A Short Hike in Nishiokoppe

The main event of this past week was our little “hike” in the woods on Saturday. Apparently, for the past two years, the Board of Education has sponsored a “Nature School” for the elementary children of Nishiokoppe. The village employs several wildlife biologists who, among other things, help manage the deer herds in the area and lead guided hunts. One of these men is Hiromasa Igota, the friend of ours who gave us the venison some time back. He and a couple of what appeared to be botanists conducted this “Nature School” last Saturday. We were instructed to arrive at the hotel around 8:30. The building the hotel is in also housed the “Kouminkan”, or community center. In the past, I had thought that these rooms were simply part of the hotel, but now I think they are not. One large room is designed to slideshow presentations, and it was in this room that we gathered. The tables were arranged for viewing a presentation, and on each table we found several types of branches laid out for our examination. The room was quite full; many of the local school children had come. The back of the room was full of local men, including the superintendent and assistant superintendent of the Board of Education (Mr. Kamaya and Mr. Tasaki). The morning began with a PowerPoint slideshow given by Hiromasa (Hiro for short). His English is fairly good, and he included some English titles on his slides. That was a real treat! The presentation mainly focused on what animals live in Hokkaido versus the rest of Japan and what might their tracks look like. It was interactive and well paced. Ridge and Holt were quite interested in it as were all the other children. He was followed by the two botanists. They talked a lot and referred to a pamphlet often. Holt quickly became bored and I took him into the hallway, so I don’t know what their presentation was like. After the mini-lecture, everyone filed outside and gathered into their assigned groups (there was only one parent, not counting us, on the excursion). Each group was led by one of the men from either the community or from the Board of Education. We began walking a little ways until we came to the Japanese Garden located just behind the hotel and across the street. Upon reaching it, the men who were with us began unloading small boxes from a number of cars. The boxes were opened and they began to distribute snow shoes. These snow shoes, however, were not the typical snowshoes one might find in the U.S. these little guys were about the size of Aaron’s food (maybe 36 centimeters long) and consisted of an aluminum frame with a complicated-looking system of straps. Aaron took one look at them and promptly declined. I don’t blame him. I’m not sure they would have done him any good, even if he had been able to get them on. As for me, I just turned on my “helpless” look, which I have perfected in the past six months, and waited for someone to put my on my feet for me. It worked beautifully. In a matter of minutes, I had two older gentlemen strapping these odd things on to my feet. Once we were all ready, away we went to tramp around the snow covered garden. We went with Hiro’s group, of course. Ridge and Aaron were able to keep up and stay interested while the group looked at trees and such. Hiro was able to provide some translation and he chatted comfortably with Aaron. My job quickly became to keep Holt from falling down one of the banks into the semi-frozen ponds. Everyone spent about a half hour or so examining what we found in the garden, including a very cute squirrel. That little fella captured everyone’s attention for a good 10 minutes. We then left the gardens to follow a path down to the river and followed it a short ways, looking for tracks in the snow the whole time. At this point, Aaron had left us, unfortunately. We had previously registered him for a cooking class in Asahikawa. It was organized by English speaking group in the same city and seemed like a good opportunity for him to socialize with other English speakers. So, Holt, Ridge, and I finished the trip up ourselves. I had a nice time interacting with some of my students and the boys enjoyed being outside. We finished out walk up at a building adjacent to the Yakuba. It is a very old building and very run down. I guess you could say it has lots of character. The kids all traded their shoes in for slippers and ditched their coats in the big auditorium. After a few minutes of running and sliding around on their slippers, everyone dashed into the kitchen area where lunch was waiting for us. All the men who had volunteered to help with the morning had apparently cooked up some venison curry (Japanese style – it’s hard to explain what it’s like) and venison miso soup. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a big pot of soup before! Then men were cracking me up; they are so different in the kitchen from Japanese women. One man was actually smoking while he dished food. Again, the superintendent and assistant superintendent were helping serve food and wash dishes. I love this place. So, we chowed down on the food, listened while another biologist talked about what do the animals of Hokkaido eat, and finished up the morning. I think everyone enjoyed themselves quite a bit.