Family antics in the snow

The last time I went skiing with my parents was sometime in the early 90s. My mother is now 70 and my father a little younger.  My mother reckons she has five years of skiing left in her.  I told my Dad that in five years time, we would have to carry a chair with us so we could have a seat while we waited for her to come down the slope.  

As my mother saw an elderly man leading a group of other similarly aged skiers she said she too would like to lead such a group and be in a position of confident leadership. I jested that her leadership would be along the lines of “Everyone, please be careful as the weather is very bad - we are going to wait at the bottom of the slope until it stops snowing!” 

As my father ages, his bladder must be taking its toll and frequent stops need to be made along with disappearances into the trees.  I was on a lift ahead of my parents and all of a sudden I heard a commotion behind me and my mother screeching about something.  Nature apparently had called, and as the urgency increased my father had drawn his knees in together and the tips of his skis got caught in the snow below and as they dug deeper with the forward movement of the lift, they were pulling him off the lift and my mother was desperately trying to hang on to him so that he wouldn’t fall off.   Luckily I did not have to go digging to look for them.  

Rusutsu is a fabulous ski resort in Hokkaido, the northern island of the Japanese archipelago.  It can accommodate up to 3,500 people and even at its highest occupancy, the service delivery is impeccable.  The staff are polite, courteous, helpful and thorough in their attention to detail.  They are dressed immaculately in their uniforms and are always one step ahead in thinking about how to serve the customer in a way that is of least inconvenience to them and of utmost assistance.  There is not one piece of rubbish anywhere....until the other day.... when I noticed a partially eaten bread roll in its plastic packaging sitting on the side table in the lift foyer of our floor.  

An hour later, it was still there as my mother and I were on our way to the onsen (hot spring baths) and it was still there as my parents and I returned later from our evening meal.  There was no garbage bin in the area.  My mother commented on how inconsiderate it was that some guest had left it there.  I said we should take it back to our room and put it in the garbage.  My father said not to touch it because it might be a bomb.  

After we returned to our room, my father said his civic duty was prompting him to go and dispose of the bread roll so he went back out again.  When he returned, I asked him where he had put it.  He said he had gotten rid of it without giving any specifics so I asked him again what exactly he had done with the roll.  He said he had put it in the elevator and had sent it down to the ground floor because he was sure one of the staff would see it and throw it away!  I was aghast.  I told him housekeeping staff would have long gone - it was now 10 pm and the bread roll would be going up and down the lift until the morning.  

My parents are highly intelligent, capable and respectable people but sometimes I do wonder....

The Land of the Rising Sun

Two and a half years since my last visit and two years today since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, I am conscious of a renewed love for my birthplace and a respect and admiration for the spirit of the Japanese people.  

Granted, Tokyo is booming even though Japan is in a recession and struggling with 15 years of deflation.  However, the spirit of possibility is palpable even though the country has suffered a major disaster that has literally left many towns barren and stripped of life.  

As the two year anniversary approaches, NHK, the national television station, has been broadcasting for days now, programs portraying both the hope and despair of people struggling to rebuild a life in northern Japan.  One grandmother has been running an ‘ekiben’ (boxed lunches sold at train stations) business and has been well known for a delicious meal of sea urchin on rice, a local delicacy in the seas off northern Japan.  After the disaster, she lost contact with the fishermen who supplied her with the urchin, and was unable to continue her business.  

She was being interviewed on television saying that it was letters from her supporters who had tasted her lunch boxes that encouraged her to rebuild her business.  Japan has a tradition of rural train stations selling boxed lunches made of local produce and tourists travel from one end of the country specifically to enjoy a train trip and a delicious lunch.  

One might wonder why a story of an old woman makes it onto national TV but there are countless stories like these both uplifting and sad that appear to be creating a fabric of resilience and a sense of community.  A police officer who used to be the chief at one of the police stations near Fukushima regularly makes trips into the contaminated areas which are now off limits to the public and only accessible by police to take photographs of the townscape.  He said it started when he was talking to people who two years on, were still living in evacuation centres who wanted to see what their homes looked like.  He told them he would go and take a photograph and bring it back to show them.  Now he invites requests and visits areas that garner the most interest and takes photos of schools, cherry blossom lined avenues, houses, town squares so that people can stay in touch with their home towns.  

After the disaster, American political philosopher and Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, held a forum inviting 5000 people who had directly experienced the impact of the disaster.  He presented in English which was simultaneously translated so that the audience who had ear pieces could listen to his presentation in Japanese.  The audience commentary was also translated likewise so that he could understand what they were saying.  He facilitated a seamless discussion with these 1000 participants on the ethics and moral dilemmas that residents, emergency services, local services and others had been faced at the time of the disaster in negotiating survival as well as the challenges they currently faced in rebuilding their communities and what learnings they could take from their experiences.  The people in the audience were everyday people, and many of them young - not those in authority or positions of expertise or influence.  Yet, they approached this discussion with the utmost earnestness and seriousness.  They bravely put forth their opinions and feelings, respecting opposing views and ideas from other participants.  Japan has been traditionally known to be a consensus based society where decisions are slow because a consensus needs to be reached before action can be taken.  This has been one of the factors that have hampered the rebuild process of many of these communities affected by the disaster.  Professor Sandel noted in his closing comments how touched he had been by the audience who had come to a point where they posited that perhaps consensus was not what was needed, and was in fact impossible, but what was needed was for decisions to be made after opportunities had been created for people’s voices to be heard and where divergent opinions could be safely expressed and held by the community.  

Incidentally, it is written in Japan’s constitution that she never wage war against another country.  Now what other nation in the world has peace as a mandate?