Spring has sprung

Suddenly, it is noticeably lighter in the evenings as we head back to the dormitory to get changed before our evening duties.  You can hear birds singing.  And today I actually saw people out and about in the village of Shintoku (where we go for any supplies on our day off).  It’s like everyone has come out of hibernation (apart from the bears yet – hopefully). 

Our Bulgarian colleague gave us Baba Marta bracelets to celebrate the start of Spring.  As we know from our time in Bansko, you can’t remove the red and white bracelet until you see cherry blossom or a stork which truly makes the arrival of Spring.

In the last week, the daily temperatures have suddenly shot up.  A couple of days the mercury reached plus 3 degrees Celsius and we sweltered in iur heavy uniforms.  We have also had rain twice (although are not assigned rain coats as part of our uniforms as we we were in Bansko).  The heat has not been good for the snow, which first turned very sticky, and then following the rain and a cold night we had absolute sheet ice.  Not a great day to be teaching beginner snowboarding when securing a good edge became very tricky.  I felt so sorry for the little boy I was teaching as he kept falling onto his knees on the solid, packed surface of the green slope – ouch.  Suddenly the beginner hill seemed like a safer place to be and thankfully it still had a little softer snow. 

We have three more weeks of teaching (fingers crossed for less snowboard lessons) but I’m not sure the snow will last that long.  Perhaps we will be back to organising ping pong competitions and trekking (complete with the bear bell and spray).

It is now the time in the season when you start seeing guests returning.  There are some guests who come 5 or 6 times during the season !  Recently Pete has been teaching some more mature, good level skiers (79 and 84) which gives us hope to still be blasting around the mountain at that age.  There are also many old Japanese farmers who come to ski and board in Sahoro through the winter months when they aren’t able to work.  How cool is that?

During our day off today, we took the opportunity to start thinking about our travelling at the end of the season.  The cherry blossom forecast shows it a week earlier than normal, so we should be in Tokyo during the correct time for the Sakura (blossom) and Haneda.  From Hokkaido, we will travel to Tokyo and then south from there – to the warmer weather – woo hoo.  It is exciting to start thinking about seeing more of Japan!