The frazzle continues
After swearing that I wasn’t going to do anything on Tuesday
night, I yet again found myself driving into Honjo to help another ALT acquire
discount shinkansen tickets.
Fortunately the lovely lady at the booth didn’t speak in Akita-ben so my duties
as translator weren’t too trying.
My efforts were rewarded with a dinner of chili and rice
and Christmas mince pies for dessert – I am beginning to envy all of the ALTs
that are going home for Christmas – the thought of roasts and puddings is
making my mouth water even as I type this.
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| My masterpiece |
Wednesday at the primary school saw me confusing the 6th
graders as until now they had known the number 30 as saati and 13 as saatiin and
all of a sudden this gaijin comes in
and starts throwing weird ‘th’ sounds at them…
After school I was invited to join the cooking club where we
decorated cakes with icing, cream, fruit etc. The cooking teacher made cups of
tea for us to enjoy with our cake so it was a nice chilled out finish to the
day.
Friday 16th December
Don’t ever joke about how long it will take you to get anywhere in Akita – it will come back and bite you. Friday saw a layer of white covering most of Konoura and large flakes of snow were falling as I walked to school. The snow continued throughout the day and so contrary to prior snow days – it was still white come home time. This meant that driving around Akita city to suss second hand ski gear took much longer than anticipated – may have muttered something about never driving in this stupid city ever again…
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| Ikawa park |
It will however, take more than a little snow to discourage
a bunch of gaijin from seeing the new Star Wars film at the movies.
Not overly keen on driving back late at night in the snow I
crashed at Cari and Josh’s in the city and accompanied Cari to Isabel’s house
the next day. With Bex in tow as well Isabel took us for a wander around her
local park, where we marveled at the pristine white snow before running
through it and destroying the peace. So many JETs (and teachers for that
matter) have warned us about how miserable and cold winter here can be. Now I
am aware that this barely the start of winter, and we should expect the
temperature to drop another 10 degrees or so (we’ve had some lovely crisp days
of 0 degrees so far) but I feel that, provided you have the right clothes and
are prepared, winter can be amazing. Like life – it’s what you make it I guess.
Back to Cari and Josh’s for a dinner of curry udon followed
by sake and then we all cringed a little as we set our alarms for 5.30am.
Sunday 18th December
The first ski run of the season.
Layered up and half asleep we loaded into the car and headed
to Tazawako. As the weather wasn’t fantastic only one of the ski lifts was
open. However once I got to the top of said lift – I saw the view that everyone
has raved about. The ski area looked over lake Tazawa, surrounded by snow
covered hills.
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| View from the top of the run (while it lasted) |
The weather packed in after lunch and we went from a view of
the lake, to barely being able to see 2m in
front of us. After what we decided was the most disconcerting run of our lives Cari and I called it a day and we met the guys (Josh and Mengkin, both of whom were in the more advanced league of skiing) back at the lodge for lunch.
Face planting in the snow, losing your skis and falling over
infront of everyone in the queue for the chair lift sure takes it out of you.
We descended on one of the local onsens to rest our weary
bones in the spring water. The outdoor pools still had piles of snow around the
place and some of the children were running around making mini snow men next to
the baths.
After another fairly eventful weekend I am well and truly
ready for school to be done for the year. One more week.
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