My Life in Tokyo

Today I’m writing from the lobby of our hotel in Hakuba, Japan–a town in the “Japanese Alps” near Nagano.  We planned to have a week of spring skiing here instead of taking a long trip further away in Asia.  It seemed like a very good idea when we planned the trip, but now things don’t look so good.  After a rather cold winter, things have warmed up significantly over the past couple of weeks.  Our first day of skiing was Saturday and I think it was the warmest day I have ever skied.  We kept having to stop and take off more layers, and I began to feel sweat drip down my back when riding up on the chair lift.  Still, the snow was surprisingly good and the sky was a beautiful, completely clear, deep blue.  Alas, I forgot to bring my camera that day.  Yesterday it was cloudy but still very warm.  Today it’s raining.  And so we’re spending the day at the hotel and hoping that tomorrow there will still be some snow left on the mountains.  It is Monday.  We have paid for hotel rooms through Friday night, and have 4 more days of lift passes. 

So now we’ve had two days of skiing in Japan.   What is it like to ski in Japan, you ask?  Of course, in many ways it’s the same as skiing everywhere.  Except that everyone else is Japanese and you can’t read the signs.  I was surprised to find in the area we were skiing this weekend that there was no place to sit outdoors.  On a gorgeous sunny day like Saturday, I expected to see lots of people outside.  If this had been Italy, we’d probably have seen half of the people sitting outside suntanning in T-shirts.  Not here.  Is it too much like loafing, I wonder?  Is skiing okay, as long as you’re working?

Though it didn’t really seem like it at the time, I guess we got in some good exercise yesterday.  Some of the trails were pretty challenging with the warming conditions and my thighs did some real work snowplowing behind Isabella on some of the narrow switchback roads.  I discovered the real consequences of this at dinner last night.

We had a wonderful sushi dinner in a local restaurant, seated at a low table in a tatami room.  Juliet was free to pop up from the table and run around, sneaking behind the screen to the next room (which remained unoccupied).  The fish was excellent and the proprietor very friendly.  They had a full English menu and he spoke some English, but seemed delighted to find that Isabella could speak Japanese very well (and Mark and I could stumble through a clumsy dinner order).  He wanted to know where we were from.  When we said America, he wanted to know which part.  I told him New York, and he made a face.  He came back a few seconds later and asked in Japanese if we were Mets fans or Yankees fans.  Mark replied “Yankees” with no hesitation, which produced a big smile and much goodwill.  The Japanese are very proud of their countryman, pitcher Matsumoto.

I was feeling very pleased with myself for managing to stay seated on my knees for much of the dinner.  Wow, I thought, look how Japanese I’m becoming!  Just at the end of the meal, Juliet had to go to the bathroom.  So I unfolded myself and tried to step down to put on my shoes.  I couldn’t stand up!  A full day’s skiing followed by an hour on my knees proved to be too much for my middle-aged American leg muscles.  The proprietor got a good laugh out of my stumbling walk.  Though his laughter was friendly and good-natured, I imagine it will make a good story for him to tell his Japanese customers.

Soon I’m off with Isabella to the friendly neighborhood conbini (convenience store) and/or 100 yen shop, in search of some amusements for an unplanned day indoors.  Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and we’ll give it one more shot on the mountain.  And then we shall see.  A visit to a nearby castle en route back to Tokyo, perhaps?  Ah well, these are the perils of spring skiing.