SEPTEMBER 05: Japan - Rebirth on the northern island
Rebirth on the northern island
I’ve seen moondrops. They fell the first night. They’re falling now as I pack. It was different the first night. Green light glowing on the hill. A pint of Japanese whiskey that tasted like rum. Florescent lights pouring through a sluice in the trees. Four-foot snow drifts. Half-inch flakes. Twenty people on the mountain. We didn’t know what was going on, but it was piling up around us.
It’s hard not to see them when I close my eyes. We’re on a bus now.. Soon the airport, then the runway, Tokyo. We fly over the peaks, the Sea of Japan. There’s a fleet of fishing boats headed for Sapporo City. They navigate the shoals in a narrow V, white breakers roll from their bows. They’re making good time. There’s another storm rolling in tonight.
***
Shunsuke curls the fingers of his right hand when he speaks. When he describes skiing in Hokkaido, he makes fists like he’s holding ski poles. He seems uncomfortable. He nods and stares at the blank T.V.
We’re sitting in his apartment near the Niseko train station. The neighborhood is rundown, not like the resort five miles up the road. The apartment sits thirty feet on the wrong side of the tracks. Shunsuke and our translator, Ian, recline on a tiny couch. I’m on a wheeled office chair. The apartment is the size of a six toll booths. There’s two pairs of skis by the front door, a skateboard in the hall, a kettle on the kerosene heater, two TVs, five VCRs, and six remote controls. When I ask Ian what the shiny cube-like device on the coffee table is, he answers, “That’s his phone.”
***
We’ve been in Niseko eight days now. We’ve been skiing with Shunsuke for four. He speaks in paragraphs. It seems he’s been waiting to explain some things for a long time. His Japanese is sudden and jumpy as he describes what it’s like to be a ski bum in Japan. Hatsuyuki. Suberi. Not easy. Young men are expected to contribute to society, follow the straight and narrow. Self-serving lifestyles are something of a disgrace.
Shunsuke lived the other life once. Tokyo, computers, money, an apartment, a wife. It’s hard to believe, looking around his apartment. It’s like he’s speaking of another person when he talks about the past. In a way, he is.
***
It’s the snow that defines Japan’s northernmost island. It skies in at night when you’re sleeping. It falls all day. It whitewashes the town, the mountains, lift towers. The locals say it comes from Siberia. Freezing air cycles across the Siberian plains, then hits the moist Sea of Japan. Another Russian front. The phenomenon has made Niseko Ski Resort one of the snowiest in the world at 551 inches a year. Averaging a feathery four percent water content, it seems like more.
In the 13 days we ski here, eight feet falls.
***
We watch it come down from the apartment Ian found for us. It blankets the trees, cars, cliffs, road. There’s snow spewing from the neighbor’s blower, blocking our van, stacked three feet high on the windshield. It’s trailing the shuttle bus, covering the patrol shack, quieting the skiers.
***
The snow is in my mouth the first night we ski Niseko. The funniest things happen in Japan. Massive fluorescent lights illuminate the mountain like a scoreboard. Speakers blast American hip-hop. I don’t recognize the tunes. Most of the skiers are teenagers. Niseko is fast becoming the most popular resort in Japan. The lifts run from nine to nine.
We find a wooded bowl off the top of the quad. The lights make the slope green. Visibility is decent. There are runs like this all along Mt. Annapuri. The mountain hosts three interconnected resorts—Annapuri, Higashiyama, and Hirafu—for an average of 3,100 vertical feet of skiing over 2,200 acres. Then there’s the 15 square miles of backcountry beyond the boundaries.
Three tracks lead to the 600-foot face below. There’s a draw at the bottom. If the face slid, it could be a terrain trap. But the maritime snowpack here seems solid. We decide to ski it and my skis lift as I pick up speed. I can hear the snow hiss and see a faint cloud of green following Dave down the hill. The scene is like a recurring ski dream I have every August. In it, I fly off a jump and keep going up and up.
I see the draw below. I split two birches and follow a sluice toward it. Then down, down. The turns keep coming and I think I must have missed it. Then there it is—whoomp—I’m across and climbing up the other side.
***
There’s a cat track above the draw. Dave’s standing on it. His body is white and green. There’s a light tower behind him. I’m honestly wondering if this is real. The whiskey was strong. I could’ve nodded off on the couch. But it’s cold and I feel melted snow dripping down my neck. Dave moves slowly. It’s spooky. It’s like we’re underwater. You can’t hear the hip-hop down here. There are no skiers. Just the muffled sound of snow on snow.
***
Ian visits every night after skiing. He collars a Sapporo from the fridge and watches us play backgammon. He’s from Scotland. It seems Niseko is a haven for snowbirds like him. He’s lived here since he quit his job three years ago teaching English in Hiroshima. He met his Japanese wife in the Hirafu Chalet 200 feet up the road.
One of Ian’s first jobs in the valley was to construct the apartment we’re staying in. His boss is local, he says, one of the old ones. His name is Kaya. The entire building, including the benches, tables, and counters are hand-hewn. There are pegs over the heaters for ski boots and clothes. There are some funny angles in the roof. Kaya wears a customary happi jacket when he works, Ian says. It’s a tradition among Japanese woodworkers. Tradition is everything here, he adds.
***
The trees are part of the story too. They surround the house, line the edge of the road, frame the trails. They’re mostly silver birch. Hoary bark coils around the trunks. Notches split the trees in two, then two again. Gnarled branches hold the snow.
The best skiing is in the trees. It’s old growth on the mountain, so they’re spaced far apart. When we meet our guides the next day—Shunsuke, Nabe, and Nashi—they head straight for a stand of birch. It’s impossible to follow them. We can’t see them through the clouds of snow. All we can do is look for the trenches they leave.
***
The components of Shunsuke’s life are strewn about his apartment. Video-editing software. Digital cameras. Stacks of manuals. Three years ago, he and Nabe produced the most popular ski movie in Japan: Rowe II. It followed on the heels of another blockbuster, Rowe I. They are cinematic films, shot mostly in Japan, but also in locales like New Zealand and Alaska. There’s no question where the filmmakers hail from. Almost every shot is of unfathomably deep powder.
The name Rowe comes from the ancient Ainu civilization that settled Hokkaido. They’re the island’s equivalent of Native Americans—conquered and cast out from Japanese society. The Japanese look down on most things foreign. They are a proud people. The old generation covets tradition, convention, language, religion, culture. Hardly anyone speaks fluent English. Visiting the hospital is a sign of weakness. There is no divorce.
***
Shunsuke knows what it’s like to buck tradition. And to be an outsider. When he was growing up, he hiked and skied the mountains near his house while his friends raced at the ski hill. When his friends received new gear on holidays, Shunsuke got old Caber boots and hot pink Blizzards.
It is that way in the Ito family. End over means. Shunsuke tells us about his grandfather. When a storm rolls through, he hikes the hill behind his house with a pair of bamboo skis. He doesn’t know how to turn, Shunsuke says, so the old man bombs straight back to the house. He says he likes to look at the lines in the snow while eating his breakfast.
***
There’s something surreal about the town of Niseko. The snow falling. The 6,000 foot volcano across the valley. Log taverns, sushi bars. Silver trees. Clapboard farmhouses with western log barns. Tiny saloons with men standing around a fire. Baskets of sake cups. Door handles made of driftwood. Crimson tuna fillets. Sushi chefs turning their hands in the air, using wooden knives so as not to spoil the fish.
***
We saw two oceans from the top of a mountain yesterday. The Sea of Japan on one side. The Pacific on the other. They looked about the same. Big, deep, blue. Sparkling waves. I read that they tested Zero fighter planes up here. They were disappearing over Siberia during WWII and no one knew why. They flew them over Hokkaido because the weather was similar to northern Russia. They discovered an engine part was freezing after a dozen planes went down. Silver Zeros falling from the sky. Last year a man dragged out a wing and hung it in his bar.