After many years I'm back on the slopes

This week I had the chance to go on the seventh and eight grade ski trip. Every year they go skiing in Tajima, the Northern region of Hyogo-ken. In the summer the ninth graders go to Tokyo Disneyland. My predecessor went there last June. Perhaps I will have a chance to go also. It often depends on which table you sit at in the teachers’ room. Since I sit at the seventh grade table I was invited to go on the seventh grade ski trip.

The timing was wonderful for this trip, following a string of fun days. Last Thursday and Friday, I went to Kobe for the JET mid-year conference. Almost all the JETs in Hyogo-ken, about 250, met in Kobe, each accompanied by one of their Japanese Teachers of English. I think there were about 461 people in total. I went with Yoshida-sensei, the only male English teacher at my school. The conference consisted of several lectures and three seminars where we did group work and exchanged ideas about team-teaching. Many JETs complain about this conference, but I had a good time. In truth, I didn’t take that much away from it, but I enjoyed being out of school for the two days. I also enjoyed seeing all the JETs I haven’t seen since Yashiro and meeting a handful of new JETs.

On Saturday morning, I finally went to Kyoto for the first time. We went for a monthly flea market at one of the large shrines. It happens every 21st, but the 21st only falls on a weekend every few months. It wasn’t so different from a flee market at home, except it seemed there were more trinkets and less large furniture. Of course many of the items for sale were uniquely Japanese, so it was a great time. I had daifuku for the first time. Daifuku is a style of rice cake (mochi), which has a filling made of red bean paste (anko) and something else. I had a strawberry and melon one. They were one of the best tasting things I have had in Japan. I spied a few cool antiques, but I was in no shape to buy. I also looked longingly at the bonsai trees. The starter trees were around $30 or $40, but the 20-year old trees cost as much as $500. I think I might check if our fabled Hyogo JET library has any English books on bonsai. I need to know my stuff before I invest any money. I killed my first houseplant in September without even trying. I have not yet acquired a second one.

After the busy weekend, having had just a taste of Kyoto, I got up early on Monday for the school ski trip. It should have been a three-hour bus ride up to Tajima, but heavy snow kept us from taking the main highway. It was about four-hours on the smaller roads, and I did my best to make small talk with the non-English speaking teacher I was with. I was really surprised by how much katakana eigo, or English with Japanese pronunciation, I could get away with using. More and more Japanese is slowly being replaced by English words, because of the Internet and the influence of Western pop-culture. Japanese only has five vowel sounds and English has 16 vowel sounds, and the Japanese have trouble distinguishing some of our consonants. So the imported English words often sound as much like Japanese as any other Japanese words.

We arrived around noon, had a quick lunch and then headed for the slopes. It was quite an effort to get four hundred junior high school students equipped to ski, but of course it was carried out with carefully organized Japanese proficiency. All the different classes had their own ski instructor from the lodge, except for one eighth-grade class who had Okuno-sensei, the gym teacher, as their instructor.

A couple of the teachers invited me to go up the lift with them, so I obliged. My previous skiing experience consisted of a sixth-grade trip when I went up the lift twice before I decided I didn’t like skiing and a day trip in tenth grade when I may or may not have skied at all. It wasn’t very memorable. I remember not really trying, because I had already decided skiing wasn’t for me. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time.



Once we reached the top, a few of the teachers skied down a gentle slope and waited there for me to catch up. As I approached an English teacher told me to stop. I was skiing just fine, and I figured it would be safer for me to just keep going than to figure out how to stop. There was one point on the way down where I took a dive because I was afraid I was going too fast, but that was the only fall for the whole trip.



I found skiing to be more fun and easier than I remembered, but it wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had. I thought it was sort of like going on a really slow roller coaster without being strapped in. If you actually achieve enough speed to make it as fun as a roller coaster, then you risk dying, which makes it less fun.



On my fourth trip up the lift on the first day I went with one of the more experienced teachers. I didn’t realize we were going to go down the fast hill, and before I knew it I was achieving incredible speed. I considered laying down by choice to avoid a bad fall, but then decided I would probably die if I fell whether it was by choice or not. With a little effort and a lot of adrenaline I made it down without falling. If someone asked me how I skied without any practice and no instruction for ten years, I would tell them I just skied like people ski in the movies. In the end, most questions can be answered by the movies.



I skied some more on the second day and had a good time. During lunch, I was looking longingly at the hills of trees around the mountain. I decided I would do some snow hiking and see what I could see. I had purposely packed my gaiters (knee-high nylon snow guards) for just such a venture.



I walked halfway to the base of the mountain where I found what was probably a hiking path in the summer. There was an almost buried trail sign where I thought the path started. Next to that was a sign that said to be careful. Maybe it said ‘no hiking’ but careful was all I understood. The snow was a couple of feet deep, but the fresh snow was only about calf-deep. Usually that was where my feet stopped, but sometimes I would dip down thigh deep in soft spots. If anyone has ever hiked in deep snow, they will tell you it can be exhausting. Every step into calf-deep snow means you have to lift your feet up higher and harder than usually. It’s like climbing stairs or running in deep water. Doing ten steps or ten feet is easy, but the longer you climb stairs or run in water the harder it gets.



The further I went the longer my return trip was going to be. I finally came to a point in the hike where it felt like I might be rounding the mountain, and maybe I would be able to circumnavigate it. I hoped that would be the case, because having to return the exact same way sometimes takes the fun out of hiking.

I didn’t see another person for a solid 45 minutes. That is indeed a rarity in Japan. I was really struck by the stillness of that trail, of those woods. I often feel withdrawal from nature in Japan. Japan has plenty of nature but you have to travel to get there, and it is often difficult to get there by public transportation. I hope, on returning to The States, I won’t take the plentiful and easily accessible forest preserves for granted. It’s the best place to be alone: just you, the animals and God above.



When I finally broke free from the woods, I found myself on a ski slope but a different one from where my kids were skiing. I was doubly surprised to see a group of camouflage-clad skiers surrounding a small ski mogul. I approached the closest man and found out they were Japanese Self-Defense Force from a base near Kyoto. The young man I spoke with, Osamu Yamamatsu, was eager to talk to me. He tried to throw in a few English words, but I did quite well in Japanese. I started taking pictures of JSDF men who were practicing jumping off the mogul, and they became a little self-conscious. Twice as many fell while I was photographing them then when before I started. Osamu and I finally thanked each other for the brief dialogue and parted ways.



For most of the rest of my hike I was crossing ski hills on foot. Although it was a little hazardous, I knew it was easier than going to the base of the large slopes. I saw quite a few more SDJF on the way back. I also found one ski track that had a rail and several ramps for snow boarders. I lied down as close to this track as I could and tried to take a few pictures of the boarders. Most of them saw me crouched beside their trail. I’m sure I affected their performance as well.



It was about a 90-minute hike in total, and one of the best 90-minute blocks I have had in Japan. Mount Shousha in Himeji and Mount Rokko in Kobe are probably the only local places to do any real hiking, and they tend to be fairly public. I haven’t yet hiked Rokko, but maybe I should start planning that for the future.



The rest of the ski trip was great. I had lots of good food, and I got to talk more with several teachers who I don’t often speak with. I didn’t go to either of the teacher’s late-night parties though. The first one I didn’t know about, and I was too tired the second night to leave my warm room. I’m sure the teachers had fun without me. That was another great thing about the trip. It was tiring for the teachers, but they all seemed to have so much fun. Half the day the students were with ski instructors, and the teachers were off doing their own thing. It was great to see the teachers enjoying life instead of working themselves to death at school.

The students also seemed to have a good time. Virtually all of them skied the entire time they were able to. At a ski trip at home, many kids wouldn’t have wanted to ski, or they would have given up after a few tries and went to the lodge. Thanks to the sometimes-positive Japanese groupthink, every student was doing his/her best to ski the entire time. I know thre had to be some students who would rather have played games in the lodge, but this wasn’t really an option. I told one of my co-teachers how weird I thought it was that all of the students were still skiing on the third day. She thought it would be weird if they weren’t skiing. I guess it does make more sense to ski on a ski trip.

I didn’t have any amazing, bonding experiences with the kids, but I talked to a lot of them in small bursts. Much of the time I was speaking Japanese, to the surprise of many of my students, but I made sure to teach some English when I found the chance. There were many students who approached me more than they had in class, and then there were those who always try to talk to me who were happy to have more time to do so. On my bike ride home, after we got back to Harima-cho, I ran into some students. They were asking me all sorts of basic questions about myself that they probably always wanted to in class. Hopefully, the little bit of bonding I did will help create openness and interest in English in the classroom.