Snow festival giant

Every house should have one: our 2.5 metre snow giant

It's Nakagawa snow festival at the weekend, and having missed the more famous Tadami snow festival once again through being in Tokyo, I decided to get with the programme and do something with the snow other than shovelling it away from the entrance. I shovelled it back towards the entrance.

There's a bit of a "Roy Wood and Hagrid meet that guy with the octopus beard in Pirates of the Caribean at Karl Marx's gravestone" kinda thing going on here don'tcha think?

Tadami festival apparently had a Taj Mahal with arches and arcades you could walk under made by the army, sorry, Ground Self Defence Force. My son and I decided to make do with a more modest one for our first go, though you can sit on it if you are under 10. He was a big help with gathering the snow, although much of it arrived in the form of big chunks tossed in the direction of my head - entirely accidental I'm sure. He made the hands and feet though, before reverting to the aerial bombardment. Where are the GSDF when you need them?

Road running in the Japanese snow

Iwabuchi-sensei elated at the end of the road

I usually avoid road running like a black plague, but when the road is not black with mind and leg-numbing tarmac, but white with ploughed snow and surrounded by mountains it is another matter. Walking isn't possible in this two metre deep snow until it hardens up, so it is great to discover (thanks Richard!) that some of the minor roads are ploughed and, with only a handful of shocked and bemused drivers to deal with, they make for great running.

Running through a remote village, with its population of elders busy shovelling snow

Trail shoes and a cap to keep the snow out of your eyes are a good idea. Studs with metal inserts would be even better. It feels like a trail run, or running through sand, as the resistance, slippiness and roughness of the snow pull you around as you run. Excellent. Care is required, as there is a lot of ice around, sometimes hidden under a few inches of powder. The snow ploughs do a great job of clearing the road, but seem to polish the snow surface. This makes for some amusingly bad free-form dancing when attempting to stay on your feet. Running in the deeper snow at the edge, or keeping to chained tyre tracks helps.

Road running Jim, but not as we know it. River near Tamonashi

Of course it is being out amongst mountains that makes it really special. Iwabuchi-sensei has a full marathon this weekend, so it was good to get out for three hours ata reasonable pace on Sunday, and we even made a full circuit of Numazawako - who knew those little roads would be ploughed? The people who live there and need to get about, that's who.

Children in their mountain village just off the school bus

When running a valley road with Richard we bumped into some of the children I had been teaching earlier in the day, no doubt wondering what on earth we were doing. What a place to grow up. Anonymous suburbia it is not.

A bit heavy on the icing sugar

The snow is at it's height now - what am I saying, there is more forecast this week. The extraordinary forms it takes, and it's transformation of everything, is a great pleasure - look, it even turned me into a 'road' runner.

Run Rudolph, run!

Snowshoe shuffle

Looking down to Nakagawa and the Tadami River, Kaneyama-machi

Now that the snow has compacted down, from three metres of leg-swallowing powder into a metre and half of layered icy globules, it is snow-shoe walking season. Routes have to be chosen with care, as the mountains bear the scars of many small avalanches, where the snow scours away at the steep slopes, and edges may be corniced. Flat shelves of land and the forestry roads are comparatively safe. I say comparatively. We descended some steep zigzags on what must have been the only road up to the village by Lake Numazawa at one time. "Oh, that is where the doctor went off the side of the road on a snow-mobile with a patient on the back, thirty years ago." As far as I know, the Hippocratic Oath does not encourage that kind of treatment, and I doubt the patient was too impressed either. Still, no lives lost, so not to worry, eh? Next up, ambulance drag racing.

An anonymous mound on the edge of the snow-covered fields on a high plateau turned out to be a samurai grave from the fifth century. This sombre and time-laden fact did not detain the children for a moment. They were  off, scribbling tracks across the huge blank paper of the snow, delighting in being the first to make a mark. Their small leaf-shaped plastic snow-shoes lent them a pixie-like appearance ('strewth, how many hyphens does one-sentence-need?). Some of the elders in the valley still use circular home-made (whoops-there's another) bamboo and rope snow shoes.

A cry went up from the leading group, and a mountain hare bounded at impossible speed up the hillside, resplendent in it's winter fur. No snowshoes required there, and a good thing if you ask me. Don't though. They are hinged at the toe (hyphenated, you might say), which means that they are always in contact with the snow. If you want to turn round when you are standing still you have to lift your feet up high. I know that know of course.  If I'd known it then, I wouldn't have suffered the very-un-hare-like indignity of keeling over into a heap. It contrasted a tad painfully with the authoritative tone I had adopted a moment before about the nature of some footprints. I always like to adopt an authoritative tone when I am talking complete bollocks, don't you?