Good news!

The end of winter in Hokkaido always brings mixed emotions. I love winter here. I love the beautiful snow and all of the awesome things you can do in it. But I also love late spring and summer here. The cherry blossoms, getting back in the garden, being able to bike around the city, and backpacking in the mountains. Early spring is a bit of a slush pit though, and I`m always a little sad to see the snowboarding season end. But yesterday, as we were hiking in the back country with our Tipi club friends, we got some good news! While the ski slopes tend to close in early April, the back country season doesn`t end until sometime in MAY! It`s the best of all worlds! We can bike to work, plant things in the dirt, and then go snowboarding on the weekend!

But in the meantime we`re taking full advantage of the last days of winter - snowboarding on the slopes and back country, and enjoying the last of the white city before it all turns grey/brown/black and the dog poop-cicles start melting out of the snow heaps.

Two weekends ago, our friend Kelly`s parents came to town and we all headed to Rusutsu for the weekend. It`s rare to get good views from the top there because it`s usually snowing. But we had two gloriously blue, sunny days with the best views we`ve ever seen from the top. Below top left is Lake Toya, top right is Mt. Yotei with Niseko mountain in the background. The next two rows show images from off-piste.

This past weekend we had another back country adventure. This time we went to Mayoizawa mountain, and it was a lovely day, but the snow reminded me of North Carolina (in a bad way). We`ve entered the near-spring weather of warmer temperatures and sunny days which leads to a 2 or 3 week window of really hard snow. After this period, the snow becomes kind of granulated, and there`s still a really deep base so it becomes fun to ride again. They call it zarume yuki in Japanese, which translates to granulated sugar. Now it`s more like 1 year old brown sugar yuki. You know that sugar. The old brick in your cabinet you have to drop from 6 feet up to be able to cook with. But it`s always fun to spend time with the Tipi club. And even when the snow is bad it`s amazing to be in the back country. We even saw some wildlife - a tiny wood pecker and a squirrel (I realize squirrels aren`t that exciting back home because they`re everywhere, but you rarely see them here and they`ve got little tufts of fuzz on their ears that make them look like squirrel-bunnies which is kind of painfully cute).

Top left you can see the city of Sapporo from the mountain. Bottom left - Takahashi San and Brian excited for the ride. To the right here - Shinohara San and Nauki San on the way up.

Takahashi San is usually busy taking photos and videos of everyone on these treks. He recently sent us links to his albums. You can check them out by following the links, but I nabbed a few to show you. The following photo credits all go to Takahashi San.

Hashida San, Brian and I on the way up Shiomaruyama on our first back country trip. Rare photographic evidence of my presence on these trips.

From the bottom up, this is Mrs. Hashida, Brian, me, Yamachan? (maybe), and Shinohara San climbing up Kiroro in a heavy snow. This was our second back country trip, the day we had insanely deep powder.










On the same trip. She actually hasn`t fallen down. She is in fact skiing. The snow is just. that. deep. This is the day we learned to snowboard with poles.

On our third trip at Neopara. Killing it. Just kidding, but I am partial to this picture. Thanks Takahashi San!

You can see more of his shots at these links.
Shiomaru Yama
Kiroro
Neopara

The Past - recent and distant

I`m not very digitally diligent, and I often forget to tell you about various comings and goings.  But these are three things that deserve note.

First and foremost, WE WON A CRAB!!!!!!!  Yes, a crab, that you eat.  And we did.  Win it and eat it.  Hokkaido is well known for it`s delicious shellfishes, they all seem to be sweeter from those icy cold waters.  And long long ago (last fall) we took a trip out to Ikeda Chou with our friends Nat, Kelly, Manabu and Sanae.  We stayed in a guest house there with an unbelievable crab feast - 4 kinds of crab (all from right off the Hokkaido coast) served 4 ways, including sashimi style.  At that guest house there was a drawing.  As far as I can remember Kelly won some cantaloupes, Sanae won a box of little Japanese pumpkins, and I won some soft serve ice cream.  Everything was from Ikeda area, everything was beautiful and delicious.  We also filled out some kind of post card for another drawing in which the winner was to get a crab.  Now, I can believe in drawing slips out of a hat and winning a prize.  There are witnesses.  But I always kind of thought that any mail in drawing was a sham.  "One lucky winner will get...."  nothing right?  Nobody ever wins those things.  But then - we DID!  We won a crab!  Last Monday this box came in the mail.

And on Tuesday we feasted on this crab with Nat and Kelly.  A crab feast on a Tuesday night?  Surreal.  As you can see, this is no blue crab.  This is Tarabagani!  King crab.  And he was tasty.  I still kind of can`t believe our luck.  I highly recommend winning yourself a crab sometime. 

Also, long longer ago (last summer) we grew a big garden for the first time ever.  And we lined the edges of all the beds in marigolds and calendula.  Both are edible flowers, both sequester nematodes in their roots, and both have lovely yellow to orange flowers.  But calendula also has healing properties that you can read about with a quick google.  Basically, if you`ve got a minor skin abrasion, calendula`s your bird.  And one of the best ways to get that skin-healing-goodness on to your minorly abraded skin is to make a balm or salve with it.  That`s just what I did and I wrote up my recipe for the Ajet Connect expat magazine and you can take a peek at it  here.  My article is on page 66.

When I wrote the article, I hadn`t actually made the balm yet because my petals were still infusing.  So I had to skimp on the images and even pilfer a finished balm photo from the annals of the internet (the other photos on the link though are mine).  But now, I can give you these, right from our kitchen. 

 The left two images are of the dried flower petals.  Top right is chunk organic beeswax.  On the bottom right is the calendula infused olive oil after 3 weeks of infusion.  Directly above are all of the ingredients I used.  And directly below is the finished product.  

Brian is currently learning web page design, and when he`s done we`ll post a full blown tutorial with these and more photos, but for now if you`re itching to get started, check out the recipe in the Ajet connect link above.  PS - I ended up putting more like 20 drops of cedar oil and 10 drops of orange oil in the mix to be able to smell them over the beeswax.

And in the much more recent past - yesterday we went back country snowboarding again, this time at Naopori, which is located on the back side of Teine mountain.  It was probably the hardest climb we`ve done so far, and the most fun descent.  We started out with beautiful, glowing blue skies and ended with a cold beer in a hot bath tub.  

You can see the rest of the photos from the trip here.

Back country, Round II

There`s a big beautiful snow coming down right now, so it seems appropriate that this post is heavy on the white stuff.  We`ve been busy getting the most out of this winter every weekend, and this will read a bit like a how-to guide on loving Hokkaido in winter.

Step 1 - Go cross country skiing!  Somehow we managed not to do this last year, but the park just across the river from us (Nakajima Koen) offers free cross country rentals and they have a lovely course that goes along the lake and through the woods to follow.  And it`s free!  And they`re not the only park in Sapporo that offers such fun.  It was a beautiful, snowy Saturday when we went.  

Step 2 - Go back country snowboarding or telemark skiing!  This has become my favorite way to love winter in Hokkaido, but don`t attempt step 2 without doing your homework.  It`s not terribly risky, but there is a chance of avalanche and if you don`t know what you`re doing (not that we do, we`re learning, but we`re also going with experienced friends) you could run into some cold deadly trouble.  The following pictures are some of my favorite reasons for back country over ski slopes.

These and the slideshow are all from our trip to the mountains around Kiroro with the Tipi club.  It was a seriously deep powder day and it snowed the whole time we were climbing and coming down.  

Step 3 - Go see the Sapporo Snow Festival. Especially on an unseasonably warm weeknight, as it can get crowded and cold. We went on a Monday night, the first night it officially started, but the week`s warm weather had already left some of the smaller sculptures a little bit battered.  The gigantic ones were still standing strong though.

I do love the festivity of the snow festival, but it`s also nice once it`s over.  It`s much easier to get around downtown when the extra 2 million (not exaggerating) visitors are not on the subways.  Plus, the ski slope population thins out noticeably afterwards as well.  Maybe hitting the slopes should be one of these steps, but I don`t have any readily available pictures from Rusutsu or anywhere else to entice you with.

Of course, there are lots more ways to enjoy winter in Hokkaido.  These are just the ones that I happened to bring a camera along for.  Hopefully we`ll get a lot more back country in before spring rears it`s melty, slushy, brown-snowed head (Hokkaido is supremely amazing every month except April).  Luckily, we`ve still got 2.5 months of snowy slopes (if not a snowy city) to enjoy!