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....
No comments:
Post a Comment