So now I have been in Japan for about 7 months. It is amazing how quick life changes. Sometimes I feel like just yesterday I was pushing my nose to the plastic window pane of a 747 watching the Denver lights twinkle in the distance. At other times my other life appears as a distant dream that gives me a smile and a twinkle to my eye when I think about it. I have just experienced skiing for the first time in my prefecture. I was able to go with my town and boarded a bus last Saturday at 5:30 in the morning with 20 or so other members of the Naraha town district. There were children and adults all there freezing in the middle of a freezing parking lot at 5:30. We arrived at the ski resort some 3 hours later and by the time everybody piled off the bus the environment had turned to the familiar winter scene. It was dumping snow! It was cold and a little windy and I was glad to have many warm layers on. Before everyone got on the slopes we all warmed up together. We touched our toes and then wiggled our hips and did all this in ski boots and full wear with 30 mph winds blowing snow. I loved it! It soon became apparent to me that I was one of the only ones in this group of people who had skied frequently before and so the day started off with me teaching lessons to some cute little kids in Japanese. After some time of this my friend Kosei suggested that I strike off on my own and explore Adatara mountain. Kosei was a pretty good skier himself having done so a lot in college and so I tallied forth and picked a random lift which I made out to be "Green Lift" in Japanese characters. Somehow the town had gotten my size right perfectly. The ski's that I rented were 1980's Rossignols, but I was happy and powder hungry. The mountain was quite small pretty comparable to Abasin in Colorado, but had some nice terrain on it and the snow was perfect. After taking a few runs I had the feeling that lunch time was growing near and so I struck out for the hut where the Naraha Town group was meeting for lunch. This was one of the highlights of the day. I took my ski's off and and opened the hut door and huge ramen bowls and steaming plates of curry were all around me. It was time to eat! I put my 600 or so yen into the vending machine (6$) chose what I thought looked good and what I could kind of read and then my ticket popped out and I waited in line. The cooks were cooking bowls of noodles in giant pots that could have been small hot tubs and the steam tried to warm the whole room as people passed in and out into the cold outside blizzard. My bowl finally came and the bowl was seriously the size of my head or maybe even larger and full of steamy noodles. I ate it right up slurping along with everybody else and my friend Kosei handed me a beer as well. It was a celebration of steam! Soon lunch was finished and Kosei who had been teaching lessons for the morning wanted to ski with me and I was itching to see what the mountain had to offer. We piled on our gear and headed for the Gondola. The mountain was small, but they did have a Gondola to the top more advanced portion of the mountain. A girl joined our group as well and her name was Hidoko.

The cold air bit our face as we arrived at the summit. The snow was deep and no one was on the mountain. There were some people, but powder was everywhere. Kosei was a pretty good skier as well as Hidoko and we all got our share of powder on our ski clothes by the end of the run, which is a SPO (Successful Powder Objective) Soon the day was over as the road back home was predicted to be very snowy indeed and indeed it was. I caught up on sleep on the way back as did everybody else and so gladly lost track of time, but it did take us some 5 hours to return to Naraha and when we arrived some sparkling snow had greeted even our town.

It is amazing how you start start talking about one thing and you go on about a complete side story. Anyway, yes life has changed indeed and Japan as the rest of world continues to change naturally.