Ohayo. Ohayo. New Jersey.

March 1^st was the official graduation date for all public high schools in Hokkaido.  I put on my suit and made my way to the high school at my usual time, on a Sunday morning…wasn’t entirely thrilled about that, but I knew students would be looking for me.  Everyone’s in their suits, even the PE teachers, and the female graduating homeroom teachers don their regal kimonos.  It’s a big deal.  We make our way into the gym and I really have no idea what to expect, except I know that there’ll be speeches and I won’t understand them.  I was certainly right about the speeches.  They were there, and there were several of them, and I didn’t understand them.  There was also a LOT of bowing—bowing to flags, bowing to the audience, bowing to the teachers, and bowing to the special guests.  And this formal regimentation did not go by quickly. 

I have to say though, that I did enjoy watching the students come up to get their diplomas.  It was like clockwork.  Your name was called.  You walked to the center of the stage and bowed.  You received your diploma.  You stepped back.  Another name was called.  That other person joins you.  Then, both of you bow.  You leave the stage and the other person steps forward to receive his diploma… so on and so forth.  The students here don’t wear special graduation gowns or uniforms.  They just wear their standard uniform plus some special graduation brooch of sorts.  Following the speeches and presentations of unknown awards came my favorite part—the singing!  My schools are big on singing here.  First they sang their catchy school anthem.  Then they sang some poppy song that everyone seemed to know.  And then the tears began!  What a contrast to all the dry ceremony that preceded this!  Each homeroom class made their way to the center of the gym and faced the audience of their peers and their parents.  The classroom speaker would shout out a line of thanks then the class would bow and make their triumphant way out of the gym. 

It’s not over just yet.  Each class makes its way to their homeroom for their final “class.”  Students are given an opportunity to share something with the class with their parents looking on.  It’s all very emotional.  These kids have been in the same class together with the same primary teacher for three years.  And with the amount of time they spend at school each day, it’s no wonder many of them get a little choked up.  Even the big burly male teachers would start crying.  It’s certainly refreshing to see this in a society that tends to hide emotions.  I admire the homeroom system they’ve got here.  The students and their teacher develop a very unique relationship that is very different from the teacher-student relationships of back in the day when I was in high school (although not the kind that ends up as a Lifetime television movie…).  Granted, it would suck to have a terrible homeroom teacher.  But it seems that every homeroom class I’ve witnessed here has a truly genuine mutual affinity between the students and the teacher.

I am going to miss this group of kids.  They were very outgoing and would come and visit me in the teachers’ office.  Yeah, they slept and talked through classes every once in a while, but they were still loads of fun.  I liked them, and they liked me.  I could certainly tell of the latter as I spent half an hour posing with students for pictures.  Since it was a commercial high school, most of these students are entering the workforce come the start of the new business year in April rather than entering college.  One student is working for the main airport in Chitose, another working for a gas company, and one other that’ll work at a prison in Sapporo.  The whole process of how they get one job over another is a mystery to me…although it probably involves some testing like most things here in Japan.  おめでとうand good luck!

This past weekend we held the annual Queens of the Drift Ice event out in Tokoro and Abashiri.  If you didn’t know, the northern and eastern coasts of Hokkaido are famous for the drift ice phenomenon that occurs at this time of year.  Tons of Asian tourists from Korea, China, and Taiwan make their way to our little cities to check out the fantastic 流氷 (pronounced ryu-hyo…it’s tricky because you have to flick the ‘r’ while still producing the ‘y’ sound in the back of your mouth).  Back in Alaska, I was used to seeing frozen ocean, but the ice didn’t move so much with the currents.  Here in Hokkaido, the ice can come and go over the course of a night, so there’s always some mystery as to whether it’ll be there the next day or not.  Many of the businesses go drift ice crazy this time of year producing all sorts of related marketable items ranging from blue drift ice beer to drift ice curry (dyed blue with white drift ice scallops floating around). 

We packed our epic weekend with myriad winter activities.  Who knew that snowmachining (“snowmobiling” to all you other people) could be so much fun?  Being from Alaska, it’s rather shocking that I’ve never been snowmachining (although the culture around it is a bit of a turn off, but I digress).  I expected us to be riding tandem but I started getting a little giddy when I saw individual machines lined up for us.  After a quick tutorial (“this is brake”—“this is go”), they had us make a lap around a track.  Then a guide broke off and we followed suit across a frozen lake.  Man alive!  It was a blast.  I did get a little headache from the fumes but flying across the powdery snow was exhilarating.  We certainly pulled in our machismo quotient for the weekend.  After our butch jaunt out on the frozen lake we embarked to a small soba shop nestled in the woods of a quiet mountain.  This place had so much zen about it that it was the perfect foil to our previous noisy adventure.  Speaking of zen and such, Hokkaido is a relatively new settlement compared to the rest of Japan and doesn’t have the ancient temples and shrines that are primary hallmarks of serenity in Japan.  Instead, Hokkaido offers it’s rugged and natural beauty to induce the same wonder.  Out here in the more remote parts of the island, all that beauty isn’t in short supply. Later, as we took a chair lift up the local ski hill, the weather couldn’t have been better and we could see for miles—frozen lakes, small forests, distant mountains, and then the ocean.

Following our short play time on the Abashiri ski-jō we set off for the main event of our weekend: the Abashiri Ice-Breaker Drift Ice Cruise.  We were taking the sunset cruise (how romantic!) and were herded on to the boat with the throngs of tourists…although, per usual, I couldn’t help but run into some Japanese folks I knew.  After breaking several rules (standing on the smoke stack, standing on benches, poking at strangers with sticks…) before the comprehendible (ie: English) announcements came on, we were off into the icy sea.  Oh, and I have to mention that the entire time we were out at sea, there was always something on over the loud speakers.  It was either an announcer’s voice or some grainy enka music.  The peaceful and quiet icy ocean, and then here comes the humans, on their loud boat, piddling through the ice.  We had an interesting discussion about how the Japanese seem to have an aversion to silence (with the exception of office settings, because as I type this, my clickity clack on the key board is the prevailing noise).  The boat tour is a good example, but also if you visit homes there’s always a tv on, or if you go skiing, that same grainy enka music is blasted from speakers on the lifts.  Ok, let’s back away from that tangent before I make dig myself further into the grandiose generalizations hole.  It was remarkable to cut through all the ice on the boat and watch huge sheets of ice break apart.  It was a bit like watching plate tectonics in action.  Needless to say, it certainly satisfied my taste for destruction (I used to take small sheets of ice when I was young and smash them on my head because it sounded like glass.  The things we do for fun in Alaska…).  The views were glorious and the skies amazing.  Two mountains made an appearance for us, one of which—Shari-dake—a couple friends and I will be climbing come summer. 

 All that time in the ocean surrounded by drift ice made us all a bit chilly, so once we docked, we high-tailed it to an onsen.  I could go on for hours about onsens and how fantastic they are, but I’ll spare you.  It’s just a shame we don’t have them back home…so relaxing!  Post-onsen, we got our grub on at my favorite restaurant in Abashiri—Bistarai.  I may have mentioned this Nepalese gem previously, but it bears repeating.  There were various naan, curries (made spicy just for us!), Nepalese-d fried rice and stir fry noodles, chickpea samosas, and lassi for miles.  It was quite the royal feast to cap off such a Queen-y event.

A kingdom of gigantic snow sculptures, millions of snowmen (even a young Calvin would be proud of), and smoking enclosures made completely of ice…otherwise known as Sapporo during its famed Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) was quite the sight to behold.  It’s a “must do at least once” if you are in Hokkaido.  Coming from a place where we have ice and snow sculptures of our own (Iced Geodesic Living Options), I’ve seen the run-of-the-mill sculptures, however these were of a gigantic scale and could stand to impress even the seasoned folks.  My fave was a life size replica of Seoul’s Namdaemun (Northern Gate) that was built by the Japanese military (can’t you feel the irony?).  I even got to see some of Japan’s Olympic gold medalists as they stood in front of their giant snow replicas.  While snow is cool, it isn’t as cool as ice (haha).  Sapporo’s red-light district, Susukino, was lined with ice sculptures.  The polarity between families looking at wholesome sculptures and the seedy secretary bars only added to the unique atmosphere of the festival.  Sapporo certainly doesn’t play down its dark underbelly during the festival as I was asked several times if I wanted to come on in from the cold…unfortunately for me, bleached blonde hair and girls in nurses outfits aren’t quite my thing.

Just prior to this snow and ice extravaganza, a few friends and I made an excursion out to Jozenkei just south of the city.  It’s a touristy onsen town nestled in the mountains.  When we went, there weren’t as many tourists as I expected and the streets were mostly empty.  We found a lovely hotel onsen and soaked for an hour overlooking the snowy mountains.  Certainly doesn’t get better than that.  I found the most charming part of the town to be its random outdoor footbath.  It was a small gazebo-like enclosure with benches and a small natural onsen spring.  Everything was covered in snow and beautiful doesn’t quite sum up its character.

Back in Sapporo, the nightlife didn’t fail to impress, as always.  Callie had her Sparking (!) Hip Hop performance at a small theater in Susukino.  The Gaijin crowd was there to represent, in full force, and we were a bit of a running joke throughout the night.  Some of the acts were surprisingly good and made me miss the good ole Repertory Dance Group days of college-dom.  Being as popular as I am, I met up with some other folks from another part of the island after the dance performance and we struck out to get our karaoke on.  And that we certainly did.  Even after that, at around 3 in the morning, with beer in hand (so fashionable here in Japan) we toted on over to a big arcade and tried our hand at some taiko drumming, UFO Catcher, and group Mario Kart racing.  We were super cool and I know you’re jealous.

*As a preface to this post, I actually wrote this back in January when it really was cold.  It’s late March now and the long thaw is starting.  I’m real good at keeping this up to date, btw.*

Although, it’s not quite as cold as it is back in Alaska, which happens to be everyone’s favorite question to ask me.  It’s certainly cold enough though, and given that they don’t have central heating here, it can certainly feel colder than home.  I do have two kerosene heaters strategically placed in my house, AND they vent outside so I can keep them on for extended periods without becoming headlines in the news.  This is good news given that I’ve been told that I live in the coldest part of town.  Although, the cold isn’t so bad so long as it’s accompanied by a bunch of snow, which it thankfully is.  Hokkaido snow certainly lives up to its fabled reputation as the best powder in the world, as I discovered snowboarding the other week.  It also isn’t so bad to shovel since it’s so light.  We’ve got what’s considered the best little ski hill in the area, but I have yet to experience it.  The close-by onsen should be an added incentive.  How perfect would a day of skiing/boarding be when it is followed by a nice warm soak in the onsen?  Additionally, my town has a regulation size speed skating rink that you can use at certain times for whatever.  Looks like I have the opportunity to get my skating legs back.

I’ve got to mention how the schools don’t have central heating either.  The hallways are FRIGID.  You have to run from one class to the other or else your extremities will fall off.  However, once you get into a classroom, they turn into balmy saunas.  I think their heaters only have two settings, on or off, so they have to creatively ventilate their rooms by opening strategic windows and doors and timing it so that the proximal students don’t freeze from the intruding cold air.  It can be quite the production.  I’ve found it wise to wear layers.