nisekonian

View of Niseko

On the last full day of the homestay, Mrs T and I went to visit her 'Nisekonian' friend. She is a woman in her early seventies who has been born and raised and lived all her life in Niseko. I'm ashamed to admit that when Mrs T explained this to me in the car on the way there, I was a little worried that I would have to face the same barrage of questions ('Does she eat natto?) that Japanese people who rarely meet foreigners usually ask. Or, worse still, I was worried I'd be ignored as an uncomfortable unacknowledged presence in the room.

But my prejudices were proved wrong. Mrs N is a large lady (in Mrs T's words: 'she's got really fat') in her early seventies with dyed brown hair and a round enormous face. She rarely smiled properly or laughed or frowned, and so her face had an impassive, calm quality to it, as if she were viewing everything in a wise, world-weary way. So, when I met her, she was so calm and slow in her movements that I felt as though we had met a hundred times before.

She talked so deliberately and slowly that I understood her Japanese without the usual struggle. For once, I didn't have to be embarrassed about being unable to follow the conversation or stressed when being asked a question I didn't quite get. She told me about her childhood in Niseko - she had to go and draw water from a well, even in winter, as there was no running water - and about her daughter, who refused to leave Niseko for thirty-five years. Refusing to even go as far as Hakodate (a city barely two hours drive away). She asked about the underground system in Tokyo as if it were something exotic and distant ('very speedy, I imagine') and had never heard of the Tokyo electric district, 'Akihabara'. Since I have only met people in Niseko who have retired early from working in Tokyo, and who exclusively talk about Tokyo in the way that southern English people talk about London boroughs, this came as a surprise.

The most interesting thing about Mrs N's life, however, wasn't her Nisekonianism per say. The most interesting thing was her mother-in-law. An old lady who sat knitting in the corner of the living room as we drank our coffee. The kind of Japanese old lady who walks with her head almost touching the ground. Her back curved, her small body wrapped in layer upon layer of puffy winter clothing.

Her mother-in-law had not left the house for as long as Mrs N had known her. They have been living together in the small four-room bungalow for 40 years.

"She gets on my nerves," said Mrs N. "We get on each other's nerves." Then she laughs. And after that she explains to Mrs T how she can't leave her mother-in-law alone, because she can't cook for herself. And even if she tries to leave food warm for her in the rice-cooker or on the gas stove, she worries that her mother-in-law can no longer hear the beeping of the appliances. She doesn't know when the food is ready, or when the gas needs to be switched off. "It's a worry," said Mrs N. "She's not even my real mother."

I asked Mrs T why the Nisekonian's mother-in-law has not left the house in 40 years. Mrs T said, "she hasn't got any friends. She can't go out on her own. She hasn't got a reason to go out, and so she doesn't go out."

We took Mrs N out for a drive to Hirafu. I haven't been on a 'spin' - a drive for the sake of driving - for a long time. It was relaxing, bright and warm in the car, the weather sunny because it was the day after the typhoon. We walked in the sunshine towards Youtei-San - only a few hundred metres or so, on account of Mrs N's knees.

When we returned, her mother-in-law was sitting on the same spot of the sofa, head bent over her knitting.