos from Hirafu that I actually remembered to take. Annupuri on Sunday was a little less photographically salient.

Bogged down in powder up to my waist, right before I had to use my snowboard to climb back up to a lift. Not fun.

2010 – 2011 Mountain Days 3&4

Kiroro (An Undying Winter)

Winter exists, my love.

It has been hiding from us at the heart of Hokkaido, sheltered in from the coasts and the seas, in places you have to brave dangerous high passes to find. From December's first sprinklings you drive up and over mountains and down into the icy full of February.

At summit, you break the clouds momentarily and are reminded of the sun, of the blue sky, and then down you plunge, past other peaks where you can SEE the howl of the white wind as it curls over the top of them like they were so many tiny snow piles.

You dive down through blizzards that make your stomach drop when you look up and can no longer see anything out of the front of the bus, to ski-jos where the white around and the grey above is all so thick that they have to burn night lights in the day time in a vain attempt to glow orange through the soup of it.

It is here that winter has been hiding while we pined away for it for so long: here, hunkered down in these forgotten valleys at island's core, where it may well have waited out the whole of the long, hot summer.

Never melting. Only waiting to blow back out across Hokkaido.

And, from what I've seen here today, there is no doubt that it's coming.

On Sunday, I finally made it out to Kiroro: a surprisingly big ski resort, just inland from Otaru, that I'd been ignoring for no good reason (Niseko blinders?) all of last season. Even with the high winds keeping the gondola and higher courses closed, the resort was still able to open their hooded quad lifts, and one of those took a good fifteen minutes from base to top, which is an indication of how very much mountain Kiroro has to mess around with. The difference between Teine on Saturday and Kiroro on Sunday was quite literally night and day. I went from wet snow and sun/cloud conditions at the former to a gale-force blizzard at the latter. There were points when I was heading down some pretty steep courses at Kiroro and I was convinced that the strength of the wind coming up the hill might just succeed at stopping me in my tracks. By the time I finished my three hours of boarding, large parts of my gear had iced up, and I was starting to feel more than a little cold. It was all very much worth it as Sunday at Kiroro felt a lot more like proper snowboarding than Saturday at Teine had.

2010 - 2011 Moutain Day 2

Tiny False Prophets

The Yuki Mushi clamour in the air most days now, crying snowy WOLF to anyone who will listen. I barely notice them at all these days, or I dismiss their existence spitefully. I see what were once romantic harbingers now more as aggravating liars: tiny false prophets who will swarm your eyes and your nose and your hair to tell you...

nothing.

For there is no snow for them to herald, and all we've got to show for this end of November is a drawn-out, leafless indian summer. Under icy nights so clear as to cause the stars to pierce your eyes like pins, I pray to the full moon in the cloudless sky: that the cold she brings in the midnight hours should seep int the days; that it should cause all of this rain to fall in unrelenting curtains of white on the mountains; that its icy claws should ply our autumn coats, sneaking in through cracks and gaps until it forces us to once again pull on our woolies.

Snow Tomorrow.

The Japanese speak forecasts like they're a certainty. I guess that's partly because forecasts over here seem to be a bit more reliable than what passes back home. Where in Canada you'd get a "we're likely to see snow later this week, though it may just appear as rain showers."; in Japan it's more of an "it will snow Tuesday. In the morning. Approximately 8am."

...which is what I've been hearing from friends and co-workers since about last Wednesday or Thursday when the yuki mushi were really showing up in force. It's the kind of prediction I'd brush off at other times as being unreliable, but I've started to really believe this one. That's likely because I've got myself so wound up for snow this year. While the autumns in Hokkaido are mild and relatively rain free, they can hardly compare to the deep, fluffy, neverendingwhite of the winters.

Hell, I've been looking forward to the snow since some point in August. When I try to rationalize it, asking why I'm this wound up about it this year when I wasn't nearly so excited last year, all I can come up with is that now I know what to expect: a winter like nothing I've seen back home. Or maybe it's because back in January of last year I finally figured out how to enjoy the snow. I've loved snow since I was a kid and have always gone for long walks in it or burrowed tunnels through it, but I had last winter while riding a chair lift, alone, up Teine. I was staring out at the patchy blizzard blowing over the mountain, at the falling wisps of white that it shook free from the evergreens, and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed with the feeling that this had been what I was always looking for.

All of those long walks under street lamps made somehow more material in the cones of flakes they illuminated; all of that aimless lying in snow drifts in warm gear watching it fall around me: I had always been looking for a way to be out in the snow--looking for a reason to spend hours and hours bathed in it. Everything I'd done before had never seemed sufficient. Even skiing never gave me the right kind of immersion I was subconsciously craving. For some reason I can't explain, snowboarding does. Between the speed of the descent and the subtly clicking quiet of the lift; between the faceplants in snow banks and the barely landed "jumps" (if they can even be called that) off of low moguls; somewhere in the middle of all that I've found just the mix I never knew I was looking for.

Now that I've found that perfect way to be out in the blizzard; now that I found a place where it seems to snow more than I could ever imagine, all I want to do as the days get short and the nights get cold is to be able to take advantage of this coming winter, from its very beginning to its very end.

In that anticipation, all I can do is sit here and hope that all of those Japanese people who are so certain of snow tomorrow are right.

Yuki Mushi

The Yuki Mushi are thick in the air today.

Look at that. I say it like I'm some kind of expert; like Heather hadn't only just taught me what yuki mushi were.

Yuki Mushi (雪 虫): Snow. Fly. Insects with an indexical relationship to winter so precise and unwavering that they have become iconic of it: their tiny white filaments, their lazy, almost wind-blown flight path. The snow(adj) flies(n) are so iconic as to have become literal: "how long now unti snow(n) flies(v)?"

Though I never noticed them last year, now that I know about them, I see them everywhere--just like you do when you're a kid and you get your first dog, and all of a sudden you can't believe how many dogs you've been missing in your neighbourhood: like the bloody block is chock ablock with the mutts all looking to sniff your crotch and pee on your tree.

It's like that with the yuki mushi now. Where before they were fleeting glimpses, almost thought to be greying fruit flies at the corner of your eye, now the flurries of them hold my eyes ransom as I try to scan past the windows. With the grey clouds unbroken above, and the icy Hokkaido nights starting to crowd into the autumnal Hokkaido days, I am given to wonder if we might not just skip the interim this year: go straight from unseasonably warm summer into unbelievably siberian winter with only the meagrest of falls from one into the other.

That inbetween lingers just long enough to give rise to the snow flies: our harbinger of not long now 'til snow flies. That middle ground between sun and snow will fall away so suddenly that not even the yuki mushi will see it coming: fall from that perfect equilibrium that breeds and sustains them to a chitin-shaking cold to make their tiny corpses into first flakes as the dancing swarms of them fall, too. They will blanket the fields and the roads and the houses like their namesake. Like stubborn spectral soldiers, they will hold their ground in death; not able to melt away until the long months of this winter have come and gone.

And, even though we've hardly had a fall at all, I'm ready.

Spring Snowboarding

I’ve been getting a bit behind on these things this month, but I figured that since stuff was still going on, I should endeavour to catch up.

Least there be any doubt, there is still snow in Hokkaido. Heather and I struck out to make the most of it by getting in our last boarding weekend of the season at Hirafu/Niseko. Though the HAJET musical/after party/late night/our 11 am check out time and plans to meet up with Sonomi and Mark for lunch in Kutchan all conspired to keep us off the hill for most of the weekend, we did get in a few hours of boarding on Saturday.

It was definitely the latest in the season that I have ever been out in the snow in a meaningful way, but I would say the conditions were as good as my last visit to Niseko, if not a little better since, well, we could actually use a lot of the hill. A guide had described the base as “corn snow,” and I have to say that I far prefer it to the slushy alternative that Ontario yields late in the season. Though it’s not as forgiving when you fall as the standard Niseko powder, its granular consistency makes turning a breeze.

Foolishly, I got either over confident or ambitious and decided to leave Heather in the low lands while I rode the lifts as high as they would go on Hirafu that day, heading to the top of the peak chair. It was somewhere I hadn’t been since that first weekend on a board with Mark back in January, and I was determined to show up the mountain with how far I’d come in the interim. From near the peak, I was treated to a spectacular view of Mount Yotei, Kutchan, and the surrounding towns…

…but it was all down hill from there{sic}. While the lower elevations with their corn snow were in some happy transition between winter and spring, the peak area held on to winter tenaciously. This late in the season, there hadn’t been enough snow to coat it in powder, and what snow there was had frozen up into a slick sheet on one side and a rocky field of micro glaciers on the other. Being unable to get much purchase on the slick sheet, I took my chances with the glacier field and wound up going down hard on one of the ridges of ice knee-first. I could almost hear the mountain laughing at me and my confidence.

In all, though the boarding was fun, seeing the mountain so far along in its melt was a little sad. Every time I’ve rolled up on Niseko this season, it has been a postcard example of a winter wonderland. The consistent soft white of it has inspired Heather to draw comparisons to a wintery Narnia. And yet now, though the majority of the runs are still good and snowed in, the trees and the cliffs peek out along their peripheries a little too much these days, killing our ice age fantasies more and more. It’s like coming back to what was once a perfect, crisp ice sculpture, only to find it a far, sagging, watery cry of what it once was. You can still see what you saw in it, but the loss makes it almost not worth the second glance. I guess I’m happy to be done with the mountain for this season, happy to allow it to return to summer on its own, happy to wait until December before I return to it for another run.

But I will be back in December, and I will ride back up to that peak, and the joke’s on the mountain because this time she will be mine.

Oh yes, she will be mine.

Mountain Day 12

Yuki

Somewhere between the parking lot and the summit, Maggie comments on how this is the second weekend she’s skied with me, and this is the second weekend that the sky has settled low over the mountains, the clouds breaking up and coming down in torrents of flakes.

I smile and point to the yellow symbol on the crown of my snowboard helmet. I tell her how a kind witch of the north placed it there, as if in celebration of her novel discovery of her icy birthright. She placed it so that it would call to the skies, and she called it a sigil: a guidepost for gods of winter. With it, they would find me, wherever I may go, and they would let their blessings fall around me in cloaks and curtains of powdery white.

“So long as I wear it,” I tell Maggie “where I go, the snow will follow.”

And as if in evidence, the wind whips up, and the clouds settle in closer. They consume what remains of the mountains and fill the space in between with white until the banks of electrical light have to blaze prematurely and the skiers around us pass in and out of view like ghosts.

Mountain Day 11