tohoku: finding fresh tracks
weathering winter on a ski trip to japan's lesser explored
Ya-a,
A month ago Tutu and I were back in Japan to carry out the annual tradition that is our extended ski trip. This year we opted out of any repeat visits to past favorites and instead ventured only to new places. It was our first time to Tohoku, the northeastern region of Honshu containing prefectures such as Iwate, Yamagata, Miyagi, and Fukushima. Many may wonder whether Fukushima is even safe to visit following 2011’s tsunami that caused the partial meltdown of the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Fortunately damage was well contained and recovery has long been underway. We quickly discovered that there’s so much more to this area than the disaster that has come to characterize it. Within the same prefecture, albeit far from the coast where the tsunami hit, are many local towns and ski fields lining the Asahi Mountain Range. And because it’s Japan, more than anywhere else in the world, there’s powder. We lucked out big time in this department—many places in Japan are experiencing record highs in snowfall this year. Almost every day was a new opportunity to lay a fresh set of tracks in powder that was perpetually “nipples deep,” as my friend Ben would describe it.
We’ve been finding a lot of enjoyment in the discovery of new places compared to replaying the hits. It’s not that we have a 100% hit rate with each new mountain being better than the last. As the ski resorts get increasingly obscure, there are times where a mountain or an accommodation just isn’t the best we’ve experienced—not necessarily a miss, more of a “That was cool, don’t think we’ll be in any hurry to come back” type of sentiment. And while there’s nothing quite like the discovery of a hidden gem, even the less-than-stellar ‘finds’ turn out to be some of the most memorable experiences for us because there’s always some form of absurdity and redemption along the way. A day trip to what ended up being our least favorite ski resort produced a night of full belly laughs reflecting on it all, characterizing the trip at its very best.
This trip was rejuvenating but I wouldn’t call it relaxing. Parts of it certainly are but in aggregate it’s pretty involved. We’re up early and staying up late to cover everything and more when it comes to work. We’re bouncing around to different resorts, towns, or prefectures which takes a lot of planning ahead of time and varying degrees of effort and resilience on the day itself. And before or after any of these two things is, of course, the skiing. Despite the highly attentive moments of working, traveling, or skiing, there is ample time to sit with one’s thoughts, particularly on the chairlift and later in the onsen. My mind mostly wanders about casually as it is wont to do, trying to soak in these 3 weeks of winter. This presence is not all peaceful, though. I did experience bouts of doubt.
I remember sitting on the chairlift by myself and I reflexively opened Instagram. Funny how negative thoughts tend to bubble up following even the quickest of social media scans. During this particular scroll I saw several different photographers I follow all going to India for this once in a decade festival called Kumbh Mela—the largest religious pilgrimage in the world. For whatever reason I felt my spirits drop and I began to ask myself why. I knew I wasn’t tempted to trade places with any of them. But I did begin to wonder whether I should have felt the temptation. Not necessarily to explore this festival specifically, but to elevate a singular passion such that it unilaterally dictates my direction. I have a demanding day job that I’m lucky enough to enjoy but I also maintain a wide range of interests to varying degrees of seriousness and ability. I’ve grown to see myself as a generalist, both within and outside of work. Most of the time I view this favorably but every so often, particularly when I compare myself to others who’ve found success in a single area, I question whether breadth is holding me back. Is preserving this optionality of many directions missing the opportunity to reach a destination? In the age of the algorithm, I fear that the Renaissance man has been replaced by the aggregation of niche specialists.
Hunkered alone on a chairlift, chin nestled tightly to my chest in a feeble defense against freezing weather and high winds, I begin to question my place and purpose. What am I doing here and where am I going?
In what turned out to be strangely apt timing, I was reading Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, a brilliant nonfiction book on the Arctic North, and he introduces the Thule eskimo term for winter depression called perlerorneq. “It means to feel ‘the weight of life.’ To look ahead to all that must be accomplished and to retreat to the present feeling defeated, weary before starting, a core of anger, a miserable sadness. It is to be ‘sick of life.’” Spending just three weeks of winter in a place as pleasant as Japan, I certainly didn’t feel the full extent of what the Thule eskimos describe, but I could recognize its distant ripples. The start of the year always feels promising. It’s the season of celebrations and resolutions. But as pristine winter whites slowly fade to February greys, the sheen of the new year’s potential wears off. What’s left is the weight of reckoning and questioning. Often experienced over a prolonged dull of darkness, but sometimes in an acute storm of ripping winds, biting cold, stings of sleet, and dense layers of fog.
My reward for weathering such storms was skiing through the resulting powder. Where you can throw yourself forward into the unknown with near reckless abandon because it’s smooth while riding and entirely forgiving in the event of a fall. Deeper turns produce an even stronger burn in the legs but all tracks lead to the place that brings you right back up to find a fresh new path. The original luster of potential’s pure pleasure may have been lost, but dedicated and disciplined pursuit is the gradual oxidation that forms the patina. In the same book, Lopez heralds polar bears as our planet’s greatest explorers rhapsodizing, “The bear is a great wanderer not solely because it travels far, but because it travels with curiosity, and tirelessly.”
Tutu doesn’t just accept this exploration. She embraces and enables it, pushing the two of us further than I could have ever gone alone. No other trip epitomizes the confluence of so many of our interests. It’s why these thoughts of competing passions can feel so acute and overwhelming at times. Going up alone I felt the doubts. Skiing down together, suddenly my inner compass was recalibrated and reinforced, pointing towards an unknown destination but in a direction I trust to be true. All in a way that reminds me we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously. Japan’s obscure and often rundown ski resorts teach me that the best things aren’t flawless. They’re lived.
fresh rolls 29 playlist (apple music)
Love these photos 🥶