ANOTHER SEASON PASSES...

Welcome to the end of April! That time of year where the sun is shining, the snow is finally melting and university students are getting drunk every day of the week for shinkan kai「新歓会」(new student party) for university circles and clubs. It is also that adjustment period where you head is still trying to brush away the dreamy clouds that have rolled in during the long spring holidays. It’s indeed a tough month. It’s a fantastic thing that the alcohol is there to assist you with getting through. Nothing better than a Sapporo Classic 「札幌クラシック」alongside your new fellow university comrades as you drink and try to forget the piles of academic papers piling up on your ‘to read’ list. Family, this is ‘irony’ okay?

During the spring holidays I once again found myself in Nagano prefecture in Hakuba – the village huddled amongst the Japanese Alps and covered with that amazing Japanese powder snow that has created an Australian, Kiwi infestation that worsens every passing year from my personal observation. For those of us who do not know, Hakuba is located about 5 hours west of Tokyo inland. Nagano was also host to 1988’s winter Olympics, and its presence can be remembered by the large ski jump stadium which has a tall presence in the small town. Littered with 11 ski resorts across the valley, many of which easily accessible within 20 minutes from the town centre it is no wonder that those southerners have come to call the place the perfect summer escape.

This season in Hakuba was my 4th, my first 2 seasons as part of the time I spent on my working holiday visa in Japan. However now a student in Hokkaido, Japan, I am limited to just over a month in the time I am able to work during my break.

My ski resort was called Tsugaike Kogen. The highest resort in the valley, and I like to claim which has the best snowfall but I may meet some arguments there.

After spending 3 nights in Tokyo with Tony, a fellow Aussie friend I met in Tsugaike in my 2nd year I headed off to Tsugaike from the Shinjuku Bus Terminal, which did not exist in my second year… but not before some misadventures which included mistaking my transfer station from Narita airport and having to walk over 6km with a snowboard and suitcase at 1am in the morning. Yet seeing Tony with his own new Tokyo apartment (he now works full time in Tokyo, and is NOT an English teacher) made it all worth it. Additionally I met up with Aki-chan who was also a friend from my 2nd year and enjoyed the typical and compulsory for any Tokyo stay - visit to Jimbocho shopping street.

For those who do not know, and those who care: for all your snowboarding needs and slightly more affordable than your local Patagonia or North Face store (or Murazaki Sports) I recommend a visit to Jimbocho. Easily accessible on the Tokyo metro with the Shinjuku Line, Hanzon Line or Chuo Line… it really depends where you are. You should probably just consult a train application for that (I tend to just rely on Google maps, but this obviously is not the smartest way as we can see from my error from Narita airport).

Jimbocho is famous for its antique book shops (which you will meet first as you progress along the street from the station) and then for its music shops (you will see secondly before finally meeting all the snow sport shops). During winter the shops are loaded with everything you need for boarding or skiing, down to complete waxing kits to help vamp up some speed on the slopes. In the warmer months after everything is sold off in the end of season sales in April, many of the stores become skate shops where the staff wearing their hats backwards absently flick their kendama balls into the air before catching them like pros each time on their sticks. If you don’t know what a kendama is now that sentence sounds slightly… well.

So back to Tsugaike, this year was absolutely amazing. The snow was bs (after I came of course) but I was fortunate to get powder in late March right before I flew back to Hokkaido. It was enough to give me a small taster of that incredible feeling of floating among the trees of the DBD (double black diamond) run and remind me how unfortunate I am to be a university student and miss the best powder of the season. Yet the people I met this year are such a unique group of mates that I know I’ll definitely be seeing time and time again.

Sometimes you meet people in life that just shake up everything you thought you knew up and take you out of this gutter that you didn’t even realise you fell into. They can also remind you of what is really important to you, something that one can easily forget when their head is stuck in essays full of words claiming to be English and working between classes to pay for the yakisoba to put on the table (Cheap, tasty and easy to cook!)

It is kind of really obvious but we do forget it when we try to be all majime「まじめ」or serious with our studies. You don’t need to feel guilty if you want a break.

In fact stepping back enables you to come back with this renewed motivation because somehow in the process of studying you can actually forget what purpose you were studying for to start with. So it is good to be reminded of what is important in your life and what you are aiming for. The same goes for working: why are we working? Do we have something we want to gain other than money alone from our position? Are we just working, unhappy, just to fulfil our capitalistic needs and give our hours to ‘the man’ to pay the rent and buy those beers.

Even the shit times in life are easy to get through if you have something waiting at the other side.

Working all spring at a ski resort has never been just a job for me. I go there year after year to see those same familiar faces who return, to be shocked when I realise I can actually speak with everyone slightly better than the year before and feel refreshed working alongside like-minded people. Those people, especially the returnee staff and those who come to Japan on working holiday visas are pretty damn unique. Stuck on a mountain for several months surrounded by piles of snow with the closest convenience store a 20 minute hike down the slope is not for everyone. Nor is the communal living, the poor staff dinner menu (bong water fish) or the mould eaten shower room cubbies (I wonder if they fix the hole in the bathroom floor for next year…)

The people who go to this kind of place do it for the people (well of course the free lift pass is probably a big contribution). It’s being able to have that community and that adrenaline rush of flying down the mountain together, having someone cheering when you land that 360 over the park kicker (I’m yet to land a 180 properly however…)

Seasonal work always has an end in sight. Perhaps this is why many seem to cherish the time they have, for it is transient. If you knew you would die tomorrow, you wouldn’t live the same way you are living now would you? I think it is good to be reminded of the impermanence of our lives sometimes, for it makes us value them all the more.

This season round I took time to personally speak to a few of the characters that I met and do a couple small interviews that I will later use on a project study for university. Hopefully it will later be added to and become a graduation thesis.

And characters; there certainly was a lot of them. Yakuza family connections guy in the kitchen, a pot dealer who travels back home to Kanasai on days off to get his fresh stash, a retired man who lost his company and savings trying to start up his van design company in Amsterdam, another elderly man who speaks about 5 languages fluently and worked illegally in America for 10 years, rafting instructor, tour guides, expat chief, engineering graduate photographer, temporary ski bums, for-the-time-being-travelling-long-term and people who have been following different seasonal work for years and not having a physical location to call ‘home’.

I don’t think most can claim to have such a colourful collection of workmates.

Damn it was hard saying good bye.

Yet, after returning back to Sapporo to sign for my final scholarship payment a week before ski resort work was due to finish I felt restless sitting in my apartment, just over two weeks of spring break left. Especially since my friends were soon heading to Tokyo after a season in the mountains.

So not even a week back in my city, one day I woke up went to Daiso and brought myself a pack of 3 oil markers and a large blank note pad. That next morning I woke at 6am and took one marker, inking the kanji 「函館の方へ」(Towards Hakodate) on my note pad. Walking towards the entrance of the highway I held my sign up and smiled at the cars that passed by, the people inside laughing at me with faces almost squished against their window glass.

And there I started my 3 day adventure of roughly 1,200km from

Sapporo city to Tokyo: the heart of Japan.