Into the Woods at Last

Those of you we keep in regular touch with are well aware that come winter in Hokkaido, you can find us on the slopes.  Ever since we first arrived here we`ve been obsessed with powder.  And not long after we got here we`ve been all starry-eyed over the idea of getting away from the ski slopes and into the woods to get our fix.  But only recently did we aquire the rather necessary safety gear to make such a trip happen. 

This year for Christmas, Brian and I got each other avalanche beacons, shovels and probes (thanks Dad and Margo!), and some snow baskets for our trekking poles.  Romantic?  No.  Exciting?  Hell yes.  Now we`re equipped with the goods, if not the knowledge, for safe back country excursions.  Luckily, our friends with whom we made this trip are extremely well versed in avalanche safety and they`ve promised us our next trip will be preceded by a lecture on the topic.  But Shioyamaru Yama is blessedly tree covered and therefore we just got to have fun this time around. 

Sunday morning we got a lift from Takahashi San, a friend and telemark skier.  We rode with him to the little parking area at the base of the mountain where we met the rest of our posse.  Most of the gang where telemarkers, but Nauto snowshoed and boarded with us.  Before this trip I would have thought that skiing up would be easier than snowshoe-ing, but when the going gets steep the shoes are definitely easier.  We climbed for about 2 hours before reaching the top.  There was no fresh snow, so going up was easier.  And the day was relatively clear so the views were amazing.  Our friends were a little disappointed in the snow conditions, but we were too excited to notice or care.  

We had lunch under this tree after having summit-ed and boarded down.  After lunch some of us climbed back up to the top to do it again.  Brian and I both had wondered if we`d like back country as much as a ski slope where you can go off piste (like Rusutsu for example) because you only really only get one ride in.  But the hike up was beautiful.  It really makes you appreciate the ride when you`ve worked so hard to get it.  And it`s certainly nicer to hear birdsong in the woods that J-pop on the gondola.  And those views!

You can click on any of these images to see them larger.

It was one of my favorite days in Hokkaido yet.  We got a call from Hashida San saying that the next trip just might be this coming Sunday.  Can`t wait!

*FIRST SNOW OF THE YEAR!*

And so it begins!  Snapped these on my way to work this morning even though I was running late because this first snow won`t last.  But it`s beautiful!  And there are little snowmen all in a line across next weeks weather forecasts!

Celebrating - the end of the garden, Halloween, and friends

The past month or so time`s been disappearing like a 10 year old`s Halloween stash. Partly because we`ve been a bit busy (by our admittedly, rather lax standards)and largely because there`s a certain date looming large in our near future. The countdown to our first return home in about a year and a half is on. And we`ll be home for Christmas no less! Exactly one month from today!

Our days have been filled with winterizing the garden, preserving the bumper crop, brewing pumpkin beer, making cheese and use-up-all-the-scraps muffins, enjoying the last bit of biking around the city before the snow makes pedestrians of us for the next 6 months or so, library books, permaculture, Halloween, writing for a food column for an online expat magazine, friends, banjo/guitar and most recently, decorating for Christmas. I know that last one is a bit sacrilegiously early, but because we`re leaving Japan on December 14th it seemed like only two weeks was too short for decorations.

The garden got a complete overhaul for next year. We`re still getting the fall/winter crops, but the summer plants went out with a bang. We`ve still got a couple of garden tomatoes reddening up inside even now. But with such a late bounty, we decided to try our hand at canning. We did everything pickles, tomato sauce, pickled jalapenos, habanero jelly, and habanero hot sauce (the habanero bush was prolific). Along similar lines, ever since we started brewing beer I`ve been trying to find good ways to use all those spent grains. Composting is the obvious choice. Soap worked out pretty well. Granola was ok. But the winner by a long shot has been muffins. And recently, I`ve been trying to make said muffins even more recycled. So when my friend Kelly and I made a batch of mozzarella, I saved the whey and used it as the liquid in the muffins. And though it`s not recycling, Brian and I foraged some fresh rose hips from beside the river and threw those in the mix. They`re so beautiful and taste a bit like cranberries, though not as sour. Here`s a glimpse.

Then came Halloween. Last year Halloween was a pretty low key affair at school. But this year I leveled up. When we moved in to our apartment last year, we found an inexplicable bag full of costumes. Masks, wigs, weird hats and horns, a sword, a gladiator`s vest... you get the idea. So this year, I`ve got a class of only 7 girls, and the teacher is about to retire, so it`s pretty easy to talk everyone into doing fun activities. On Halloween I took all the costumes to school, along with a pumpkin and a bunch of apples. I wasn`t sure how well the costumes would be received, being that Japanese students are typically quite reserved. It was awesome. The girls kept trying out different combinations of awkward bits of costumes together. They were completely taken in by the jack-o-lantern and roasting pumpkin seeds, and they even gave bobbing for apples a respectable go. I`m plotting bigger and better things for next year.

This past weekend, our friends Saga and Sanae invited Nat and Kelly, Brian and I over for a sushi dinner. Saga`s superior at work used to be a sushi chef (no small feat in Japan - one must make rice for a number of years before even being allowed to touch fish), so we all chipped in for a beautiful selection of fish, got a feast, and even a lesson. It was delicious and hilarious. We promised to make western food for all of them when we get back from the States. Food exchange. Brilliant.

The garden

Recently, Brian and I have been really interested in permaculture. Obsessed really. During commutes and free time at work we read text books, articles, and blogs about it. By night we watch lectures and videos about people`s permaculture farms. All the books we get from the library have something to do with agriculture. And along with all this reading, we`ve been experimenting in the back yard (more like the bit of grass between our building and the next one over, but it works). We started seeds inside in March, hoed up the grass in late April, and finally put things in the ground in May. It turned out to be a bit early, but most things made it anyway. It`s been incredibly educating and a lot of fun. Delicious too. Here is the evolution
up til now.

In the beginning, there was dirt. Good black dirt. Before that there were weeds and grasses, but I didn`t think to take a real before shot.

We ended up losing a couple of tomatoes to cold, so we had to buy a couple of plants, but everything else we grew from seed. We also ended up expanding 4 different times. The first and second were a sunflower patch and an herb patch you can see below. The others came later.

Above is the garden in June. It had gotten a bit longer and a lot greener. All we put on it was water, mulch, and EM (effective microorganism) bokashi, a Japanese compost inoculant that eats up your kitchen waste fast and yields a nice brown juice that plants love. It also yields a ton of humus that we`ll throw on when the fall garden finishes up. Below are some more pictures in June.

Now it`s late fall in Sapporo. The mounds are finished, the sunflowers have been harvested and most things are winding down. Except for the new plants of the fall garden.

Unfortunately, my camera broke right after the June garden pictures, so the few harvest pictures we have are blurry cell phone affairs. But not so blurry you can`t make out the size of that lettuce.

Chard was a major producer. We seriously over planted chard. But it`s lovely, easy, and delicious!

We got enough habaneros to make hot sauce AND spicy jelly, and we`ve still got more than we can deal with. We harvested tons of calendula to make a balm one day, and lots of coriander, dill seeds, onion seeds for baking, and sunflower seeds. In fact, the only things we didn`t get tons of were okra and eggplant. They got shaded out by the zucchini monsters early on. But we learned a lot and have big plans for next year.