Merry Christmas

It was not particularly Christmassy here yesterday. Oddly enough, Kazuko going to work was about the only thing that usually happens in our Christmas routine – the curse of being a nurse. Yesterday, of course, she was joined by the bulk of the population as it’s not a holiday here. I had a go on the indoor trainer and headed down to the local public baths to relax in the hot water. There’s nothing like sitting naked in a hot tub outside while a bit of snow falls on you. As Kaz and I had already opened our Christmas presents when they arrived (thanks Mum and Dad!), the only Christmas thing we had to do was go to town and look at the Christmas lights in Odori Park. We were amazed to see massive queues at the Kentucky Fried Chickens we passed. Seriously, if you got to KFC and there was a queue, surely you’d just walk off and get something else? The big-wigs at KFC must be turning to religion just to find someone to thank for their good fortune in the whole of Japan deciding that KFC must be eaten at Christmas. Anyway, here are some photos I took in the park before Kazuko and I did that thing where you walk around for an hour past a hundred restaurants because none of them fit the narrow but vague and indecisive guidelines in your head. We settled for pasta in the end.

Japanese music

Bump of Chicken, School Food Punishment, Porno Graffiti and Rip Slyme are among the many names you’ll find in the mix down at the Tokio Top 100. In fact, you’ll find Bump of Chicken twice as they have done the seemingly impossible in the age of digital music and released a double A side. I suppose an mp3 file can be multifaceted – I have no idea of the physics of computer data. In any case, RIP sits at number six (up from number seven last week), while Merry Christmas has failed to carry any festive season momentum and has dropped to 44th from last week’s 30th. Of course, I would never try to assert that Japan has a monopoly on silly band names. Or even, having just watched a top 20 on the telly, that it is the only country serving up utter dross as a substitute for popular music. After all, the top contender for the UK’s Christmas number one single was so horribly bland (listening to it from beginning to end is like watching a bored cleaner methodically wiping a smudge from a Formica worksurface) that a campaign to get people to buy Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name instead was able to succeed. Nonetheless, I can tell it’s going to take a bit of research to sort out the wheat from the chaff of current Japanese music but in the meantime, I thought I might share what little I do know (and supplement it with a handful of lies) about Japanese music.

First of all, modern Japanese music is mostly blissfully free of the shamisen. If you’ve ever eaten in a Japanese restaurant, you may have been treated to the plinking, plunking of the shamisen in the background until, like John Cleese in the cheese shop sketch, you finally feel compelled to shout: “Will you shut that bloody shamisen up?”. If you really must, you can see some exciting shamisen playing here. For me, however, the essence of Japanese pop is some bad dancing, odd clothes and a smattering of random bad English, as in Hate Tell a Lie, the 1997 hit for Tomomi Kahala:

Her real name is Tomomi Shimogawara but for some reason she performed as Kahala, even though there’s no ‘l’ in Japanese. A bit like the band Glay (we’re not black, we’re not white, we’re Glay). Kahala was a member of the so-called Komuro Family, named after Tetsuya Komuro, a sort of one-man Japanese Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Also in the Komuro Family was Okinawan Namie Amuro, who famously asked: “Can you celebrate?” in what was the highest ever selling single for a Japanese female solo artist (a bit I suppose that’s a bit like being just the third batsman with a surname beginning with K to score exactly 78 runs at this ground).

It all ended badly. Kahala was romantically involved with Tetsuya Komuro, the gossip magazines carried rumours of drug abuse, her and TK split up, her career went downhill and she was eventually fired by her management agency after “several months of sudden cancellations, drunken collapses and an ongoing history of prescription drug dependency” (right down the bottom of the page, if you do follow that link). Namie Amuro got pregnant to, married and later divorced some bloke twice her age and her paternal uncle repeatedly ran over her parents in his car and attacked them with an axe, killing her mother. Apparently they had disapproved of his girlfriend. However, unlike Kahala, Amuro has recently been enjoying renewed popularity. Be sure to ask someone tomorrow if they can celebrate and let me know the response.

Although it’s the right time of year to be watching David Bowie swanning about in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, I’ll be sparing you the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto but I will draw your attention to Kyu Sakamoto, the singer of what is I believe the only Japanese song to reach number one in the US charts. Ue o Muite Aruko topped the charts in 1963 and you are probably familiar with it but because the Japanese title was deemed to be too hard for the average American DJ to pronounce, it was renamed Sukiyaki for the foreign market. Sadly the same strategy hasn’t worked for the songs Borscht, Casserole or Tamale.

You can’t say that’s not a nice tune. The song’s title, which is also the first line, means I look up when I walk. The second line is: so the tears won’t fall. Kyu Sakamoto died in 1985 in Japan’s worst ever aeroplane disaster. Other Japanese groups that may be familiar to western ears include the Pizzicato Five, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra and Shonen Knife. Pizzicato five are quite handy for those who like pop music but don’t like to be seen to follow the charts. They go quite well with chardonnay.

Tokyo Ska Paradise, or just skapara as they are often known in Japan, were brought to the attention of the Australian public thanks to the good work of the best DJ Triple-J ever had, Maynard F-sharp Crabbes. Here they are live doing a classic medley:

And despite Shonen Knife being quite famous, I couldn’t actually remember any of their songs. Except for their version of the Carpenters’ Top Odda Word, where they prove that despite living overseas for great periods of time, it’s not just Scotsmen who never lose their accents.

Which brings me to my favourite Japanese girl band – Puffy. Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura sparked Puffy-mania in Japan in the late ’90s with their first CD amiyumi and its hit single Asia no Junshin. They had their own TV show in Japan and changed their name to Puffy AmiYumi when they tried to crack the US market to avoid conflict with one of the many pseudonyms of rapper Sean Coombs. They even have their own cartoon on the Cartoon Network – Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. Their tunes are lively and their lyrics are incredibly daft. You’ll notice a bit of Beatles influence in the following song:

Japan’s most popular boy band is SMAP. They’ve been around for years now and there isn’t a Japanese TV show left that one of them hasn’t made a guest appearance in. One of them plays Monkey in the brand new remake of that classic Japanese tv series. Oddly, all the characters in the new Monkey look like their counterparts in the old series. Takuya Kimura (or Kimutaku to the faithful) is one of the best-known entertainers in Japan but fellow band member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi brought scandal upon himself earlier this year when noise complaints led police to a park in Tokyo where he was found drunk, naked and yelling incoherently. When they arrested him, he is said to have asked: “What’s wrong with being naked?”. A fair enough question, if you ask me. I couldn’t tell you any of SMAP’s songs, but from the snippets I have heard, they would appear to be rubbish so I won’t be linking to any youtube videos of them.

That’s roughly it for all the Japanese music I can think of just now but I will be looking to increase my knowledge of J-pop, so be prepared for future updates. I will leave you with a collabo of my two favourite Japanese groups with Puffy demonstrating that the dance moves that worked so well in their early 20s are only going to look more absurd, the older they get.

Couldn’t help myself, here’s another Puffy song:

More snow

It’s early doors yet but I’m showing no signs of being sick of snow. On the other hand, I was sick of a cold over the weekend so I could only stay indoors and enjoy watching some pretty heavy snowfall until yesterday when I got to go for a walk to the bank with Kazuko. Sad to say she doesn’t share my enthusiasm for frolicking in the snow and our walks are generally punctuated with her telling me grow up or asking me my age (I’m 38 in January – you’d think she would know that by now).

She may be smiling here but that's because I haven't started throwing snowballs yet.

We had such a good load of snow that all the bike seats have snow afros and the baskets are full:

No need for a kick stand.

I can now see why everyone put so much effort into tying up all their plants before the snow started and it’s fascinating the way the snow changes the streetscape. It’s no longer so clear where the footpath ends and the road begins. I’ve also realised traffic lights by themselves aren’t so effective if you can’t see any markings on the road or intersecting streets. I’ve seen a couple of cars drive into empty intersections before realising they should have stopped.

and there's even a little snow plow that clears the footpaths.

I took a detour into the park, but Kazuko wasn’t having any of that nonsense and stayed on the footpath.

Honestly, who wouldn't want to go and play in that?

It was bad enough that I went for a walk through snow up to my knees. I didn't dare risk doing the obvious and sitting on that bench. I think a snowman may be absolutely out of the question.

I think I really need to borrow a child from someone so I can play in the snow without proper grown-ups tutting at me.

Toyako summit: warm globally, cool locally

About a year and a half ago, the world’s great leaders descended upon Lake Toya, roughly 100km south-west of Sapporo, for the 2008 G8 summit where, among other things, they resolved to cut world carbon emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2050. Evidently, from pledges made at Copenhagen, they want someone else to make the cuts though or perhaps, like me with a homework assignment, they think they can put off making them until New Year’s Eve 2049.

Slightly less than a week ago, three of the world’s great cyclists (this may be a slight exaggeration) descended upon Lake Toya to cycle a lap, have a bite to eat and warm up in the water of one of the local onsen. In the interests of the climate, we eschewed our private jet and instead took up the generous offer by our friend and Team Attic teammate Mr Kon to drive us there.

There's our lake with the red line around it.

To be honest, our visit to Toyako had nothing to do with reliving the past excesses of the world’s leaders and more to do with Mr Kon’s suggestion that it’s warmer for riding there than in Sapporo, which turned out to be not so very much warmer at all. Kazuko shook off a week of illness and got up bright and early to make lunch for us yet was strangely unprepared to bring me a cup of coffee in bed so I had to get up to review her work.

Kazuko, busy in the kitchen.

Sausages, with room for egg.

Kazuko Fried Chicken and not a vege in sight.

As you can see, we have plenty of opportunity for cutting our carbon footprint by, at some later date, changing to vegetarianism. And there was another tray of onigiri to get through as well. Nice work, Kaz.

There was no snow on the ground in Sapporo but we had to cross some mountains to get there and we soon got into some snow.

Mr Kon was in charge of transport.

And it started snowing in the mountains. Oddly enough.

Luckily for us, we basked in a sultry two degrees or so at Toyako and I only had temporary cause to regret not bringing another layer of clothes. We parked the car and hit the road.

Getting ready to go. I think Kazuko is hiding behind the open door.

Because it was so clearly cold and not warm, I quickly decided to ignore all the evidence to the contrary and become a climate change contrarian. “There’s no evidence the world is getting warmer,” I espoused as we hit the road. “In fact, the world has been cooling since 1998,” I claimed, to the amazement of all around me. To fit in with my new climate denial chums, especially those in politics, I’ve decided to start believing in God as well. Because although there is not a single scientific body of national or international standing that holds a dissenting stand on climate change, I still think there’s room for doubt, I’m still confident the existence of God is a scientific certainty.

So off we headed for a lap around the lake:

A great place for a summit.

Mr Kon steps up the pace.

Kazuko is actually colder than she looks.

Not long after this shot, Kazuko told us to go ahead as, after a week’s illness, she was having trouble keeping up. Being the gentlemen that we are, we left her behind. I’m sure she regretted that quite soon as we were riding into the wind and then it started snowing and she had no one to hide behind. I forgot to get my camera out while it was snowing but if you look at the photo below quite closely, I’m sure you’ll see some just-melted snow on my eyebrows. It’s quite novel cycling while snow builds up on your sleeves and gloves.

The sun's come out but it has no warmth! And how did I manage to look fat in this photo?

The lap around the lake was about 40km and both scenic and enjoyable. Also quite flat for a change.

That's an island in the middle.

On the way back, not too far from where we left the car, we passed one peak that had volcanic steam coming from it, which put me in mind of pompous buffoon Ian Plimer’s assertion that global warming is actually caused by volcanoes. And judging from his interview on Lateline, the role of the climate “skeptic” is to ask questions but not to actually answer any on the pack of lies that you assert as truth. Poor old George Monbiot looks like either is head is going to explode or he’s going to burst into tears. I suppose it’s quite rare to come across such brazen dishonesty.

When we got back to the car park, Kazuko wasn’t there yet, so I phoned her to learn that she had been held up because her chain had come off. I don’t know how that can have happened, I only adjusted the front derailleur the other day. We picked her up and then drove to an onsen that Mr Kon knew, where we ate lunch and enjoyed sitting in hot water.

It clearly hadn’t stopped snowing in the mountains while we were down at the lake and we had a jolly white trip home.

At least it was nice and warm in the car. (Is that localised global warming?)

I enjoyed the ride around the lake so much, I’ve pledged to lower my carbon emissions by riding out there some time next year when the weather warms up again. And here in Sapporo the snow has finally caught up with us. This was my walk to the subway station on Tuesday morning:

Even the colonel was hiding inside.

So it looks as if I’ll have to persist with cycling on the indoor trainer. Now if I can only find a way to put the energy from that to use, I’ll be able to power at least two light bulbs. The 60W ones, not the 100W ones, of course.

Hama down: Don’t mess with Mr Daylight

The rate of blog posting is definitely slowing down and this is causing me no end of concern. Is it possible that novelty wears off after six months? Have I been in Japan so long that I’m now immune to novel uses of English and peculiar customs? Yet I still cringe when all 20 staff members of any shop shout their thanks in unison when I make a tiny purchase. Perhaps the economy really is that bad. When I ride past the shop up the road called Leather and Hot Dog Steal, I still wonder what sort of products they sell and whether they are acting as a fence operation or are a bunch of anarchists encouraging customers not to pay. And at least bad Japanese English is generally amusing, such as this on the packaging of the elastic straps I bought the other day to stop my trousers getting covered in muck from my chain:

I shall definitely keep bottoms out of my drive.

As opposed to the perplexing English used by native speakers, such as sports marketing chap Ben Crowe, who tells us: “Our primary relationship is with the persona of Tiger Woods as a brilliant athlete, and as such his brand will be judged over the journey rather than by this incident.” I tried to explain to Kazuko that she should judge me over the journey and not by my persona as a lazy layabout who forgets to vacuum but she didn’t seem to buy in to it.

Instead, the conclusion that I’ve had to come to is just that I haven’t been doing much. It’s been cold but not so cold that I can go outside and enjoy the crunchy sound that fresh snow makes when you walk on it. However, I can confirm that I’m not the least bit surprised that eskimos have many words for snow. I’m already familiar with light fluffy snow that floats up and down in the wind, light snow that falls heavily, wet snow that’s melted a bit already on the way down, icy snow that’s melted and re-frozen, and light icy snow that doesn’t melt on the ground but gets blown about by the wind . I’m sure there’ll be plenty more to come over the next few months.

Although I’m only working part-time, now that the end of semester is looming, I seem to be occupying most of my time marking homework I should have looked at ages ago and preparing revision material in the hope that some of my pleasant but not entirely brilliant students can manage to get themselves a pass mark and therefore make me look moderately competent. Their saving grace may be that the test is multiple choice and I’m fairly sure they can be trained to choose the correct answers without actually understanding English.

Meanwhile, it is getting on toward the end of the year and although Christmas is not at all part of their culture, the Japanese will snaffle any holiday, especially one that involves shopping. They like Valentine’s Day so much, they have it twice – in February, women buy gifts for men and a month later, men buy candy for women. Candy – the cheapest of lollies. Men are the winners in this one. Ramadan is yet to catch on but it could work with a little tinkering – Ramadan cards and post-sunset Ramadan all-you-can-eat cake parties – I’m sure it could be a staple on the calendar. In any case, there are now Christmas songs everywhere you go, which Grinch Kazuko finds annoying but at least they’ve waited until December, as opposed to October. Except Kentucky Fried Chicken, which has found itself a Christmas niche and it has become a tradition to get food there on Christmas Day. Here’s how the colonel looked back in October:

All you colonels lick my fingers.

December is also the time for bonenkai parties here in Japan and that’s a lot more enjoyable than some bland deep-fried chicken. Bonenkai literally means forget the year and parties are held with friends and/or colleagues to put the year behind us and clean the slate for the year to come. And what better way to do this than to drink too much in the spirit of camaraderie? Last Saturday I attended the cycling team NSR’s bonenkai party where, among other things, I realised that NSR, which stands for North Sea and Road, is the English word-for-word translation of Hokkaido (北海道 if your computer can read Japanese). Also, I met NSR’s foreign team member, Brian, who is the first English native speaker that I’ve had any length of conversation with since I got here. I’ve got a nasty feeling he was subjected to some sort of Bruce stream of consciousness monologue toward the end of the night so sorry about that Brian. At least I managed not to post bizarre drunken messages on Facebook or Twitter. I also learnt a bit about fishing with live bait from the team member who was advised to give up cycling by his doctor because of an erratic heart or something. And I have vague memories of being invited to ride at the velodrome in Hakodate or something like that. I boldly gave up drinking yet again the next morning.

However, there was a break from the humdrum yesterday as we’ve had a couple of warmer days, the snow has melted and finally the sun came out (undoubtedly a sign that thousands of climate scientists are completely wrong and Sarah Palin’s right. I shouldn’t be surprised if glaciers don’t start advancing again shortly). I think this may well be my last chance for a long ride this side of winter, so I decided to try and make the most of it and get up the coast to somewhere I haven’t been before. That somewhere turned out to be a town called Hamamasu, which ended up being a bit further than I probably should have gone considering how early the sun is setting these days.

Up the coast.

My initial plan was to head inland and go along a small road through the mountains that I went along with Team Attic a little while back and then head north, across to the coast and then back along the coast. However, when I got to the start of that road, it was all covered in snow. This turned out to be quite fortunate because I would have ended up riding even further than I did. On the way back to the coast, I still had to get off and walk a couple of times because the road became icy.

Walking seemed better than falling off.

It soon gets a bit annoying having to scrape the ice off my cleats to be able to get back on the bike. Also heading downhill is a bit nervous hoping not to hit a patch of ice. Back on the coastal road, there was a bit of snow by the side at times but luckily none on the road. The view was quite pleasant, too.

I got as far as those mountains up there.

The road was never too busy or too steep and had a nice turn inland through some mountains before winding back out to the coast just before Hamamasu. The only problem was a few long tunnels. I don’t enjoy cycling through these much at all. The footpath through them is rarely wide enough to ride on and the way noise bounces around the tunnels makes even the smallest car sound a bit frightening. I had forgotten to take any lights with me so all I could do was try to get through the tunnel as quickly as possible and hope that drivers were alert. As you can see from the graph below, one tunnel scared me so much I that I hit my top speed ever:

Obviously the speed of sound changes depending on the temperature and especially the medium so mach one under water is quite different to mach one in the air.

Unfortunately for me, when I left home, there was no food to put in my pockets and no powdered sports drink so I had just filled my bottles with water and put some money in my pocket. And as any quoter of American Indian proverbs can tell you, you cannot eat money. As ever, I waited until I was hungry to think about eating and that was naturally at the point furthest from the nearest convenience store. By the time I got to my destination of Hamamasu, I was just slightly dizzy and not in a pleasant drunken way. Three onigiri and three chocolate bars later, I was feeling strong again and hit the road home, only to realise that although it was just 1.30pm, the sun was rapidly disappearing. Uphill was in the shade but downhill was mostly in the sun. I started to worry that the temperature might cool enough to start refreezing the melted snow on the road but luckily that didn’t happen. Instead I just had to race against the sun so I wouldn’t be caught on the road, in the dark with no lights.

Luckily for me I managed to get to a stretch of road that had a pavement while there was still some sun so although there was a greater risk of crashing on the less-than-flat pavement, at least I wasn’t going to get side-swiped by a passing car. Not that any car had driven too close to me until that point but I didn’t want to risk it in the dark. To celebrate being able to ride the last 20 kilometres or so on the pavement, I celebrated with a little rest and a large can of caffeinated, sugary fizzy drink to see me through until I got home. While resting, I checked my twitter feed to see Kevin Rudd boasting about driving a hybrid car, so despite bicycle riding taking me to the edge of exhaustion and with a good chance of catching exposure, I thought it best to tweet back to him and let him know that bikes are better for the world than even hybrid cars. Needless to say I got no reply. I’ll remember that when the revolution comes.

The rest of the ride was at least safe but all the rubbing in the world wasn’t warming my hands back up. I got home in full darkness at 4.40pm. My hands took so long to warm up that in the shower the hot water felt cold whenever I pointed it at my hands. Felt strange to me, anyway. Tomorrow Kazuko and I are off to Lake Toya with a teammate from Attic, Mr Kon. The forecast is for two degrees in Sapporo but it should be a little bit warmer at Toya but I think my ride to Hamamasu will have been the last long one for the year.

Happy trails

Yes it’s true, I have been quiet on the blog. The fact is, I’ve been spending much of my free time breaking up furniture to keep the bonfire in the middle of the living room going. However, Kazuko now informs me that it’s not going to be possible for me to spend the winter months walking around the house in only my Mr Tickle Y-fronts and a pair of socks. And I have to clean the smoke and fire damage off the ceiling. Luckily, I seem to be getting more used to the cold weather so perhaps I’ll be able to spend more time lounging about in my Mr Men mangerie* without having to trash the apartment.

The last couple of weeks hasn’t been entirely spent shivering around the charred remains of our furniture. For about $20 each, Kazuko and I have taken out annual membership of the local zoo. We can now visit any time it takes our fancy, so we popped in for a couple of hours the other week. As far as I can tell, the zoo is a blistering success. The polar bears may have been shifted to another zoo but we were able to visit the empty pen of the zebra that died the day before. Sadly, we weren’t able to make it to the funeral of the gorilla that recently died but he will always be in our thoughts. Because it was cold, there weren’t too many animals outside but this red panda looks familiar, doesn’t he?

Looks more like a crack fox than a red panda to me.

And inside the nice warm building, there was a real one:

The red panda is not closely related to the panda, nor is it a bear. Its colour is quite close to red, though.

Back outside, I was disappointed to find the monkeys were neither fornicating nor fiddling with themselves. In fact they seemed to be mostly huddling together for warmth. In front of the zoo’s cafe was a sign telling up we were close, which is always nice to know. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be open. Still, I had a giggle because although it is written as Earth cafe, the Japanese would pronounce this Arse cafe. I had a good chuckle when the television advertised they were going to show a documentary about arse.

Very close, indeed.

We couldn’t find many animals outdoors, so we followed the smell into another building, where the giraffe got a bit cheeky:

Don't poke your tongue out at me, young man.

And the hippo was busy showing its dental work to the kids:

... and that root canal work set me back a small fortune.

All that was left to do was to try and console the zebra looking mournfully through the bars at where his (or her, I don’t know) friend used to be.

There, there. It's not all black and white, you know.

And with that, it was time to head off. We’ll be back though – if only to investigate the mounting death-toll.

The next day Kazuko took me shopping to Sapporo’s top shopping mall, The Factory, where the Christmas tree was up and the indoor wind turbines were spinning merrily.

But there's no wind in here.

For a change, they weren’t holding their usual talent competition for Sapporo’s worst karaoke singer or least dextrous juggler. And over in the restaurant area, I was yet again impressed with how realistic the plastic food is.

Mouth-watering plastic.

With all the shopping done, the only thing troubling me was that I hadn’t been on the bicycle for a while so when I got an email inviting me to go for a ride on Sunday, I decided it was time to man up and get some cold-weather cycling done. The meeting point for the ride was Kitahiroshima and I had heard there was a good bike path out there, so I decided to throw all the clothes in my wardrobe at the problem and do an exploratory ride out there last Friday. It was great just to be back on my bike again and although I proved conclusively that my sense of direction is terrible while trying to find the bike path, once on it, it was a great ride out and back. There was snow forecast for Saturday but I was confident it would do what it always does and melt as soon as it touched the ground. Kaz and I went for a stroll for lunch on Saturday and we got a bit of snow on the way home.

Smile - it's winter.

So when I got up on Sunday and found a thin dusting of snow on the ground, I wasn’t particularly surprised or put off. It would all melt soon enough. It was however, quite interesting to see how easily a bicycle can slide about on an icy road but this is all part of the fun. I made it through town without getting lost and got on to the path, which looked like this:

A beautiful winter's morning. (Although technically it's not winter yet.)

The further along the path I went, the deeper the snow got and I learnt the fairly obvious lesson that a 23mm slick tyre doesn’t grip very well in a couple of inches of snow. But I also found that when the bike starts to snake around, the trick is to keep pedalling. At least that seemed to keep me upright. It may have been simple good fortune. The deepest parts of snow were only a couple of inches or so but, especially uphill, that was enough to slow me down to less then 10kmh. Runners coming the other way were giving me funny looks as I laboured through the snow. I ended up being only a couple of minutes late but was not surprised to find a carpark devoid of bicycles as I couldn’t imagine it being very safe to go for a bunch ride in these conditions. As it turned out, they had gone inside to the gym and were doing a training session on rollers in there but I didn’t find out about that until later.

Hello? Anyone here?

I did a couple of laps of the car park and decided to head back for home. I would have stopped to take more photos but I found that whenever I did, I couldn’t get my shoe back into its cleat without having to get out my small allen key and scrape all the compacted ice off from the cleat and pedal. Here’s what part of the path looked like:

Lots of lovely snow.

As you can see, I was not the only cyclist to ride along the path but I was the one with the thinnest tyres. I wasn’t sure if my front brake was frozen or just not working because of the ice build up.

The snow was slowing me down better than the brakes, anyway.

And my shoes and bottom bracket all got a healthy coating.

It's icy down there.

At least the countryside was scenic:

A passing farm.

And I found it was far easier to ride in fresh snow than to try and follow some one else’s tracks. The bike would just skid through the mush from old footprints.

Oddly enough, riding along this bit was quite easy.

I’m starting to see the attraction of mountain bikes but I think I can probably just start some research on knobbly tyres and I should be right for my winter snow riding. Except I think the snow is only going to get deeper for a while yet.

*This is my attempt to introduce another word to the long list of trendy expressions that incorporate the word man, such as: manbag, man-boobs and man-crush. As you can see, it fails to be a mixture of man and lingerie because mangerie is already a word. I have persisted nonetheless.

Snow business

Much is made of the two-part episode of Happy Days where Arthur Fonzarelli goes water-skiing in his leather jacket but I don’t understand why people are so quick to accuse tv shows, or more often blogs, of jumping the shark*. At least it’s evidence that someone is still making an effort. Critics forget that after the shark-jumping episode, there was still Suzi Quatro, Laverne and Shirley, Mork the Orkan and Tom Hanks all yet to make guest appearances. For mine, the real sign that the scriptwriters have surrendered to lassitude is the flashback episode. This is the one in which a situation is contrived where a couple of the lesser-paid actors are trapped in an elevator/snowed in at a mountain lodge and spend the episode reminiscing about past episodes from a time before the scriptwriters stopped caring. I only mention all this because although today’s blog entry is the third or fourth time I have written about cycling up Teineyama, I wouldn’t want these to be thought of as flashbacks because each time has been entirely original involving either a different bicycle or, as is the case today, different weather.

Although I have lived in several places that have a snowy winter, I still look forward to snow with great excitement. It’s everything that rain isn’t. It falls on you quite gently; it’s made of water but doesn’t really get you wet; and you can roll it up and make snowmen or throw it at your friends (but not your wife, if you know what’s good for you). So imagine my disappointment that the weather forecast kept predicting snow but the best we got was a light dusting and a wet balcony. All I could do was gaze mournfully out of the window at the snow in the mountains and wish we could get some down here. On Wednesday I woke up to an excitingly heavy snowfall but after it didn’t last very long and failed to settle on the ground, it was clear I had only one course of action. If the mountains wouldn’t come to Bruce, Bruce had to go to the mountains. Without stopping to wonder whether a sentence like that could result in a fatwa, I pumped up the tyres on the Long Haul Trucker, put on several layers of woollen underclothing (and some overclothing) and headed, yet again, for Teineyama.

There was still no snow as I got to the base of the mountain but as I started the climb, I enjoyed some very light snowfall to motivate me on the way up. Soon there was little snow on the leaves of plants by the road, then a little on the ground and finally, in a poor reflection of our modern, technological era, the first thing I did when I reached a reasonably-sized patch on the ground was not to play in it but to photograph myself and email it to friends.

 

Hey guys, look - I found some snow. In a cold country. In winter. Isn't that amazing?

Despite the top of the mountain being closer to the sun, it got colder the higher I went and there was more and more snow by the side of the road.

 

I stopped to take and email another photo. If I see snow and don't email/blog about it, have I really seen snow?

Finally I got to the base of the ski fields, where snow covered all the open ground. Luckily the drinks machines were serving hot as well as cold drinks. Here was my choice:

 

Nice choice, eh? I went for the one called Almond au Lait. It was sweet.

And although I had been wearing my thickest gloves, holding the hot can was very pleasant.

 

And then I rode the Trucker into some snow for a photo.

After this short stop I continued up the mountain and the snow started covering the road until I had just a thin strip of bare road left to ride on. When I got to the top, the entire car park was covered in compacted snow and as I rode in, a group of Japanese getting ready to do some cross-country skiing seemed surprised and impressed that a crazy bloke on a bike had ridden up the mountain. I managed to dispel any awe they might have had of me by coming perilously close to falling off twice before I decided it was probably better to get off and walk. So I parked the bike and took its photo:

 

It's always satisfying to cycle up a mountain.

Then I went for a stroll. I was too self-conscious to build a snowman but luckily someone else had done the job for me:

 

First snowman of the season.

As I got back to the bike from my stroll, a Japanese bloke got out of his car and offered to take my photo. He still seemed impressed with me so I assume he didn’t see me nearly come a cropper a few minutes earlier.

 

Hai! Won, tsu, tsree, smairu!

I waved goodbye to him and headed back down the mountain, riding the brakes all the way down for fear of skidding on the snow and slipping over. I stopped to take a photo of the snow on the road and my new passed me and waved again.

 

I don't know why I wanted to photograph the road any more but that car ahead is being driven by the bloke who took the photo of me above.

Despite my gloves and slow speed, my fingertips and toes were still quite numb by the time I got to the bottom. The sun was out, so they warmed up a bit but looking to my left, I could see a big front of snow coming toward me. Luckily I had the wind behind me all the way home, which enhanced my enjoyment of riding in the snow.

 

This is the last known photo of my bell still alive. I went to ring it a couple of minutes later and found that cold apparently makes the plastic ringer brittle.

The view to my right.

The path ahead.

But even for all this snow, there still isn’t any left on the ground down here at sea level. I mustn’t complain, though. I think we have a good few months of snow and ice to look forward to before next spring. Plenty of time for me to practice riding the Trucker on slippery surfaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I should also like to point out that although this expression is now somewhat cliched, my first encounter with it was in the excellent book Sushi Daze (still available at some bookshops in town last time I looked) by author Rob Payne. To my mind, this means he invented the expression.

In hot water again

The weather kindly eased off a little for the weekend so I was able to go for a relaxed hilly ride with a few people from the Attic cycling team:

 

A hilly loop.

 

 

 

I puffed myself out racing up the hill so I could take a photo looking back.

The autumn colours have almost all gone as the trees are getting increasingly bare but it is still pretty pleasant getting out of the city and on to a quieter road.

 

Hey wait for me!

But this was a small fitness entree to the weekend’s main course of relaxation. Whereas I would have been more than happy to treat Kazuko to anything she wanted on the menu at Burger King, apparently we had to do something better than that to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary. Kazuko has spent the last month or so studying web pages and holding long consultative discussions with her sister Masako until choosing an onsen hotel in Jozankei that Masako had previously stayed in. In fact, we ended up getting the same room as they had had. Jozankei is a spa town with a cluster of hotels built around the town’s healthy natural hot water. We arrived a little early to check in so we went for a walk around town first. Hotels in these towns provide guests with a yukata (a light summer kimono) and many people see no problem in wandering out of the hotel and up the street in them.

 

There's the ladies, enjoying a lovely day out.

The hotels are all built around the town’s river.

 

That's looking one way.

And this is the view from the other direction.

I assume the source of the town’s hot water is nearby as there was plenty of water flowing down walls and also a couple of places where people could kick off their shoes and warm their feet in ponds of hot water.

 

Enjoying the warm water.

Being such a watery town, there were plenty of kappa about the place.

 

Here's one just kicking back.

People familiar with the Japanese television series Monkey will remember Sandy the water spirit who was also a kappa.

 

Here's one enjoying a hot water bath.

And here's one promoting the town.

Meanwhile, Kazuko had spied a cat and was trying to make a name for herself as a cat lady.

 

She says she had five of them around her at one point.

On the way back to the hotel there was a small shrine where people had tied their wishes to a tree.

 

Write your wish on a piece of paper and tie it up and of course it'll come true.

Back at the hotel, our room was nearly ready but we had to take our induction course first. Kazuko really outdid herself in choosing the hotel. Everything about it was immaculate, including (as you would expect in Japan) the manners of all the staff. I was unable to walk past any of them without at least one of the great range of Japanese ingratiating remarks. The best one was the cleaning lady who said good morning to me in Japanese, I replied good morning in Japanese and she then told me, again in Japanese, that my Japanese was wonderful. I have no problem at all with false flattery. In any case, we were led to the sixth floor and into a lounge area where we were presented with a nice cup of tea and a snack while the hotel lady ran us through all of the facilities and presented us with our vouchers for free use of certain baths, free drinks and free late-night noodles. She finally took us to our luxury suite. In addition to the hotel’s main baths, we had our own private bath. It looked like this:

 

This is the view from through the window looking at our bath.

And it looked like this with me in it:

 

You really don't want to see the photos Kazuko took standing up.

The trees were bare on the mountains outside our window:

 

Those are trees and mountains.

And our room had a nice large area of tatami mats as well as another room with armchair, sofa and refreshments.

 

Kazuko enjoys sitting on the tatami in our luxurious room.

Campagnolo fans get tattoos. Us Shimano people just wear the socks.

Although an onsen is a very relaxing place to stay, our relaxation was still filled with the very Japanese stress of having many things to do in a limited time. Curse all those vouchers. We headed down to the main baths, which are segregated, where Kazuko and I waved goodbye to each other and promised to meet back in our hotel room. You’re not allowed to just walk into the baths, of course, because that would make them dirty so it’s compulsory to have a shower first before getting into the bath. Everyone is naked but we all have a small towel that we carry with us. Some people are quite careful about using the towel to cover themselves up whereas others, usually the old men, are quite happy to go full frontal. I opt to casually dangle the towel about in front of me somewhere, as if to say ‘this is a token gesture I make in order to not embarrass the rest of you’. Once in the water, most of us place the towel next to the bath but I notice many old men will fold it into a square and put it on their head. I think this is the Japanese equivalent of wearing a knotted handkerchief on your head.

My strategy is usually to sit up to my waist in water for bit, then up to the neck until the extreme heat of the water sends my heart rate sky-rocketing, then I head to an outside bath where the air is cooler and sit up to my waist until I’ve cooled down a bit. Then to the sauna, then the cold water bath, then back to a hot water one, then outside, then the steam bath, back to the sauna, cold water, hot water and finally it must be time to go and meet Kazuko back in our room, where we rested for just a short while before heading to the hotel’s external bath house to use the first of our vouchers. By this time we were dressed in our hotel yukatas and wearing Japanese flip-flips so we could blend in with the other guests. And because they are very comfortable. This bath, segregated again, had an indoor and an outdoor bath. I could hear the ladies next door chatting away but we men are more austere than that and our side of things was very quiet. In fact, I was playing the ‘how do they react to the foreigner’ game. If I enter a bath and a Japanese man immediately leaves it, I like to think it’s because he’s uncomfortable sharing the water with a foreigner. On the other hand, if he doesn’t immediately leave, I think it’s because he’s realised that it would be rude to leave now so he’s forced to sit there longer than he otherwise would have out of a peculiar sense of politeness. They can’t win.

Our next voucher was for a free drink in the lounge of this bathhouse. Kazuko had a juice drink and I had a delicious cold beer served in a pottery cup. And then it was off to a very Japanese dinner. We had a private room and a lovely energetic grandmotherly type as a waitress. Dinner was endless courses of small Japanese dishes. Sushi, octopus eggs (quite tasty), tempura ginger stalk and Japanese maple leaf, sashimi, bits of fried beef (possibly wagyu but I’m not sure) and pumpkin ice cream were just some of the meal. At first even Kazuko was thinking the portions might be a bit small but we went away absolutely stuffed.

Then it was back to our room to open a bottle of Italian fizzy and enjoy our private bath as well as letting the Facebook world know that we were having our anniversary (mobile phone technology, eh?). A quick ten-minute nap to break up the relaxation and out we went to use the rest of our vouchers. The lounge where we had our induction course was now the evening lounge and there was free tea, wine and whisky. I was tempted to pretend I was in a 1960s American movie and throw some ice and whisky in a glass but common sense prevailed and we decided that the wine and whisky were probably both not the highest quality so went for our late-night noodles instead. As if we needed them. And finally we had vouchers for the cocktail bar. Kazuko fancied some Baileys (but not from a shoe – please see The Legend of Old Gregg) so she talked the cocktail waiter into making a not-on-the-menu Bailey’s and coffee while I had a brandy, Baileys and Kahlua concoction. Kazuko impressed him enough that he dished up a further Baileys drink for her later. And as we left he wished me to ‘take yourself at home’. I’m not sure what he meant by that but I always appreciate it when people make the effort to use a bit of English. Anyway, it was back to our room to finish the fizzy, have another dip in the bath and collapse tired but happy in bed.

And before we knew it, it was morning again. A quick plunge in our bath and we put on our yukatas and looked at ourselves in the mirror and headed out.

 

There we are.

And that's the corridor in the direction of breakfast.

Breakfast was back in the same place as dinner last night and we got the same lovely grandmotherly lady as our waitress again. Breakfast was another collection of several dishes including the following:

 

Natto is fermented beans. It's horrible. I think it's the only Japanese food I won't eat. The Japanese love it, which makes it their version of Vegemite I suppose.

Raw squid in its own sauce. I confess this was a little strong for me first thing in the morning too. I just had a few pieces.

Raw tuna with daikon and wasabi. This one was very tasty.

The full meal. Unfortunately Kazuko was not happy with her morning face so in order to gain her permission to use this photo I have had to pixellate out her still-sleepy expression.

Then it was back to the hotel room for another quick rest. Kazuko needed more for me so I dashed off to the lounge which was no longer the whisky lounge but had become the coffee and danishes lounge. I could only stomach the one danish after that big breakfast but managed a couple of cups of coffee before Kazuko arrived. Then it was back to the main baths where I took my time shaving (face and legs) and managed about thirty seconds in each of the baths before heading back to our room via the coffee lounge. There was just enough time for the briefest of relaxing dips in our bath before we had to leave the room. If you go away anywhere in Japan, however brief, it is compulsory to bring souvenirs back to your work, so Kazuko had to make a quick trip to the gift shop while I was able to squeeze in another cup of coffee. And finally, after an overnight stay of intense relaxation, we were able to have a rest in the taxi on the way back to Sapporo where poor old Kazuko had no time to rest because she had to head out to work in the afternoon. It was a fabulous night away so thank you Kazuko for organising this and for putting up with me for seven years now – good heavens!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow in the mountains

I’m posting incessantly this weekend. Looks like we got some snow overnight but only in the mountains. This is the view from our balcony this morning. The top of Teineyama is hidden behind that cloud. Must be a chance of snow down here at sea level today if those clouds fill in. Should I go for a ride today? Looks cold out.

More photos

Another walk, another bunch of autumn photos. Still no snow, though – maybe tomorrow. Click on the photo to get to the gallery.