‘What blood type are you?’ is a common question that I get asked here in Japan.  Most westerners don’t have a clue, myself included, but most Japanese seem to know.  My wife even seems to know my blood type, based purely on my personality!  ‘O’ apparently!

Read this story to find out more about the subject.

http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia29/en/wonders/index.html

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Here are some pictures of the Furano area from the last week.  We saw the opening of the ski area with already an 80cm snow base. 

Opening day on Furano Resort and already great powderand then it started to snow

 

 

 

and then it started to snow

and snow

and then it cleared

and then we cleared

We have started plotting the weather for this season already.  It gives us an indication as to what is going on with the snowpack, particularly how the weather is contributing to stability or instability.  From direct weather effects on the snowpack we can get an idea what is going on with the snow surface.  There are 4 of these;

Wind can transport a large amount of snow which results in rapid loading of the snowpack.  It can change the shape of snow grains and increase slab density.

Temperature and Sun changes the settlement and creep rate of the upper snowpack.

Rain or snow adds weight and therefore stress on any buried weak layer in the snowpack.

We have not been out skiing just yet, but when we do we will have some knowledge of the snowpack already through our weather chart.

Check out Rocky Mountain Sherpa’s new avalanche educational movie, ‘The Fine Line.’  In the teaser it looks to be certainly the most entertaining avalanche movie I have seen.  On their website they write, ‘We are greatly looking forward to meeting the challenge of communicating the wide range of infomation regarding Avalanches and Backcountry travel in a creative and effective manner.’  Good on them!  Look forward to seeing the film in full.

We must have had 50cm of storm snow! It was one of those mornings where everyone was out and removing all the snow.  The Sato’s down the road were doing it the manual way.  Snow removal is such a regular occurance in Hokkaido that some people have snow-blowers, bob-cats, and even small graders to make the job a bit easier.  There aren’t any Jones’ in Hokkaido, but one way of keeping ahead of the Tanaka’s is to have a snow removal machine bigger than their’s.

Me, I like the manual way.

Furano Ski Resort is officially open for the season.  There was about 10 cm of new snow this morning and it probably snowed up to 20cm today, and still snowing.  The high temperature for the day was -1 degree celsius and a low of -3 degrees.  It has been snowing about 2 cm /hour through the day.  The forecast is calling for snow until Tuesday.

The season start is looking good!

We guided  Tim Neville, a journalist  from Outside Go Magazine in Spring this year and this is his article which has been published already.  There are good photos of one of our guides, Nori Watanabe. (the photos take it a little time to upload).  Hope that you enjoy it. 

http://outsidego.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=445&Itemid=1

 

http://outsidego.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=449&Itemid=1

http://outsidego.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=432&Itemid=1

Woke up this morning and it is lightly snowing with 5cm of snow settled on the ground.  The forecast is looking good for the opening day of the ski resort which is this Saturday, snow right through until next week!

For live pictures visit the website and take a look at the live webcam of Furano;http://www.hokkaidopowderguides.com/

Natural hot springs (onsen) are numerous and highly popular across Japan. There are many types of hot springs, distinguished by the minerals dissolved in the water. Different minerals provide different health benefits, and all hot springs are supposed to have a relaxing effect on your body and mind, especially after a hard day’s skiing.

Hot spring baths come in many varieties, indoors and outdoors, gender separated and mixed, developed and undeveloped.  An overnight stay at a hot spring hotel or guest house is a highly recommended experience to any visitor of Japan.

Below are the way that you take one of these baths;

1)	Take off all your clothes in the changing room and place them into a basket together with your bath towel. Coin lockers for valuables are often available.

2)

Japanese hot springs are enjoyed in your birthday suit, or naked. Swimming suits are not allowed in most places. However, it is the custom to bring a small towel into the bathing area, with which you can enhance your privacy while outside of the water. Once you enter the bath, keep the towel out of the water.

3)	Before entering the bath, rinse your body with water from either a tap or the bath using a washbowl provided in the bathing area. Just rinsing your body is usually sufficient unless you are excessively dirty, in which case you want to use soap.

4)	Enter the bath and soak for a while. Note that the bath water can be very hot (typical temperatures are 40 to 44 degrees). If it feels too hot, try to enter very slowly and move as little as possible.

5)

After soaking for a while, get out of the bath and wash your body with soap at a water tap, while sitting on a stool. Soap and shampoo are provided in some baths. Like in private Japanese bathrooms, make sure that no soap gets into the bath water. Tidy up your space after you finished cleaning your body.

6)	Re-enter the bath and soak some more.

7)	After you finished soaking, do not rinse your body with tap water, for the minerals to have full effect on your body

One of the first avalanche beacons to be used was the Skadi, invented by John Lawton in 1968.  It was named after the Norse goddess who traveled on skis, and carried a bow to hunt, but was nicknamed by users as the ‘hot-dog’  for its long and rounded at the edges shape, and of course for its color.  It operated on a 2.275 khz frequency which functioned free from interference and still worked well when blocked by objects. 

The range for the unit was about 30 meters.  The signal got louder when the units got closer together, so by using a grid search pattern a searcher could home in on a buried victim by listening for volume changes.

The Skadi saved lives and was improved upon by European manufacturers.  Popular beacons these days work with a micro-processor and have more functions, but still work the same way.