the quiet eye: Under the Volcano

Narrow roads, switchbacks, and rain

[ View from the back deck ]

Welp, I did switch backs up the mountain in the van yesterday during a downpour. It wasn't a nail-biter it was straight up white knuckles. We left Chitose around 11:00 a.m. and the urban landscape dropped off rather quickly as we started the climb to higher elevations. The road dipped and turned, inclined steeply and offered up several hairpin turns. The rain created near hydroplane situations along the berm of the road. Along the steep embankments above the road I observed double, sometimes triple layers of snow fencing staged along the hills. The edges of the road on both sides were demarcated with a string of vertical arrows which hung at the tree line and were illuminated in red lights, dangling over the pavement berm. I am guessing they are used in winter weather to make visible the edges of the road for drivers ascending towards ski towns in and around Niseko. My stomach tightened at the thought of what this road must be like to experience in a snow storm. I vowed to never leave my hilltop perch until the snow melted.

[ Lush foliage and hairpin turns ahead ]

We arrived in the driving rain to our new home, a Japanese chalet perched on the edge of a field. The volcano was hidden behind clouds off the back deck. The interior of the house is simple, elegant, and lined with pine wainscoting and ceilings. There are two tiny bedrooms and a loft above the living room. A tiny expired bat was curled up on the floor beside the wood burning fireplace.

[ A view from the living room ]

[ The kitchen ]

We unloaded the suitcases for the last time and wondered where on earth we were going to store the clothes that we had packed. Inside we found one bureau and a teeny tiny closet in the downstairs bedroom. This was a conundrum that demanded too much cognitive energy to resolve so we decided to go out and find some food instead. We drove to the village of Niseko to eat a meal at the Farm Table, a small restaurant in the center of the village that had a farm to table menu and a friendly staff. We shared pasta with chicken and anchovies, short ribs with roasted radish, lava cake, and a few glasses of wine. This was a moment of heaven on our first rainy night in town. And our bill came to less than $50.

[ We use the tambourine to alert our waiter ]

[ Menu items ]

[ Norah google mapping our route home ]

By the time we got back to our house we were pretty tired. We made up our beds - a combination of futons, mattresses and comforters - and crashed. Unfortunately, I was awake by one o'clock in the morning trying to figure out how I was going to stow my clothes and other sundries without closets and bureaus. This kept me up all night and by the time the sun came up at 4:00 AM I was wide awake and frazzled. I made some coffee and sat outside just staring at the volcano for answers. It was a beautiful morning and a cuckoo bird was calling somewhere in the trees. I am not trying to be poetic, I mean for real it was calling. Anyway, Tom soon joined me for coffee and he came up with a solution to the storage challenges - a trip to a store called Nitori (Japan's version of IKEA) in the van. In the mean time he was dressed and ready to go to work. He cleaned out the garage, got rid of spiders, swept the front porch and found an old sun umbrella and chair in the garage.

[ Notice the hydrangea behind Tom ]

Well, we worked until 6:00 and then stopped and made some breakfast in our sweet kitchen, which has a very high-tech cooktop. When we did not turn the burner off, the cook top spoke to us in Japanese and told us to turn it off.