A Page Turning to the New Year

As 2022 closes and 2023 opens there are many things to think about and be grateful for. Often I look back to the saying; Happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. Can I say I am all of these things? I think 2022 was a very good year in those respects. We made some major changes and those resulted in a lot of positives.

First; Health. I will put this first rather than "happy" since the other things rest on this one. Recently I heard someone say that health is like a table and other things we have in life are things we put on the table, like as options that we can engage with but if your health fails then just like the table failing all those other things slide off. Perhaps not a perfect metaphor but it does the job.

We are both getting older and so new aches and pains crop up. This is inevitable in some form or another, but we are both keeping active physically and mentally and trying to be careful in what we do with our bodies. Aya is doing yoga and pilates, and stretching at home to keep flexible and fit. I do running three days a week and weight training 4 days a week occasionally taking a day off. When the weather was nicer I was also hiking and biking once a week. We both do a lot more walking than we did as we are close enough to downtown and can easily justify not taking the subway but yet far enough that go anywhere and back will get us close to 10,000 steps. 

In early November I had a little health scare when I was hiking with a friend. I started to feel lightheaded and at first I thought that I was just feeling that because I hadn’t eaten breakfast, something I usually don’t do anyways. Then it got worse and my fingers started to tingle. Long story short, I realized that my blood pressure was a bit higher than normal on most days. Because we did blood tests the doctor also determined my cholesterol was a bit high. All that to say, I’m in middle age now and shouldn’t be putting whatever I want down my gob. I know many people kind of feel sad or lament reaching that stage of life but actually I feel pretty ok with it. If some slight dietary changes will result in me normalizing my readings and I can continue to be physically active, that is a win! 

Having made the  move to Sapporo I am much less stressed in my daily life and that has manifested in many ways. I’m sleeping a bit more and getting better sleep. I’m eating more healthily and in general eating less. I’ve also started intermittent fasting, something I kind of did before but now I’m really sticking to it, eating first at 11:30 am and then last around 4:30 pm. Of course, exceptions can be made if heading to dinner with friends or something but in general I feel pretty good with that. We’ll get a full check up in a couple months but in general we are feeling good. 

Second; Happy. The covid years have put a strain on this to some degree but still I’m happy that I’ve been able to see family and to keep in contact with them. I saw my mother both in December of 2021 (it still counts for 2022, right?) and then again in Poland in June. As always it is really fun to show her “my world” and I’m sure she will be seeing us in Hokkaido soon. I’ve kept in contact with my dad and we chat often, though I’ve not see him for about three years now so that is overdue but I plan to see him again this coming year. Hopefully that means he is coming to Hokkaido, but I won’t hold my breath. Aya’s parents came in November so I got to see them again after a nearly 3 year gap. They haven’t changed at all, a good thing. Finally, the cats are happy and healthy. 

Of course, friends and social life are also important in the “happy” category. The move from in person to fully online work means I don’t see people day to day in person and that has changed things a bit for me socially. However, because of the pandemic years I’ve not done a lot of socializing so that change was not as pronounced as it might be otherwise. One of my biggest concerns in moving to Hokkaido was that I didn’t know anyone here and there wasn’t really a ready made pathway, like a job with coworkers, to making connections. However, I’ve made a few friends and connections and now just about 5 months into our time here I am feeling like we’ve made a pretty good start at creating our community here. We’ve hosted some game nights, gone out to dinners, taking day-trips, etc. with friends and there are other connections that I’ve made in the community here so I feel like things are going as well or better than I would have hoped for. I see this only continuing. 

In addition, I’ve kept in contact with some of my “old” friends and that has been really good for me and I hope for them too. Perhaps it is a shift of getting to middle age, perhaps a bit of the explosion of video calling during the pandemic years but we’ve now got a few people that we regularly chat with. Aya has some of her friends around the world that she’s gotten to know from work or otherwise and every month or so she chats with them. Occasionally, depending on things she might see one of them in person as well. Funny enough, despite being pretty far from much of the world our friends like coming to Japan so there are opportunities to see people when they are in country.
We’ve also kept in contact with some of the people that we knew in Warsaw and continued to video chat with them, keeping up on each others’ lives. One of my old friends commented that we needed to not only hold on to old memories, but create some new ones. I thought that was an important insight and it got me thinking of how we do that, so far away from one another but still valuing each other’s friendship. One of my friends suggested he and I do a “book club” of two and that we meet every couple of months to chat and discuss the book. That has worked very well for connecting and I should say for pushing me to read new things and consider new ideas. 

Third; Wealthy. My time in Warsaw ended this year and I moved from International teaching to working only online. While this has pros and cons, it is a move we made deliberately and having the choice to do so is very fortunate. We have been extraordinarily lucky that we have been able to both work remotely freeing us to live anywhere and be flexible with our schedules. While we still have some work complaints, we realize just how lucky we are. In addition, we are both growing in our roles; taking on new challenges and rising in the ranks so to speak with our organizations. We both get paid well and fairly for what we do. I feel respected in my work and I think I work with some great colleagues who challenge me and work with me to improve our work together. I have autonomy to make changes and my superiors often put the reins in my hands to lead my team and to do what I think is best. I also feel like my work has meaning as I get to interact with young people and to shape how their learning experience can help them and, with my colleagues, to think about and implement changes to improve that experience in the future.  We've reached a point in life where our incomes are good, our savings and investments towards retirement are good, and though we are still checking the sticker prices of things we can be a more free in our spending. Perhaps the saying, you can have anything but not everything fits best to describe this feeling. One thing we decided to have was a home of our own, so this year we bought an apartment and renovated it to our liking. It feels nice to have a nest that is ours and even if we decided to fly the nest some time in the future we know we'll have a place that we can retreat to.

Fourth and last; Wise. Have I become wiser this past year? You bet! Since the start of 2022 I’ve completed 12 graduate credits towards my doctorate, with about 30 yet to go. I’d say that would be enough to qualify for the year’s quota of “wise” but wait! I’ve also begun to take Japanese lessons again. Having reached N3 about 12 years ago, but since they getting quite rusty, I decided to step back to studying at N4 level with tutors. I did this from September to mid December at which point I took the JLPT N4 test. I’m pretty sure I passed, though results won’t come out until late January. Continuing that, I’ll join a class of ten students in daily study from early January. This will mean that technically I am a full time student for Japanese. So, I’m grinding away at the rust and learning new things. I also shouldn’t forget to mention that the aforementioned book club with my old friend has opened up some insights for me. Most of our books revolve around philosophy and so these readings and discussions have led to me learning and thinking about new things. Lastly, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what is important to me. After almost 3 years of the pandemic and considering what I want, from where I live and what I put my work into, I’ve come to some tentative conclusions. Without saying too much about that, we will stay here in our current pattern for at least three years, probably more. 

So to sum up, 2022 I was happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise! 

A Quick Jaunt to Tokyo

Last weekend we went to Tokyo and stayed at the Conrad. We had some points accrued for Hilton that we had to burn before the year was up. The property was fantastic, great views and great service. The lounge food and breakfasts were also very good. In addition, the location is great since it is centrally located.

The view from the Conrad

One of the mornings I went to run around the Imperial Palace since it was just a few city blocks away, for example. 

While we had the points to burn, we were also coming to see some of our friends who worked at an international school. It was great to see them again, 2.5 years since we saw them in person in Warsaw! As things go, it felt just like old times. While great to see them, sometimes I forget just how big Tokyo is. From the hotel to where they lived was 1.5 hours by train! Sapporo is Japan’s 5th largest city, with about 2 million people. To get from one side of the city to the other by train would take you maybe 30 or 40 minutes. Tokyo is the largest city regardless if you are counting just the city itself (15 million) or the metropolitan area (35 million). The infrastructure in Tokyo always impresses me as everything is layer upon layer upon layer. The other thing that always impresses me is that Mt. Fuji is always peeking over the horizon. I don’t think it a stretch to say it is a majestic mountain and very entrancing. 

Another highlight of the trip was going to the TeamLabs exhibition. This was something Aya had done about a decade ago, but was the first time for me. What an experience! Here is a video detailing what there is, but basically you enter this building that is an interactive exhibit. There are maybe 8 different rooms you go through, pretty big rooms. Each is different. Some have water up to your knees! Others have mirrored floors, etc. You can see those rooms in the video. I think we took about an hour to go through, but you certainly could spend twice that or more. 

Since there are other locations, I think we will try it again sometime in the future or bring guests if we are in Tokyo. Pretty cool! 

Hiking Around Sapporo

Since moving to Sapporo in July I’ve noticed that no matter where you are in town, the mountains are there. Sapporo is a big city with two million people. Yet, because it is situated right next to the mountains it means that each time you turn the corner around the buildings and skyscrapers of the city the mountains are there, seemingly hemming us in. 

In reality, the mountains hug the city to the west and south to some degree, but to the east and north the plain is more open. This a big reason why this city exists where it does, with plenty of fresh water flowing from from the Toyohira, Chitose, and Ishikari rivers bring fertility to the land and the wide spread of the flood plain. Of course, now days these rivers have been mostly tamed by construction of dikes and some dams, though much of the land is still agricultural. 

What this means in my daily life though is that the mountains are so close as to be a daily reminder of the hiking I can do! So, every couple of weeks I go hiking either by myself or with friends. As with any person hiking in Japan, I bring my trusty bear bell and more recently I bought some bear mace, though I don’t expect to ever use it. Bears are sited in the areas around the city, but the chance that I’ll encounter one and need to use the mace are incredibly low. In all of Hokkaido there are perhaps 1 or 2 maulings a year from bears and those are almost entirely on the east side of the island where things are more wild. Still, a bear is a bear no matter if east or west. 

What I think I love the most about hiking is that it is so easy to do. From my place I can hop a bus and be from door to trail in less than 30 minutes. The trails are well maintained and at least around the city’s mountains they are fairly well traversed. I use an app to find trails mostly, Yamap, but also blogs and google maps. It is fun to explore what is out there. People are friendly and as with other parts of Japan people say hello to each other as they are passing. The other day I even had an older woman passing me ask, “Have you seen any bears back there?” “No, not yet” I said and we both had a laugh. 

Perhaps the number two nice thing is the views. From the trailhead to a good view point can be as little as 30 minutes. There are great views of the city, the mountains to the east, and to the north the Sea of Japan and Russia! (ok, I can’t see Russia but maybe if my vision was better?haha). So far I've hiked Moiwa five or six times, Maruyama a few times, Sankaku, and a small mountain near Jozankei, but there is so much more to explore!

As winter sets in I think I’ll have to push pause on my hikes, and that will be a bit sad but I’m sure I’ll be back into the hills and mountains again soon.

A New Chapter - Sapporo

 

Last picture of our apartment building in Warsaw. 

Boarding the flight out of Warsaw was a bit nerve racking. Japan was requiring a negative PCR test 72 hours in advance of boarding. We had gone to the airport a couple days prior to get this test done and with results in hand we were confident we would be fine. We uploaded our results to our apps for landing in Tokyo and were ready to go. At the gate the airline was checking the results to make sure everyone had tests. I saw a couple of people get turned away. When it was my turn I showed them my results, but they insisted there was a special results form that Tokyo would be asking for and what I was showing them was not it. I admit, I was insistent that was the right one and they let me on but once I had taken my seat I realized there was in fact another form I had which was the one they were asking about. In my panic at not being allowed on I forgot I had it.

Shiro tucked under the leg rest

Kuma under the blanket. 

The flight to Tokyo was about 12 hours long, 6 or so hours longer than usual since we went around and to the south of Ukraine and Russia. The cats stayed with us in the cabin so they had that comfort, but the whole trip they were both quite scared. 

When we landed we were beat, but we weren't done yet. We rushed our way through covid immigration, a process we expedited by uploading the proper documents first to an app we then used at the airport. Going through immigration I was handed my spouse visa, 3 years! (some get only 1 year). From there we had to get a cab to cross Tokyo (no small trip) to transfer from Narita airport to Haneda. Once we arrived there we had to arrange for the cats to go in the cargo of the plane, they were not allowed on board. By now we'd been awake and traveling for 24 hours. The cats were very much not pleased with us. 

After about 1.5 hours we landed at Chitose Airport, collected the cats, and got a cab to Sapporo. About 30 hours after taking off we crossed the threshold to our temporary apartment. Being the seasoned travelers we are, we knew better than to crash. We ended up staying up another 5 hours or so to fall asleep once it was dark. 

Over the next few days we slept a lot,  but our jet lag was very mild. A nice surprise. Aya began working again, I was doing some course writing as well as exploring the city. Hiking, running, and just generally being out and about is a nice feeling. Sapporo is a very livable city with cool summers and easy access to nature, but still big enough at about 2 million people to feel like a large city where anything can be found or experienced. 


We've now gotten into a routine of sorts. I have Japanese lessons on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Most mornings I work from home, then go running, work a bit more and then study until Aya gets off at 2pm. We then do something for the new apartment, like furniture shopping and have dinner early-ish. She takes her bath in the evening and I watch the news and that is pretty much our day. It is really nice that my schedule is flexible. On days when the weather is nice I can put any work or study to the side and go hiking, or whatever catches my fancy. 

We have more or less remained in that mode until the present. We are now just two weeks away from moving into our own place, that we decided on every appliance and piece of furniture as well as the design. This is such an odd feeling since for all of our adult lives we've lived in rented places where we put up with the most unusual or shoddy things. We've gotten so used to just shrugging and living with it that it will be extremely strange to have everything that works and is in place as we wish it.

So, a new chapter begins. Here, in Sapporo. 

The Last Days in Warsaw

 As 2021 wound down and 2022 began I was once again looking to the horizon, thinking of what adventures may be in another land. Our time in Warsaw had been fun and productive, but like many people during the height of the pandemic, we had a mind shift. I'd seen people in my school get sick, and some died from covid or other reasons. Education had a whiplash change that I think was positive on the whole, but the constant tension of the past few years weighed heavily on myself and the profession. As the summer ended and I returned to work we started to formulate a plan. Apply to only X,Y, and Z jobs because they were place I really wanted to go to. If that didn't work out, take the other option. 

As it turned out we took the other option. So we would both working remotely/ from home and that would free us to live anywhere we wanted. At the same time it meant that we decided to make that space the best possible for us since we would be working and living in the same space. That, and like many of the international community we work with, we had begun to have a yearning for a forever home to find a place of refuge in. By January we had decided, we were heading to Sapporo. 

We laid plans for Aya to go first to buy an apartment and to set up renovation. Everything was in place and she was about to fly when the war broke out with the Russian invasion. The following months were quite tense in Warsaw, but she rerouted to fly south of Russia and made it to Sapporo to begin our move mission. As she toured apartments and sent back pictures and videos, Ukrainian refugees poured across the border to Poland and elsewhere. For a time we were not even sure if she would make it back before my contract ended in June and it was time to go. Throughout the spring we kept our options open and in Warsaw I continued to work and help out with the refugees where I could. What started as going to the central station to hand out some envelopes of cash turned into a near every weekend routine of going to wholesale stores to donate and volunteer, then spending time updating everyone on what was happening on the ground in Warsaw and how funds could be put to good use. I teamed up with my friend and co-worker Rebecca whenever possible and she has since done much much more work in helping. I think by last tally she had collected over 100,000usd.  

Most weekends we would load up Rebecca's car with whatever was listed as needed. This included all sorts of things like diapers, sanitary pads, juices, apples, etc. Whatever was needed, we got it. 

Rebecca also was coming up with other ways to donate. She hosted families in her apartment, giving up her bedroom to sleep on the couch. She bought backpacks and school supplies for refugee kids in Warsaw, books in Ukrainian to send across the border for kids still there, and medical supplies for those were were dealing with the wounded in directly on the front lines of the war. Money was coming in for her so fast that at times it was difficult to spend it fast enough, but she is now a fixture of volunteering and relief and she has been featured in her hometown paper as well as local news channels in upstate NY. 

I also gathered a lot of donations during that time, but nothing like Rebecca. Still, I did a lot of volunteering and large donations from my family and their extended networks rolled in over the spring. In total I believe we gathered about 20,000 usd in donations that went directly to people in Warsaw who needed it most.

The community at American School of Warsaw also made a massive effort. Everyone kicked in to high gear and within a couple weeks there were massive amounts of food and clothing for refugees coming in as well as sending it across the border. The school community also took in hundreds of refugees to their homes. By May Warsaw had absorbed about 400,000 refugees. There was so much attention on this that the vice president came to the city and while here stopped by our school to meet with a group of refugees and talk to our kids and staff (See Rebecca, right of photo). 

And the Poles? Polish people have been uniquely steeled against Russia by half a century of occupation. While relations in recent years has improved, the Poles have not forgotten and when the war started they opened their arms to those in need. Though the country is now overflowing with Ukrainians, they are welcomed. Their resilience in the face of tragedy has continued to inspire me and hold them closer in my heart. 

As May came around Aya secured our apartment and set up the renovation plans. She was clear to come back and the war seemed to be grinding to a stand still with Ukrainians putting up fierce resistance. By the end of May Aya was back and we were winding down our belongings and getting our documents in order. Both of the cats had to make multiple visits to the vets for vaccines and documentation. No one was happy about that. The final day of work came and I said goodbye to my school community. The end of a three year chapter. While I was sad to leave I was also excited as the new chapter was taking another step forward. 

At the end of June my mother came to visit. A much welcome and overdue event. I'm sure if the pandemic hadn't occurred she would have come sooner and we would have travelled more. Still we spent time in Krakow and Warsaw and got some good mother - son time together. She even met the ever famous Rebecca and we managed to make a run to pick up a load of goods for the refugees at the central train station. Of course, as many tourists to Poland do, we went to Auschwitz and many sites around Warsaw from WWII. The past was not so far from the present and that was certainly not lost on either of us. 

By the beginning of July we were almost ready to go but decided on one more trip before leaving Europe, to Norway. It was very beautiful and I'm glad we went. We rented a car and did a loop out from Oslo, nearly reaching Bergen but turning back around to return by a different route. 

Even in Norway, the echos of the holocaust were not far away. Here you can see gold plates in the streets of Oslo, each with a name of someone who was taken by the Nazis. 

Finally, in the last days of July our flight time came. We packed up our luggage, caught the cats and put them in their carriers, and cleaned the apartment. Time to go, to turn the page. 

Dubrovnik and Beyond

 

We were in Dubrovnik for just a short 3 day weekend. Why Dubrovnik? We are Game of Thrones fans and we had heard that the town was quite beautiful. Given that we weren’t going to have a lot of time we decided to keep it pretty local BUT because I’m so keen on getting passport stamps we did spend an entire day driving to Montenegro. I’m tempted to say we wasted the day since we spent about 5 hours in total just sitting on one side of the border or the other waiting to get through, but still it was fun to drive around and we saw the city of Kotor. We stayed at the Hilton which, in a later photo you can see was destroyed just 30ish years prior. It had a great view with a seaside balcony part of which face the old town and fully facing the sea. 

 

The next day we had a Game of Thrones tour scheduled for the afternoon, but I should note that during the peak of the day temps were reaching 40C and so it was really not fun to walk around. Most of our day we split between 7-11am and then 4pm and after in order to avoid the worst of it. So that morning we hopped a ferry to the island of Lokrum and spent the earlier part of the day walking around there and seeing what we could, old fortifications and some scenes from Game of Thrones. I don’t mean to be demur, the island was beautiful as was the sea. It just wasn't a whiz bang type of thing. You could easily, EASILY, spend a couple days there if you want to take it slow, swim a lot in the sea, and sip some expensive drinks. It was nice. 

 Arriving back around noon we headed to the comfort of our hotel the later headed out for the game of thrones tour. Our tour did not disappoint. The guide was knowledgeable and friendly and most of the other people on our small tour were also fans so knew enough about the show to make it fun.

 

On our final day in the city we woke early so we could be the first ones on the city walls. There is a counter clockwise walking path on top of the city wall and both for reasons to avoid people and to avoid the heat we started right when it opened at 9am. We moved pretty fast, but it still took until nearly 11am to complete the loop. I suppose we could have taken quite a bit longer but it is mostly wall and parapets and not much else along the way

Having some time to kill in the afternoon we did see a few more things, small museums in the town and such, but not much more.

The picture of our hotel, bombed out in the war and burned down. It is always interesting to consider time and place. It was not lost on me where we where and the history attached. I considered many place we could have gone to reflect that, but decided against it and to have a "nice trip" However, the war is in the cracks of society as we saw in this photo. Had Aya been sitting on the balcony as in the first photo of this post, things would have been very different.