Category: Blog

Winter

Jennifer Roche sat at her desk and stared out the window. The snowy deluge showed no sign of stopping. Scores of thick clumps fell in an endless barrage, covering everything under the sky in a bulging carpet of white. 

She expected to hear at any moment that school was closed, that she was being sent home, or any kind of response to the act of God unfolding outside. “There was no such announcement,” said Jennifer, “that was just kind of what every day was like for the rest of winter.” 

Mountains surround Jōetsu on three sides. In winter, they block Siberian squalls from the west, directing their moisture back up into the sky and down onto the city. The result is a disturbing amount of snow. In January alone, Jōetsu receives an average of four meters of powder – that’s almost two Shaquiel O’Neil’s. 

“The most surprising thing was hearing that that winter was normal,” said Jen who, like me, experienced her first apocalyptic Jōetsu snowfall in 2022. By all accounts, that year’s bombardment was mild; although the city’s bar for “mild snowfall” is still far higher than most places on earth.

The previous winter, however, was a different story. 

Takuma Kobayashi, a Jōetsu resident of some 30 years, witnessed the winter of 2020/21. He recalled, “on the big road outside my house the snowplow couldn’t come for one week, you couldn’t see anything. (…) Tsune (our mutual friend) came to pick me up from Kakizaki. It’s usually a 30 minute drive but it took him three hours. His landcruiser got stuck in the Aoki parking lot and many other cars were stuck on the road.” 

In January 2021, the city designed to weather two Shaq’s-worth of snow per-month ground to a halt after 3 meters of powder fell in one night. Residents couldn’t access roads and some could barely leave their homes. According to local news, four people died and 33 were injured. 

In past winters, before the invention of snowplows, Jōetsu’s economy survived this recurring apocalypse thanks to a network of covered walkways called Gangi Dori. These coverings, many of them over a century old, still line the city centers of Naoetsu and Takada. Countryside folk bereft of this infrastructure had to make do by other means: they tunneled between buildings like moles. 

In those days, a handful of people looked upon Jōetsu’s blizzards with glee: the Uesugi. They were the denizens of Kasugayama Castle, one of Japan’s five great mountain citadels. 

Kasugayama Castle lay to the west of Jōetsu’s city center, overlooking the highway between Naoetsu and Takada. For all its towers and parapets, the Uesugi knew their greatest defense was Jōetsu’s snow; a yearly barrier no army could hope to assail. Surrounded by walls of powder, the likes of Uesugi Kenshin could retire to their keep and scheme. 

In his half-buried fortress, Kenshin planned campaigns that earned him a place among Japan’s most cunning and tenacious samurai. Official records say he died from a stomach ache. Yet, according to another story, the warlord met his end when a spear-wielding ninja snuck into his latrine pit. Regardless, the snow saved Kenshin from neither. He is buried somewhere on Kasugayama. 

In late February, I ventured up the hill in ski pants and snow boots, determined to find Uesugi Kenshin’s grave. I soon came to a forested cemetery, amidst waist deep snow and surrounded by eerie, spherical headstones. I waded deeper into the woods until I found a clearing. In the middle was a particularly grand monument. This wasn’t Kenshin, but one of his lieutenants. 

As I stuffed the cemetery map back into my jacket, a thunderclap rang out and the sky turned the color of slate. The wind picked up tremendous force as it shrieked through the trees, ejecting roosting crows in a din of angry barks. 

All of a sudden, that graveyard was the last place I wanted to be. Pelted by a sudden hailstorm, I waded down the mountain with inhuman speed. Even today, its castle barely a ruin, Kasuagayama proved unassailable. 

Like Uesugi Kenshin, Takuma relishes Jōetsu’s snow. He likes to ski; “powder hunting” as he calls it. In Jōetsu, Takuma doesn’t have to look far for this quarry; the town nestles amidst some of the world’s best ski resorts, renowned for their powder snow. 

Jennifer started skiing last year. On the mountain, she took in sweeping views of the alps while enjoying a physical activity that, while exhilarating, was also social. “It was really nice to do an activity and have people you could chat or spend time with,” she said, adding that many of her enduring friendships blossomed on the ski field. 

The weekend ski trip became equivalent to hitting the town (convenient, as Jōetsu has no nightclubs). It was the social highpoint of weeks spent beneath snowdrifts, huddled under a heated table, alone for one’s thoughts and a bevy of Netflix offerings. 

Little grows under a Jōetsu snowfall save a feeling of profound isolation. I felt this gloom creep into me week by week, to spite the excitement of being in Japan. Gogo Salaswat felt something similar. 

“I was like, oh yeah, seasonal depression. I get it every year,” said Gogo, Arizona native and self-proclaimed “desert rat”, “but I never realized how bad it could get until I lived a different season the way that season is supposed to be lived. I was just like, man, this is it huh, this is how it goes.” 

It stands to reason that intense winter blues would accompany an intense winter. For me, potent FOMO (fear of missing out) compounded this pestilence. From December through February, I watched a New Zealand summer come and go on my phone. I doggedly sought the kind of fun my friends were having back home, but the ski field, onsen and occasional bouts of drinking never felt like enough. 

Eventually, I accepted that I was never going to recapture that kind of fun in Japan – the unparalleled highs of being out with old friends, amidst the music you love in the town you grew up in. Those highs were out of reach no matter how long I looked back. Instead, I had to find new highs, and trust home would still be there when I returned. 

In the meantime I shoveled, sipped a range of soups, drank, and skied to shake my soul free of winter’s bitter grip. In time, the snow thawed. The once-vast carpet of white shrank to dirty mountains by the side of the road, reduced daily by each rainfall and moment of sunshine. No new flakes fell on Joetsu. The city, long buried in a state of near-hibernation, began to stir. Shops that were closed for the winter reopened. The days grew longer and sunnier, and the streets began to swell with passersby. 

Spring arrived, and I’d almost made it through winter without doing something foolish. Almost. 

One year and two weeks ago, I moved to a town on Japan’s west coast named Joetsu. On my third day, a local told me that I’d landed the best placement in the country. I looked out the car window, through the rain at the growling motorway under a sea of sooty clouds, and silently disagreed. 

Joetsu sprawls along a river valley that empties into the Sea of Japan. The city itself is an amalgamation of several municipalities, among them the once-heaving port of Naoetsu and the moated inland bastion, Takada.

In 1971, Takada and Naotsu merged, whereupon the authorities created a new cultural and administrative center in the 8km of farmland between the two towns. This became Joetsu’s official center, a dingy array of offices and motorways where I spent my first few days as the city’s newest resident. 

For many who drive through Joetsu, this is all they see. One such tourist was Australian travel writer Richard Pendavingh, who visited in 2005. He had this to say,

“Joetsu was a maze of tightly-packed low-rise houses without gardens or street trees interspersed by windswept concrete plazas and big, blocky commercial buildings (…) the atmosphere wasn’t helped by the fact that the streets were empty and the weather was dismal but even on a good day I got the sense that it wouldn’t have been a very pleasant place to live.” 

Richard only seemed to have been in Joetsu for one day some 17 years ago. After one year of living In Joetsu I can say he is unequivocally wrong about one thing: we do have street trees. 

Richard, however, was spot on with his illustration of the city center and even more so with his description of how Joetsu’s heinous weather and weatherbeaten buildings make for a grim atmosphere. This was the town I entered back in November, 2021. Then, in December, the snow came. 

On the 6852 islands of Japan, there are Kami. 

Kami are primordial nature spirits. They manifest as the sea, the wind and the rain. They’re creeks, floods, and typhoons that dash Mongol ships against the Kyushu shoreline. They can even take the form of abstract nouns. Mountains make for especially important Kami (see Mount Fuji), but no Kami is more important than the sun.

Kami can reside within people, too. The emperor of Japan and his descendants are Kami. Sometimes, Kami manifest in culturally significant buildings. My town’s martial arts gymnasium contains a white-panelled section of wall that is a Kami. Practitioners must kneel in reverence to the entity before every session. 

For the most part, Kami are elements of nature that inspire awe. If a waterfall, tree, or even a particularly aesthetic rock ever gave you pause, then you’ve felt a Kami’s power. 

Awareness of these beings comes from the primaeval sense that the natural world is both beautiful and terrifying. Accordingly, Kami have two souls: one benign, the other destructive. By appeasing a Kami, one hopes to encourage it’s first soul and avoid the wrath of the latter. 

Acknowledgement of Kami and the veneration of these beings are what constitutes Shinto, something akin to a religious practice.

The above sentence is just about all scholars can agree on when it comes to defining Shinto. The tradition has many qualities, or lack thereof, that make it hard to classify as a religion. It doesn’t espouse a moral code, nor does it have a founder. Shinto lacks base texts like the Bible or the Koran; there isn’t even a specific doctrine that outlines practices. Preaching and conversion are rare, and the faith isn’t much concerned with the afterlife. 

Ritual rather than belief lies at the heart of Shinto. In this regard, it’s less a religion and more an inseparable part of Japanese culture.

Many of these rituals take place at Shrines. A Shinto shrine requires a series of steps to ensure one’s visit is done properly. Visitors must first wash their hands and mouths with water from a trough at the entrance. When making an offering, bow twice, clap twice, ring the bell, and bow once more – in that order.

Japanese who observe rituals like these are unlikely to see them as religious practices, much like how everybody who says “bless you” isn’t a god-fearing Catholic. Rather, to many, going through the motions of visiting a local shrine is simply an aspect of daily life.

An estimated 96 million Japanese regularly engage in Shinto rituals. Yet, two decades ago, when Pew surveyors asked Japanese whether religion was important, 75% answered no. That Japan should be home to the most devout, irreligious people on earth is just another incongruity in a land of mystifying incongruities.

As mentioned, Shinto is notably light on philosophy. Yet, what it does emphasise is a belief in universal impermanence. There’s a reason why Japan’s national symbol is the cherry blossom – a flower that blooms and disappears within the space of a week.   

One seeking further examples of this philosophy can look no further than Ise Jingu – the holiest site in Shinto. Ise Jingu is so sacred that punters like me can only gaze upon the fence surrounding the main building. No one knows for certain how old the site is. It was already an ancient place of worship when the first histories of Japan were written, some 2,000 years ago. 

Yet, despite this level of prehistoric sanctity, the main buildings are dismantled and rebuilt with new materials every 20 years. The western equivalent would be tearing down the Sistine Chapel, scorching the rubble, and building it anew every two decades. Unthinkable. 

Shinto’s philosophy of impermanence could well be the product of a nation routinely humbled by nature’s power. This is, after all, the most seismically active country on earth. A mediaeval European might well baulk at how frequently Japan’s wooden castles catch fire, but I’d like to see Mont Saint Michel stand up to the 5,000 earthquakes that rattle these islands each year. 

That life is short and everything dies are truisms that permeate Shinto and therefore Japanese culture as a whole. This is Mono no aware, meaning “sensitivity to transience” – the idea that true beauty is fleeting and that good people accept how everything they love will one day disappear. Heartwarming stuff. 

Yet, Shinto is far from a pessimistic tradition. For one, that a Kami could wash one’s life away in a tsunami on any given day tells us to savour the good stuff. In our brief pre-tsunami window, we should accept change and seek to live well in the face of new challenges. Moreover, Shinto says it might also be a good idea to acknowledge and respect the immortal supremacy of nature. In doing so we might, just maybe, avert disaster. 

With iffy flavours like pickled plum, mustard seeds, and fish eggs – tuna mayonnaise is a calming medium by being, in true onigiri fashion, deliciously bland. 

Tuna mayo embodies all the best qualities of onigiri: understated, predictable, and moreish. When I ask people their favourite rice ball flavour, the answer is often tuna mayo. 

Mayo is a key ingredient. Japanese mayo is a tier above its western counterpart. This is because, while western mayonnaise incorporates whole eggs, the Japanese variety only uses yolks of a particular yellow. 

Combined with rice vinegar, the result is a creamy sauce akin to custard; fatty, sweet, rich, and acidic. The chief brand even has an adorable name, kewpie. The logo is a naked red angel baby doing the YMCA, and the nozzle is cut like a star so that the sauce squirts out in a funny shape. Cute, bizarre, novel, and delicious. Japanese mayonnaise.

Yet, like a surprising number of popular Japanese foods, Japanese mayonnaise isn’t very Japanese in origin. 

It began just over 100 years ago when a political upheaval opened the proverbial floodgates between Japan and the west. This period is called the Meiji Restoration and marks the nation’s transition from Samurai warriors and ritual suicide to Hello Kitty and the highest life expectancy on earth. Large sections of Japanese society embraced western clothing, ideas, technology and food. It was during this time that mayonnaise, the whitest food of all, entered Japan. 

So began a legacy of abuse. Noodles, pancakes, fried chicken, octopus balls, melon – few foods escape mayo. There’s even a Japanese word for a mayonnaise-obsessed individual, Mayora. This comes from merging the word mayo with the suffix “er” (as in “fighter” and “driver”) essentially creating the label “mayonaiser”. 

Overall, the mayonnaise that completes a Tuna Mayo onigiri is special not just because it’s delicious, nor because it is everywhere, but because it represents one of Japan’s most remarkable qualities. 

Few countries do cultural fusion like Japan. This land has a long history of adopting foreign concepts so zealously that one could be forgiven for thinking these things weren’t Japanese to begin with. Food is a key example, although others range from video games to toys to world religions. Mayonaise, ramen, tempura, even the very custom of eating meat – these pillars of Japanese cuisine are imports that arrived during the Meiji Restoration. 

Tuna mayo embodies all the best qualities of onigiri; it also embodies some of the best qualities of Japan. In a long-winded sort of way, you can see this when you peel back the nori. Hell, you can taste it too. It’s very good.  

Onigiri are a Japanese food made from white rice (sometimes salted, most often plain) formed into cylindrical or triangular shapes and wrapped in nori (seaweed). Within this package is a filling: ume (pickled plum), salmon, cod, tuna mayo, bonito flakes…the list goes on.

You can see onigiri arranged in a refrigerated cabinet adjacent to the checkout counter at convenience stores, gas stations and supermarkets. This pride of place reflects their popularity. They’re Japan’s equal to the ham sandwich, a trustworthy and versatile staple that is cheap, predictable, and easy to consume. 

Onigiri are, to put it simply, delicious. 

My first real taste of Japan was an onigiri bought in the lobby of the Hotel Nikko. It was day one of a fourteen-day quarantine and I had to arrange my dinner. I bought the cod roe flavour, certain that I liked cod but unsure about the concept of “roe”. 

Nori grows soggy and unpalatable when applied to rice for an extended period. So, onigiri are ingeniously wrapped in a way that separates the two by weaving the plastic packaging between rice and seaweed. When one pulls at both ends, the barrier slips away and nori embraces rice. 

Back at the Nikko Plaza, my inexperienced self made a mess of this first onigiri. The brittle nori broke into pieces as my barbarian hands tore at the packaging. Nori flakes at my feet, I bit into the rice ball and tasted Japan for the first time. 

Onigiri are one of the many irreplaceable components of the Japanese engine. Manufactured for greatest convenience, It’s a faux pax to eat food while walking here, but onigiri are one of the few exceptions. The densely packed rice is filling – I’m reminded of lembas bread, the Tolkein invention that fills the stomach of a grown man after one bite. 

They’re simple, even bland, but it’s this very banality that makes them special. Like so much Japanese food, onigiri proves that a dish doesn’t need to sock you in the mouth with spice or flavour to be delicious. I feel like this is one of the many incongruities I’ll never understand about Japan. 

At the time of writing, I’ve been here for two bags of rice, two tubes of toothpaste, four razors, one canister of shaving foam and twenty-two onigiri. I could spend a lifetime studying this country and still die ignorant of most of it. I could live here for decades and still be a visitor. These thoughts are equal parts enticing and isolating. 

Living here is sometimes like being in an aquarium and I can never really tell which side of the glass I’m on. I can press my nose against the pane and observe all I want, but try as I might, I’ll never be able to cross over. I am both the ogler and ogled, separated from a world (that stares back with the same confused intensity) by some invisible barrier that I can’t name. 

Perhaps that barrier is language. My Japanese is not, as the locals would say, jouzu. Although, I feel as though it’s more than that. For now, I take comfort in the fact that coming here has led me to onigiri. In the face of disorientation and an occasional twinge of homesickness, the presence of good snacks must mean I’m on the right track.