Hokkaido Rail Sesh

Sooooooooooo ski season is just about all wrapped up here in Hokkaido and what a doozy it was!  We traveled all of the island skiing some great powder and the occasional ice patch.  We went to the most famous resort in Japan, called Niseko, as well as Tomamu, Furano and Akan Kohan ski areas.  They all had their good sides and bad sides but in the end our overall favorite was Tomamu.  It has sweet tower hotels that you can ski into after a long day on the mountain, an onsen and a sweet ice bar that was super cold but worth it.

Just the hotel, nbd.

Angela progressed like a beast this season skiing her first ever blacks, tree runs and powder runs.  After being forced to follow us through some adverse terrain she quickly picked up and has been hooked ever since.  When we get back we're definitely getting her a pair of new skis and a pass to the closest mountains! Let's just hope the states get some real snow next winter, we got pretty spoiled over here this year.  I gained a new appreciation for powder skiing and got to demo lots of cool fat skis.  I didn't really get to work on park stuff very hard this year but still got to play around a little bit.  Hopefully next year I'll get to do both twice as much!  We're a little sad to see the ski season end but we're always happy to welcome in the spring and the warm weather!  

Angela skiing, 900 year old granny style.

Just doin' our thang on the slopes.

**let's give a round of applause for Corin's first blog post!**

***clapping***

Tales of an Engrish teacher, ichi ban.

It's nearly impossible to get Corin to write a blog post, as evidenced by every post on this blog, thus far, having been written by me. However, he generally comes home with much better stories than I do so I'm going to start compiling them here for posterity's sake. 

Case in point: The best story I have from class involves a very good English student at Meiki insisting on being called "Linda." I have yet found the right moment to inform him that Linda is, in fact, a girl's name. 

See? Not very good. But Corin, Corin has some killer stories. He goes to some of the "other" schools in the Kushiro area, those basically full of the students that didn't have high enough test scores to attend school within Kushiro's city limits. He has students who are entirely undisciplined in the classroom, the teachers having all but given up controlling them. On top of his unpredictable high school students, he also has worked with elementary and junior high school students at past English camps. One of these camps produced one of the best ESL blunders to date. It's amazing how changing one little letter can do to the meaning of a sentence. 

At the end of camp, all of the students and ALTs were asked to write cards for each other. Corin made some super cute cards featuring characatchers (<----is that even a word?) of himself and Sadie, another ALT in our area who was his partner during camp. He received some very sweet cards in return. One of them was from a little boy who was, as Corin puts it, "a space case." This kid had written a very nice card, one that I'm sure was an attempt at expressing his happy sentiments in making part of the farewell dinner with Corin and Sadie. The farewell dinner had been held the night before, each group of junior high and elementary school students taking care of a different part of the meal. Corin's group's assignment had been to prepare salads and rice crispy treats for the dinner. The preparing had gone fairly well and I believe the boy intended to write "thank you for helping us cook salad and rice crispy treats" on Corin's card. However, he didn't complete one pesky letter in the word "cook" and he will now be remembered for eternity as the kid who made Corin look like a pedophile.

I won't actually write what he wrote because the type of people who might put that particular phrase into a search engine, and possibly be led to this post, are not exactly the sort I want finding our personal blog. So thus, a picture of the card must suffice. It's probably better that way anyway...

Sorry, I can't get the photo to rotate...but you get the idea!

Corin also had an exciting class earlier this week in which he was supposed to play a game of Jeopardy. The teams were supposed to come up with their own names, and in true bad boy/girl fashion, the students wanted to be the Mother F***ers and the B*tches <insert incredibly bad katakana Engrish here>. Yes, these are students who can barely say "My name is ...." and yet they are coming up these options for team names. Being the awesome man he is, and taking their very poor pronunciation into consideration, Corin wrote "Mazda Hawks" and "Three Cheeses." God, I love this man. 

A New Year before (almost) all others.

When we reached Sapporo we grabbed a taxi and headed towards The Blue Wave Inn, an affordable hotel very near Sapporo’s drinking district, Susikino. 

On the train back to Sapporo.

Evan and David were staying there, so we organized ourselves and headed off to find a New Year’s Eve celebration we could giajin-crash. We happened upon a bar full of gaijin, many of them ALTs that we recognized from Sapporo Orientation. We settled ourselves in and started the evening off with snacks and drinks. The cook was a bubbly Italian motocross rider who might have spent more time taking shots with the customers than actually cooking anything, but the fries were spot on and the guys quite enjoyed the quesadillas. After talking with an ALT who had recognized us, and exchanging numbers, we decided that we would head to the nightclub “Mole” for the countdown to 2012. We still had some time to spare so we headed over to St. John’s Wood, a british pub style bar for another few drinks. By 11:30, we were on our way to Mole. The night club was full-ish. It wasn’t to the standard of Beta the night the Will.I.Am performed, but it was definitely enough people to have a good time. The music was loud and easy to dance to, although they might have played LMFAO’s “Shots” five times in two hours. Most of the Japanese partiers acted like they were at a concert and stood along the stage staring at the DJ. Corin and I knew better and danced our hearts out, then screamed and yelled when the countdown began.

Happy New Year!

It was a crazy experience knowing that our 2012 started 15 hours before anyone else’s and it was pretty fun to tell everyone “that’s so 2011” or “that’s so last year” for the hours afterwards (it may have also been funnier with the various alcoholic beverages we had consumed that evening…just saying). We left the club as the big hand on my watch neared two a.m. and found our way back to the Blue Wave, Corin and Even climbing piles of dirty brown snow in triumph every few blocks. It was the perfect way to bring in the New Year!

The whole gang together again!

The next few days were spent picking up a JET lagged Thomas, wandering around Sapporo, cursing the stars that we hadn’t read up on the Japanese New Year tradition of having ALL of the banks and ATMs close the first three days of the year. That’s right, no money for fun shopping the entire time we were in Sapporo. These bank closings coincide with what is the Japanese equivalent to Black Friday. There were sales everywhere, each store with their “Lucky Bags” priced and organized at the entrance. The tradition is to buy one of these bags and have it contain a complete outfit, a new wardrobe to wear in the New Year. They were priced from ¥2500 to ¥15,000 so there must have been some pretty good finds inside! Fortunately, we had taken out exactly what we would need to pay for hotels, trains and most meals before we’d left, so we ended up only having to borrow ¥1000 from Tom for the taxi ride home. Nonetheless, it was a bit of a pain having to count our yens just because the invisible man inside of every ATM in Japan needed a vacation. Oh well, another of those “cultural differences” I will never understand. 

The best powder in the world.

As though to make up for the off feeling of Christmas Day, New Year’s in Japan was one of the most fun I’ve ever experienced. But first things first: skiing in Niseko! As mentioned, Corin and I headed back to work on Monday and proceeded through three solid days of BOE/office nothing-ness. We then hopped the Limited-Express to Sapporo Station, changed to a local train headed for Otaru, swapped for a smaller train headed to Niseko and found ourselves in Kuchan around 4. Our amazing host, Ryo, picked us up from the station and took us over to his hostel, Niseko Lodge Tabitsumugi. 

There were only two other guests the two days we were there, a Kiwi named Jason and his eleven year old son. The two were eight days into their month long holiday, using every hour to explore the ski resorts around Niseko. Saying they were hardcore is an understatement. They hit the slopes as soon as the lifts opened and didn’t return until the resorts were shutting down the night skiing lights, every. single.day. Needless to say, we didn’t see much of them.

View from our hostel, the volcano Mt. Yotei.

We woke up fairly early the next morning and headed out to Grand Hirafu with plans to meet our friend Evan at some point that day. We had first met Evan at Denver’s Pre-Departure Orientation when he and Corin were roommates. After that, Tom, Corin, Evan and I spent the majority of our time at Tokyo Orientation together. However, he is placed in a beautiful city far down south and braved turbulant seas on a 20 hour ferry just to ski the powder of Hokkaido. However, finding him right away amongst the Japanese, Kiwis, and Aussies at Grand Hirafu was difficult so we started out skiing on our own.

Instead, Corin spent the morning coaxing me down the bunny hills and lovingly telling me to quit following behind the ski schools. It has only been a year since I last skied but when given the option to “pizza” or “french fry,” I’ll choose pizza every time. I passed one little girl at the top of the mountain crying her little eyes out, wailing that she was scared*. I felt her pain. I enjoy skiing, I really do, but the snow in your face, wind in your hair, powder rushing under your skis feeling of going any faster than a three-year-old on miniature skis in a hot pink snowsuit and monkey inspired backpack/leash combo brings me only mind-numbing fear. So Corin, as usual, was patient and encouraging and managed to get me back to a comfortable place in my skiing abilities, which usually meant calling up to me from a short distance asking if I was okay (I was, just talking myself through the descent like a paratrooper being dropped behind enemy lines during a sand storm/tsunami natural disaster combination of doom). After an expensive but tasty lunch and ensuring that I would be okay by myself, he headed off up the mountain to meet up with Evan and I stuck to the happy little slope I could navigate without fear. I ended up skiing four more runs before finally calling it “freezing” and heading in for some coffee. Corin followed soon after as a blizzard rolled over the mountain and made it just too hard to see and ski at the same time. Evan and his friend David were staying at a lodge on the mountain so Corin and I headed back into town by bus, warmed up in our little room and then found a tasty dinner, trying octopus for the first time and filling our stomachs with various flavors of yakitori (basically chicken meatballs on skewers).  

So much snow! This is total normal too...feet on feet.

The next morning we packed up and headed out, riding two hours back to Sapporo, the New Year nearly upon us. 

*I saw her later that day, possibly on the same run, still crying. This time she was simply saying "I don't want to ski anymore!" Let the poor girl go inside already!

It's an interesting Christmas time.

Christmas was, interesting. That’s really the only way to describe it. Although Corin and I made the best of it, the feeling of family and overwhelming love in the season was just lacking. We had a white Christmas. We had the tree. We had loving presents sent to us weeks in advance. We had hot cocoa and Christmas aprons. We just lacked something. I still can’t put my finger on it but it has a lot more to do with family and friends and the feeling of being warm inside than presents and trees and Christmas carols. But in the end, we had each other, and as this experience has proved time and time again, that’s all we really need to make an incredible memory. We started out Christmas Eve by going to our favorite place for dinner, B&T Curry. 

Christmas Eve at B&T

It helps that it’s right down the street from our house, since our car finally decided to give up the ghost earlier that day. The problem was essentially the starter (which I’m now being told is actually the alternator), but there were a boat load of other issues that finally led to its demise. Anyway, we decided to call our Akkeshi friend Corey to meet us for dinner, as we were the only three foreigners left in the general area. Corey was happy to drive the 45 minutes for some tasty curry and naan, and although I accidently got palaak mutton instead of palaak chicken, the meal was delicious. Corin and I headed home and decided to watch the newest version of A Christmas Carol. It’s a CGI version and downright creepy but probably as close to the actual story as you can get (I reread Dicken’s version the week prior). After the movie, we discussed what sort of traditions we’d like to start for our own mini family. I mentioned opening a present on Christmas eve, and Corin was fully on board. We each selected a gift and were happy to find new undershirts (thanks Mom!) and a micro block set of the Kinkaku-ji Temple in Kyoto (thanks Laurel and Colin!).  We ended our first Christmas Eve totally away from home by reading, “The Night Before Christmas.” It’s one tradition I definitely want to continue! Since “Santa wouldn’t come until we were fast asleep,” we turned out the light soon after. I haven’t believed in Santa since, well, ever and I’m sure Corin has been in the know for a while, but it seemed to be the only thing left to do on Christmas Eve.

Keen to our inner five year old selves’ demands, we were wide-awake extra early the next morning. We just couldn’t help ourselves and were up drinking cocoa and opening presents by 7:30. We got many great, thoughtful, beautiful gifts and spent most of the morning playing with and admiring our new toys highly intelligent gadgets and things. We had decided the day before to make pizza for our Christmas lunch/dinner. An Angie-safe pizza was something I hadn’t had since we’d arrived (really missing our BeauJos dates!), so I began readying the gluten free dough around noon. It needed an hour to rise and as I was planning to make BBQ chicken, I needed to whip up some homemade BBQ sauce and pre-sauté some onions.

yum!

By the time everything was baked, topped and baked again, it was nearing 3 o’clock, perfect timing for our late lunch/early dinner. We filled our bellies with the good stuff, Corin saving part of his pizza for later while I devoured mine in almost record time. We spent the rest of the day Skyping our parents and remarking how odd it felt to have to head back to the office in the morning. And that we did, treating the 26^th as any other workday and making the 25^th feel like any other Sunday. Spending Christmas so far from family and that indescribable Christmas spirit wasn’t particularly hard, it was just something I don’t wish to do again. Although I’ll refrain from saying that we’re 100% coming home in July, I will state that I definitely hope to spend next Christmas less than an ocean away from the (rest of the) ones I love.

The epic burn.

I know people complain about the over use of the word "epic" but I do believe this qualifies:

Day 1: Right after it happened.

Day 2: Kinda angry.

Day 3: Looking okay.

Day 4: Skin is not looking normal, so went to the doctor. 

Day 6: You blisters, go away!

So the story behind the burn.

*Disclaimer: Corin feels terrible, absolutely terrible, and in no way do I blame him for what happened. Neither of us knew any better!*

My family has had a tradition of making fleischkuchle every Christmas eve for as long as we've been "in country" (1904). I had told my JTE at Meiki about this tradition and had described the fried meat pies to him. We had a bonenekai planned on the 16th and he asked very nicely if I could make some 'kuchle and bring it to the party. Of course I agreed. So, on Saturday, Corin and I set to work getting the ingredients gathered and got the big to-do started. Fleischkuchle is usually an all-family ordeal and while the women roll the dough and fill and seal the patties, the men stand in the garage with a boiling pot of oil, smoke cigars and fry the 'kuchle. I knew the oil was going to be the tricky part since we only have one sauce pan and it's just not very big, but we determined to just make due. We prepared about 30 meat pies, and started to work frying them. The first few turned out a little raw inside, so we upped the heat and attempted to keep them fully submerged for as long as possible. Both Corin and I had utensils in the pot of oil, a pair of tongs and a slotted spoon, respectively. The tongs Corin was using had one of those metal rings that keeps the tongs closed when they're not in use. He had them closed while moving the 'kuchle around but as soon as he started to remove the tongs from the pot, the ring slipped back and the tongs flung open, throwing oil everywhere. Since I was standing right next to him when it happened, I was first in the line of fire (the wall and floor got some too). I screamed, dropped my spoon and immediately ran cold water over my en fuego hand. But, boiling oil is boiling oil and the burn was set. 

I held cold compresses on the burn for the rest of the day and then headed off to my JTE's house for dinner. He provided a glorious bucket of cold water in which I submerged my hand for the duration of the evening. That night I tried powering through the blazing heat that encompassed the burned area but just couldn't do it, so I ended up sleeping with my hand tucked under a towel wrapped ice pack. By the next morning, it was feeling much better and seemed to be just a minor 1st degree burn. 

The next day, however, bubbly skin started to appear and on Tuesday I decided it was time to see a doctor (after getting scolded by three RN's via Facebook that I'd better). I asked the JTE at Hokuyo (the school I visit once or twice a week) if there were any English speaking doctors in the area. The PE teacher, school nurse, my Meiki JTE's wife whose house we had been at on Saturday and my regular JTE all banded together and found a dermatologist right near my apartment who travels with the hockey team internationally and supposedly spoke English. I got the address, finished my classes for the day and hoped for the best. Corin accompanied me to the clinic, just in case I needed an interpreter (and for moral support). We waited about 20 minutes to get in and, praise Jesus, the man immediately spoke to me in English. It was so nice to be able to fully explain what happened and his face was priceless when I showed him the burn. I have a feeling he was used to seeing much smaller affected areas. He prescribed some anti-inflammatory pills and burn cream, plus advised me to keep it clean and wrapped. I've done my best to follow orders and although apparently exercising makes blisters appear, the burn seems to be healing. I'll head back in on Monday for a follow up, just to make sure everything is looking hunky dory. Until then, I get to be Michael Jackson and wear one white glove all the time. If only it was sparkly...

Thank you so much for all the concern!

UPDATE: Healing burns itch like nothing I have ever felt before. I was awakened in the middle of the night to the most intense form of skin crawling, epidermis tingling itch ever. I struggled for a few minutes to restrain from doing the one thing I wished I could, tear my skin apart, and hoped it would pass. It didn't. When I could stand it no longer, I grabbed my phone and immediately Googled "burn itches severely." Turns out, I'm not alone. Studies have found that 87% of burn victims deal with severe itching during and after the healing process. The increased sensation is caused by the damaged skin becoming overly dry. I had been leaving the wrappings off of my hand at night, just to let it breath a little. Well, I will no longer be doing such a silly thing. The internet mentioned antihistamines and liberal application of burn cream, so I scrambled out of bed and rifled through our pill stash. I found some non-drowsy allergy medicine and figured that would be as close as I could get. I then applied a new wrapping and prayed that I would at least get a few minutes of sleep this night. The antihistamine worked and I fell asleep after only thirty minutes or so of wanting to rip my skin off. Problem solved, lesson learned. My sympathy goes out to all of the real burn victims with extensive skin damage. I have only glimpsed a small part of what they must go through.

Snow! Oh, and that conference thing...

Winter has finally arrived in Hokkaido. We had our first snow at the beginning of December and it has stuck around ever since. Definitely way less snow than us Coloradans and Wyomingites are used to but at least we'll have a white Christmas. On the 8th and 9th of December, the Hokkaido section of JET hosted a Mid Year Skill Development Conference in Sapporo. Corin and I headed out on the 7th, catching the earliest afternoon train we could. I prepared for the often motion-sick inducing ride by drinking catnip infused herbal tea. Yeah, I know, catnip...what?! Contrary to what you might think, it definitely didn't make me run around the train meowing like I was in heat, and actually helped a lot with the motion sickness thing. So it's a little weird, but it worked! I now have a hunch cats that have been pulling the wool over our eyes for centuries on the effects of that stuff...

Let's see what all the hype is about...

We arrived at the JR Inn, a nice little hotel recommended by our friend Corey (a different one) which was close to the main Sapporo Station, shopping and a great little British pub, shortly before 5. Besides the handy location, the biggest plus to the JR was that it was half the price of the hotel where the conference was being held. We started Sapporo off right with dinner at an American style hamburger joint (I had a few fries, grilled veggies and mixed nuts) that the guys raved over. Then we were off to karaoke where I imbibed a little too much in peach sours...hey, it was nomihodai*, I was determined to get my money's worth! The next morning was a little rough but we powered through. Unfortunately, the speaker didn't help much. He was...interesting. We'll leave it at that. 

After soba with the crew for lunch (I had a gigantic bowl of white rice, the first time anyone had ordered just rice at this particular place), we sat through another few hours of a much better quality speaker and the afternoon flew. By 4:00, we were ready for freedom and headed out to find the German Christmas Market and dinner. Apparently there is a prominent German community in Sapporo and each year they open a beautiful German style Christmas market in Odori Park, the biggest in the city. There were brats, kraut mashed potatoes, milled wine, and lots of adorable Christmas bobbles. I had some kraut mashed potatoes to satisfy my plummeting blood sugar, but if we didn't have our minds on some hot curry, and if it had not been below freezing, we may have explored longer. We headed off with our friend Jason to find an Indian food restaurant so that I could have my first full meal of the trip. Jason lead us nearly right to Taj Majal and we basked in the elaborate decor and English speaking maitre d, as well as the extensive menu. When our food arrived, I tucked into the tandoori mix grill. It had tandoori chicken curry, tandoori chicken, tandoori sikh kabob, curry rice and a nice little side salad. Delicious! Although I will stay loyal to our local B&T and declare that it is the best Nepalese food in Japan, I was starving for a real meal and the Indian food at Taj Majal hit the spot. We parted ways with Jason after dinner and did a little shopping, then called it a night. We found ourselves watching Japanese game shows by 9 p.m., whilst in the bustling metropolis of Sapporo...what an exciting couple of early 20-somethings we are!

The next morning broke us out into different sessions concerning Student Motivation (both Corin and I), the Hokkaido English Challenge (me) and teaching at Multiple Schools (Corin). The conference ended with a long presentation on making the tough decision to re-contract. Corin and I are still up in the air so I paid special attention, hoping to gain some insight. Unfortunately, we're still up in the air. The official decision has to be made by February 10, so we've still a little more time, thank goodness. 

We had the 6 o'clock train back to Kushiro so we quickly said our good-byes, grabbed a bite to eat at the pub (delicious salad for me, fish and chips plus a side of nachos for Corin), gathered our luggage from the station lockers and hopped on the train for our 4 hour trip home. In sum, the conference was beneficial but getting together with friends and getting out of our little town for a while were the definite highlights. Christmas in Hokkaido is coming up next!

Christmas 2011

*nomihodai: all you can drink for one set price.