冬へようこそ。(Welcome to Winter.)

This is the scene that greeted me this morning as I stepped out of the house:

Gunbayama under a November blanket of snow.

This will be my fifth winter here and this is the earliest it has ever snowed. Usually, if we’re lucky, we might get one blizzard or snow event in December so this may not bode well for the rest of the long winter. Based on the shitty, non-existant summer that we were treated too, I can only imagine that a long and precipitation-filled season is ahead of us; although that might not be so bad for those who live here and like winter sports…

I guess it’s time to kick the soy-hot chocolate season into gear!

阿寒富士。(Akan Fuji.)

Up until today the weather these past few weeks has been pretty decent; we even had a real warming trend in the last week that culminated last Saturday when I went for a hike. It was an unbelievably gorgeous day with not a cloud in the sky and temps, even at the summit, that were mild and pleasant. A perfect day to get out, sweat, and commune with nature.

I had only been up Akan Fuji once, a few years back for my birthday, which seemed kind of strange because it sits right next to 雌阿寒岳 (Meakan-dake) and wouldn’t add much more than an hour or so to get to the summit. Regardless, this would be my second climb up to the top and I was looking forward to it. So, around 6 I got up and got ready, then left with my friend at 7.

Unsuprisingly, we were the only people at this trailhead (seldom used by most because it’s up a long dirt road and there’s a greater chance of running into bears-gasp!) and it was as quiet as could be-cold too. We were all bundled up but about 10 minutes in we were shedding layers as fast as we could. The day only got warmer from there…We were treated to beautiful views of 阿寒湖 (Akan-ko = Lake Akan) and the surrounding area. Unfortunately, my camera is at the Nikon repair shop (hopefully getting cleaned up properly) so I wasn’t able to take any of the classy pictures that you’d expect. The ones that follow were taken with my friend’s little point and shoot:

Akan-ko.

Akan-ko and Oakan-dake.

A panorama of two shots from the top of Akan Fuji-Meakan to the left.

西別岳。(Nishibetsu-dake.)

 

With the crazy Halloween party season over, I may be able to get back to updating this blog on a semi-regular basis. The last two weeks were filled with no less than six Halloween parties, both at school and otherwise, and I was busy trying to keep everything straight.

In these past two weeks it certainly has gotten a lot colder and it’s already dark at 4:30 when I leave the office. All the leaves are gone (save for the stubborn oaks) and the タンチョウ鶴 (Japanese red-crested crane) are slowly starting to make their return to this barren land. For some reason, they choose to winter over here and they are a major tourist attraction, one of the few that this area can claim, and people from all over Japan flock (no pun intended) to gawk at them.

Since I see them on almost a daily basis, weekly in the summer time as there are always a few pairs who never seem to leave (and even some lone wolfs), I don’t get too excited about their return. They are quite graceful creatures in flight but are generally pretty ordinary when walking around and picking at the ground…This year their arrival was heralded by a group of about 30 or so that decended on a field just north of my town. Oddly enough, in all the years I have been here I have never seen them land in that particular area but they have been there all this week. Maybe it was the freshly-sprayed manure that has kept them coming back. Mmmmm, good.

Anyway, that was a digression, but I promise to hopefully have some decent (dust-free?) photos of them up this year; although a 200mm is still quite lacking in capturing intimate wildlife portraits.

This past Tuesday was 文化の日 (National Culture Day), which meant a day off from work and a chance to go for a hike. Thankfully they hadn’t closed the gate yet at Nishibetsu and my friend and I were treated to an enjoyable late autumn-early winter hike. Had more dust problems this time so the body is on its way to the service center to get a good cleaning. If that doesn’t do the trick, it’s getting dumped and I’ll have to shell out even more money for something better. I’m not impressed Nikon…

Photos are below:

Icy Limbs.

Lonely Berries.

 

Shari-dake in the distance.

Icy Limbs #2.

Mashu-dake in the distance.

The approach to Nishibetsu-dake.

At the summit.

新型インフルエンザアラート。(New-Type Flu Alert.)

Interestingly enough, there is only one school that I go to that actually posts the school closures around the area. Maybe the others can’t be bothered or they would rather keep to the “out of sight, out of mind” mantra; hoping that it won’t befall their own oasis of calm. Well, maybe it’s too late for that now.

I had mentioned about two weeks ago how a school in my county had finally been closed because a couple of the kids had come down the the dreaded “swine flu”. That number managed to quadruple this week when four, count ‘em four, schools were put on hiatus (yes, the teachers still had to go to work). This talley included all three of the schools in my actual town, from elementary school on up to the high school, and one outlier about 15 minutes away.

I have my doubts about closing the schools for a few days because by the time they realize someone has it it’s probably already been passed around anyway. These closures haven’t seemed to lessen the spread, although it may have slowed it, since it started in the Kansai area back in the summer (or was it spring?). No matter what you do, the flu is gonna manage to spread itself far and wide. I suppose the only sensible thing to do would be to vaccinate those most at risk; which is what started this week with medical professionals getting the already scarce doses of the vaccine. However, Hokkaido was one of about 17 prefectures that said they couldn’t start on Monday due to “delays in preparation”; whatever that means. Maybe enough bureaucrats weren’t bribed compensated properly enough to get the wheels moving.

天気の最新情報。(Weather Update.)

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. Like clockwork, around the first week of October, the nightime temps start to really plummet, and the frost finally moves in. I still don’t have to shut my water off at night yet but that will be coming, I’m sure, by the end of the month. Then I have that sometimes twice-daily ritual to look forward to. Yeah! In the meantime, I can still leave it off at night and not wake up to any busted pipes.

In the spring and fall I use my heater only in the mornings and evenings. There’s nothing worse for me (a real non-morning person) than to have to wake up to a cold house and have to get a bunch of stuff done when my teeth are chattering. So I have it come on (thanks to a handy-dandy timer) about a half-hour before I pull myself out of my sleeping bag and grumpily start the day. Normally, that is more than enough time to warm up my little house but not this morning. After a full half-hour it was still about 3˚below the target temp of 20˚. I hadn’t seen what it was that morning before it clicked on but it must have been cold because I woke up before dawn and wished I had a shirt on.

When I stepped outside to get on my bike and go to work I noticed that there was some significant frost on some patches of grass around the area. As I rode on I could see large swathes of the sparkling white stuff covering the park grass and a few other selected areas. It wasn’t everywhere, so maybe it can’t count as a full-on frost, but it was the first of the year.

I checked the forecast after I got to work and it showed a -3˚as the low temp for the day. Not sure what the rest of the week holds but it’s all a downhill slide into another 7-month winter from here. Guess I better get the snowshoes ready, as there’s already a thin blanket of snow on Meakan and Akan Fuji.

武佐岳。 (Mt. Musa.)

I make it a point every year to try not to work on my birthday. There’s no great philosophy behind it, no self-righteous stick-it-to-the-man-ness or anything like that; I just don’t feel like working on my b-day. And so, in keeping with that tradition, I took some nenkyu (annual leave) again this year and headed out to a nearby mountain to get a little exercise and nature communion.

The weather has been pretty sweet lately, well-up until a few days ago, and so we’ve been able to enjoy that early fall weather pattern that brings with it the only real good weather this area ever sees. The forecast was calling for some partly sunny skies, which meant, based on the week or so that preceeded it, that it would be mostly sunny with pleasant, clear views all around.

The day before my b-day was perfect: clear, blue skies and temps in the upper teens. I was hoping this would play out for the next day too but it wasn’t quite as nice. It didn’t rain though and wasn’t completely cloudy so, here in EH, that would be considered a victory.

I hadn’t been up this little mountain in over a year and forgot how consistently steep the trail is. Still, it was awesome to get out and, because it was a weekday, I had the whole thing all to myself (and maybe some bears but I didn’t see any)…It took me about an hour and 45 minute to summit and about an hour and 15 to get down. I perched myself on the big boulder that caps the top and sat there and read for an hour. I also took some pictures. Have a look:

Looking west. Shari-dake in the distance.

Looking east towards the disputed island of Kunashiri.

Looking slightly northward, with Shari on the far left.

A nice spot on the trail. I always stop to take a few shots here.

Once again, sorry about the dust spots. I went over the damn thing with compressed air and a cloth before and they still showed up. WTF! I was almost ready to toss the thing when I saw the dots but I’ll give it one more scrub and see if I can get it clean.

スーパを訪ねる。(A Visit to the Supermarket.)

Many people in the west are under the impression that Japan charges ridiculously high prices on most everything (except for cigarettes, which are actually cheaper than they are in America-you go, Japan Tobacco!) and that is certainly one perception that holds true. Whatever it is-guitars, books, pencils-you can be sure that it will usually be 30-50% higher than what you would pay for it in the States. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of food.

I never really used to pay much attention to the prices of things when I went shopping. If it was something that I wanted to eat, and was within my food budget, then I would pony up the cash for it. Now, some of that organic stuff these days goes for silly prices but it’s considered a “premium” product and I guess they can get away with that. Accordingly, everything in a Japanese supermarket must be considered a “premium” product because there aren’t many deals to be found (things just don’t seem to go on sale here very often and when they do the price difference doesn’t seem like much to me) no matter where you look in the store.

I went last week for my run to the local Fukuhara grocery store and it ended up being right around the 3000 yen ($30) mark. It certainly didn’t feel like much in my courier bag so, when I got home, I decided to spread out the contents and see what my money really got me. Here’s the picture below:

What a $30 haul at an average Japanese supermarket looks like.

Back Row (L to R): toilet bowl cleaner, 1 kilo of white rice, garlic (recently reduced in price by almost 2/3rd’s!), kochujan, canned tomatoes, orange juice, soy milk, a bag of hot peppers, bananas (9 items).

On the Floor (Top to Bottom, L to R): onion, tofu (locally made!), pasta, organic corn, broccoli, maitake mushrooms, blueberries (7 items).

That’s a total of 16 items for around 30 dollars, so it works out to a little under 2 bucks for each one. Most of this stuff, with the exception of the bowl cleaner and white rice (I usually buy 5 kilo sacks of organic brown), is part of my normal weekly diet and this small haul will last me a few days, or more, depending on what else I have in the house…I do my best to buy local if at all possible (there are no farmer’s markets here); meaning either from my town, EH, or Hokkaido but do make exceptions (hello American blueberries and Phillipine bananas).

The garlic comes from 青森 (Aomori), the prefecture just south of Hokkaido, and used to be priced at 350 yen for one bulb. Absolutely ridiculous but I bought it because it was either that or I could get a 3 bulb bag for 100 yen from China. Sounds like a good deal, right? I don’t know about you but, after all the tainted food scandals in recent years, I don’t trust anything that comes out of that authoritarian capitalist state; no matter how much of a bargain it is. Thankfully, the price of the Aomori stuff has recently gone to a much more reasonable 125 or so (I don’t really remember the actual price) and I don’t have to cringe when I put it in my basket.

I often augment my conventional market groceries with a trip to my friend’s little organic/macrobiotic cafe in Kushiro. Here you can find all sorts of goodies for the non-meat-eating or health-conscious individual. There’s a good mix of stuff that is imported from the States or European locales and products that are produced here in Japan (although I wouldn’t be suprised if the ingredients were imported, adding to the higher price); all of it costing quite a pretty penny. I pay the money because: 1) I want as much variety in my diet as I can get; 2) I don’t want to eat Japanese food every day (or most days); 3) I want to help out my friends and support their much-needed business (an island of food sanity in a world of absurdity); and 4) it’s a comfort issue.

Yes, yes; I know that an inordinate amount of fossil fuels are consumed in the process of transporting these foods halfway across the world but that’s not the issue we’re dealing with today. I would be lying if I said that didn’t concern me, it certainly does-a lot, but when I bite into that veggie burger that they make at the cafe, or can make some chili with black and kidney beans at my house, I feel like myself again. Anyone who underestimates the healing or regenerative power of food is deluding themselves.

Anyway, I went down to the store last weekend and here’s what my 5300 yen ($53) got me:

What $53 bucks gets you at the foo-foo cafe.

Back Row (L to R): organic muesli (from Europe), eco-friendly laundry detergent (from the States-at 1470 yen, the most expensive item), Hansen’s cola, organic kidney and black beans from America (5 items).

On the Floor (L to R): two packages of tempeh (made in Japan), organic pasta (maybe from the States), veggie soy ham (from Japan but the beans may be from N. America-I’ll have to check. This little log is 870 yen!), and a sauce package for mabudofu (5 items).

That’s 10 total items for 53 bucks; a considerable difference than at the conventional supermarket. Yes, it definitely puts a dent in my wallet and yes, the fossil fuel thing sucks but if Japan would stop putting meat extract in their cereal (I’m not kidding) and consider broadening their palate a little, I would be happy to buy these things from inside the country…I think what needs to be kept in mind though is that since Japan is so resource-poor and has such a low food self-sufficiency rate (as I have mentioned in previous posts), the vast majority of raw materials, for food, electronics, steel, etc. are imported anyway. So, even if I were to buy products that were made in Japan, I’d probably still be incurring the fossil-fuel debt. I doubt this is taken into account when Japan is hailed as a world leader in energy efficiency. But I digress once again.

戴きます！

新型インフルエンザさん、ようこそ僕の町へ。(Mr. New-Type Flu, welcome to my town.)

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. There have been outbreaks and school closings all around my little area since I got back from my summer holiday. I couldn’t understand why it had managed to get a foothold in towns to the north and south of here without passing through. I suppose all I had to do was wait though and last week, the wait was finally over.

Actually, it started maybe three weeks ago when a school bus driver came down with a case of what is referred to here as the “new-type” flu (don’t even get me started on the pork producers and their cry-baby politicking to get the name changed so their sales of pig flesh wouldn’t be interrupted). I didn’t hear much after that but it’s been on everyone’s mind and the BOE had a bunch of those hand santizers shipped in and delivered to every school. There have also been plenty of public health service pronouncements throughout the schools and in the newspapers and such. The Japanese have really worked themselves up into a frenzy over this thing and it shows no signs of abating as we head into the fall flu season.

Then, this past Friday, I learned from one of my co-workers that two of my students, two 7 year-olds in one of the smallest schools here, had caught it. The protocol for a school is that once the pupils have been diagnosed with it (so far no teachers have been infected), the school shuts down for 3-4 days; this one being closed until Thursday-when I just happen to have a lesson there (yeah!). I think that that’s probably a good thing to do and I figured that everyone, teachers and staff included, would be given a few days holiday in order to let the germs run their course. Naturally, I underestimated the importance “the JOB” to the Japanese.

While the students are given the days off, the teachers and staff still have to come to school like they would ordinarily. To me this doesn’t make any sense at all. There is still a serious threat of transmission because it could have made it’s way from the students to the teachers before it had been diagnosed and having the adults all milling about in the same room for another couple of days together only increases the chances of it being passed on…When I asked my co-worker why the teachers still had to go to school his answer was, わからないけど、仕事です (I’m not sure but it’s their job). Well, there you have it. Health be damned.

There was a helpful flyer stuffed into yesterday’s copy of the Kushiro newspaper. It was labeled “New-Type Influenza Information (2nd edition)”…This one is printed on pink paper and offers a list of symptoms that may indicate whether you have this new strain or not. They are as follows: a fever of over 38˚ , a cough, a sore throat, and a runny nose. Hmmm, sounds like every other flu around, eh? If you do go to the doctor, they would like you to: 1) not take public transportation and use your own car; 2) definitely wear a mask (note: there is no proof that this stops transmission of germs); and 3) please inform the front desk of your flu symptoms.

If someone in your family does happen to get this flu, you are requested to: 1) refrain from taking any of the affected articles outside; 2) keep the humidity in the room to 60%; 3) not directly touch any masks or tissues that the affected person has used and to seal them up and throw them out; 4) use a germ-killing disinfectant, bleach, or other agent to wipe clean any doorknobs or toilets touched by the affected person; 5) make sure the affected person gets sufficient water and easily digestible meals and use the medicine prescribed by the doctor or pharmacist as directed. Got all that?

But we’re not finished yet…The thoroughness of the Japanese is displayed at the bottom in a handy dandy chart listing all infections in the cho (that’s the equivalent of “town”, remember?) between September 19-26. Here they are, as follows:

• 19th: a 4 year-old girl
• 24th: a 7 year-old boy and a 15 year-old boy
• 25th: a 7 year-old boy, a 10 year-old boy, an 11 year-old boy, and a 60 year-old woman
• 26th: a 23 year-old woman

And there you have it…I just learned today that a couple students in the largest elementary school in town, just about a block away, have caught the flu but they haven’t decided to close the school yet. Don’t worry, if they do I’m sure the teachers will still come to work every day.

トムラウシ山。(Mt. Tomuraushi.)

Yeah, I finally did it! I managed to escape the sodden boundaries of EH and venture about five hours to the west to hike a real mountain this past weekend. It was the illustrious five-day holiday, unofficially known as “Silver Week” (in contrast to the early May extended holiday of “Golden Week”), that allowed me the time and space to make this trek.

As I’ve mentioned in numerous posts before, this year’s weather has been particularly atrocious, especially on the weekends, so I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to get out and commune with nature. Last year at this time I headed over to the 日高 (Hidaka) range to hike 幌尻岳 (Poroshiri dake-Mt. Poroshiri) and, while that was an option again this year, I decided instead to head to the national park of 大雪山 (Taisetsuzan-literally “big snow mountain”) and try my luck with one of Japan’s 百名山 (hyaku mei zan-100 famous mountains), トムラウシ山.

I had been to Taisetsuzan once before, about 3 years ago, but the weather had only been good for one day so I never really got to see the whole lay of the land only lots of fog and clouds, and didn’t make it as far south as Tomuraushi. This time I was hoping that the fall weather would be on my side and I would be able to get some nice views of the park that people refer to as the “roof of Hokkaido”.

Tomuraushi, as the perky reader will notice, is not written in kanji but in katakana, the phonetic script that is used to denote foreign loan words (god forbid they might be expressed in kanji or hiragana, then how could the average citizen know that they are not a “real” Japanese word) and occasionally a Japanese person who has lived in the west for a long time, i.e. Yoko Ono…When I asked one of my teachers why her name was spelled in katakana in one of our English textbooks he replied that because she had lived outside of Japan for so long most Japanese thought of her as a foreigner-even though they are happy to claim her as Japanese when she is recognized for her accomplishments (this is a perfect example of the “in group-out group” way of thinking in Japan)…but back to Tomuraushi.

It’s the Ainu name of the mountain and, for whatever reason, the Japanese decided to keep the pronunciation the same (as they did with many, many places in Hokkaido) instead of replacing it with a phonetic kanji equivalent or changing it altogether. That’s one of the reasons that many of the place names in Hokkaido can be difficult to read, even for native speakers, because the kanji don’t conform to the general pronunciation rules that people are normally used to.

This year it was the site of a veritable massacre back in mid-July as eight middle-aged to elderly climbers succumbed to hypothermia during their trek and died. This tragedy could have probably been avoided if the victims had not allowed their guides to make them leave the hut, and push them on through the cold wind and rain, and if the guides hadn’t felt pressure from above to keep the trek on the scheduled pace of two days-three nights so as to save the Tokyo-based company money due to flight rescheduling. Ultimately, because they are the guides, the responsibility rests with them but when you’re out in nature no one is going to look out for your best interests except yourself. These people were inexperienced hobbyists and they paid a heavy price for their conformity.

Anyway, I happened to go at a really good time to see the 紅葉 (kouyou-colored leaves) and, when the sun was out and about, was treated to a beautiful array of colors, the likes of which we don’t really see here in EH (even our fall foliage is disappointing). So, without further ado, I present to you some pictures from my western excursion:

Note: I had major problems with dust on my camera mirror and couldn’t get it off, even though I spent over a half hour messing with it, so you may see some spots in a few of the photos. Sorry about that…

From the summit, looking south towards Tokachi-dake.

From the summit, looking north towards Asahi-dake.

On the decent.

Fall Foliage #1.

Fall Foliage #2.

マグロは早くなくなっている。(The tuna is quickly disappearing.)

Asia Times Online has a good piece on the plummeting blue-fin tuna stocks in today’s edition. As you may or may not know, Japan is the world’s largest consumer of blue-fin tuna; generally eaten raw in the form of sashimi or sushi but probably found in a whole host of other products too.

Well, this sort of unchecked consumption couldn’t continue unabated forever and there have been all sorts of warnings emanating from concerned environmental groups for the last few years. As with almost every other ecosystem on this planet, things are starting to look dire for the chicken of the sea. Of course something should be done right away but there are billions of dollars to be lost if anyone admits that stocks are crashing, catches are being grossly under reported, tuna farming might actually be contributing to the decline of stocks, and the Japanese might lose some face (never underestimate the power of this last one to promote inaction on any issue).

Finally, someone in the international community has stepped up, the EC- European Commission, and they will be taking their case to the rest of their member states this month. What does Europe have to do with the Japanese eating tuna? A whole lot, as Japan consumes up to 90% of the European catch. But it’s not only the Europeans who would be losing out on a large source of revenue. There are all the wholesalers and fishmongers of Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, not to mention the uncountable number of sushi joints in Japan, all of whom inflate the prices of the fish to astronomic levels, that would stand to lose unlimited amounts of money.

Usually at a time like this a population might come to some kind of realization that an aspect of their way of life is damaging one of the very things that that life depends on. Well, thanks to capitalism and the ingrained selfishness of most human beings, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on the Japanese uber-consumer to make that connection…

Nowhere on the planet has this out-moded, discredited economic model perfected itself as well as it has in Japan. This post-war period has seen the rise of what one could term the ‘perfect consumer’. As if grown in a test tube, this would be a person who doesn’t give a thought to the implications of the endless purchases that they make, only wanting the newest and the best of everything, and with the money to buy it, why bother to think of the consequences. If something inconvenient does happen, “Well, we can just buy our way out of that too.” The ‘uncomfortable’ facts that might dwell behind their Nike trainers, their plate of tuna that was flown in that morning from the Mediterranean, that cart of stuff they bought from the 100 yen store (which I saw recently has become the 105 yen store) or the possibility that they might want to consider making a few sacrifices in their behavior in order to benefit someone or something else on this earth, don’t really play into the everyday thought patters of the “perfect consumer”. They are only concerned with fufilling the neverending hole in their lives that can only be plugged up by the latest and greatest gadget or rare food and leave those other pesky things to the politicians to work out (and we can see what a swell job the LDP has done in the last 55 years or so).

This is not just a criticism of the Japanese consumer either, the Americans, and other first-world inhabitants, should come in for their own horse-whipping as well in this race to the bottom. Ultimately, this is an indictment (as if any more were needed) on the economic system that supposes that unlimited resources and unlimited consumption can continue indefinitely into the vast, hazy, nirvana-like future. This may have seemed to have been the case when Adam Smith concocted his “invisible hand” theory but the world has since proven to be a very finite and limited place. A place that requires all of us to work together to create a harmonious environment for every creature to live and breathe to it’s fullest capacity. Unfortunately, the lust for money has stymied the growth of real alternatives to this out-of-date economic theory and the collapse of our ecosystems is but one of the nasty effects of the human being’s greedy short-sightedness.

There may still be time to save ourselves but will there be enough time to save the tuna?