On Winter

I dislike generalizations, but I'm fairly comfortable with this one: most Japanese people pride themselves on being extremely aware of (mainland) Japan's four seasons. Coworkers remind me of the four seasons. Student compositions on what they want to tell foreigners about Japan often feature the four seasons somehow. I have students named, literally, "four seasons." Beer comes in autumn leaf bedecked cans in October and cherry blossom bedecked cans in March. You cannot find a fan in October, and come April, I probably won't see a kotatsu (heated table) cover for six months. There. Are. Four. Seasons. In. Japan.

Yet, in Ishikawa, it would be polite never to talk about winter.

January and February are when Siberia dumps whatever it has left over on the west coast of Japan. The form of precipitation can change depending on the minute--I have been snowed, rained, hailed, and sleeted on within the space of the fifteen minutes it takes me to walk to school. None of the houses or apartments I've been to have central heating. Most people keep warm via kerosene heaters or heat/ac units, piling on thermal underwear in their own homes to keep costs down. There is no sunlight.

Minnesota got me used to meter-tall piles of snow, dead vegetation, bitter winds, and ice biking. Despite this, NOTHING could have prepared me (or Japan Railways West) for the sheer amount of snow that hit us in early February.

I was coming home from visiting my partner in Gifu one Sunday night. It had been snowing in Gifu prefecture, and there they were big, pretty snowglobe flakes drifting down past the city lights. Sometime between there and Tsuruga--a charming port city in Fukui prefecture--it turned into a snow storm. In Tsuruga, our train stopped.

Our train stopped for almost 36 hours.

It turned out that almost a meter of snow had fallen in just over a day. That weekend dumped so much snow that the tracks were under too much for the train to move forward. We had to wait in the train until JR West's track plows could dig us out, or until another train could get through. For the first time in its history, JR West shut down all its Hokuriku (Northwest Japan) lines for a full day because of snow.

Needless to say, I missed work that Monday. I didn't get back to Komatsu until 5 am Tuesday morning, and went to work a few hours later hating trains and snow and my phone's battery life. I had kept in contact with my school, and they responded like I was sending them secret messages from inside a hostage cell: "are they feeding you??" "I am relieved to know they are treating you well!" "Please don't come to work if it has been too much for you," etc. My poor supervisor might never let me travel again.

My students got a snow day. They studied. Some came to school anyway.

Apart from the train adventure, most of my winter time has been spent finding ways never to leave my apartment, and preferrably, not to move away from the heater or blankets. The computer was farther away than my Kindle (thanks Mom and Dad!), so blogging was clearly far too much effort.

I did my first legitimate grocery shopping trip yesterday, because this weekend was sunny and warm. Until lately, grocery shopping has entailed ice biking and its impossible cousin, slush biking. Between ESS recitations and helping students with studying for their entrance exam English compositions, grocery shopping has been me grabbing what I can as quickly as I can before it gets too cold and dark outside to get home safely--before the ice refreezes. The roads to the stores have been icy and frought with peril, but the little sushi place is close and tasty.

Now that the stores are more accessible by bike--and now that I see the sun once or twice a day, hooray!--it's like a big dark sheet has been lifted from my culinary vision. I realized...I can cook food! It will taste delicious! So now I'm back on my bento kick and dinner planning kick.

My goal? Never get prepared food unless I am with friends.

Wish me luck. I might post a bento recipe or two.