Winter WWOOFing in Niseko

I woke up hungover, fully-clothed, and two hours late for my flight to Sapporo. Insert many colourful expletives. After a fair number of haphazard laps around my near-empty apartment vainly trying to get the 7 neurons of my brain that were not still ignoring the alarm to formulate an impromptu plan B I grabbed my bags and walked out the door. Destination: uhh...

Train station. I figured if I was going to make it to my WWOOF host more or less on time then it was my best bet. No, it was my only hope. God bless the shinkansen. Riding it all day, northward through Tokyo, and catching an overnight sleeper train from Aomori, I arrived in Sapporo the next morning. A couple more hours on the local train saw me finally arriving in Kutchan, a snowball's throw away from the great ski fields of Niseko, Hokkaido for my winter of volunteering and snowboarding through the WWOOF program.

The fun and user-friendly acronym of WWOOF stands for either "Willing Workers on Organic Farms" or "WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms" depending upon your preference or country. It is an international organization that assists individuals in finding volunteer placements at host establishments that are organic farms or other places "organic" such as environmental education centers and bed-and-breakfasts offering organic cuisine.

While my desire to WWOOF (yes, it can be used as a verb) was initially, and still is, motivated by an interest in organic farming, permaculture, and environmental issues, the winter sportsman in me could not afford to pass up a chance snowboarding Japan's finest powder for a few months. The reports are not overexaggerated. The snow, in quality and volume, is absolutely amazing. Bear in mind too, this is coming from someone with 25 years of Canadian winters to compare it to. I am volunteering at a small hotel in the town of Hirafu. The slopes are only a 5 minute shuttle-bus ride away. On clear days, you can actually see little black human specks winding their way down the mountain from the hotel's windows. The work is simple enough. Wake up is usually a scant few minutes before helping with breakfast service beginning at seven. There's a brief break for staff breakfast before the daily cleaning of the hotel. Vacuuming, room cleaning, dusting, mopping, snow-shovelling. There's also cleaning out the o-furo, the shared guest hot tub and sauna which is blissfully mine to use outside guest hours to soothe sore joints and muscles, which I have been getting perhaps a little too familiar with. There are plenty of little odd jobs too. Today I helped the hotel's "Owner-san" fix-up his translation software's atrocious English in an email to future guests from Hong Kong. The work itself can feel a little menial at times but the experience as a whole has been fantastic. The "Mama-san" can be rather stern in the kitchen but her cooking is wonderful and goading a laugh out of her is a fun challenge in itself. There always seems to be plenty of free time to study kanji, write some emails, or just crawl into a book in front of the living room windows. The snowboarding has been the best of my life. I won't write of it here. Have a look around the internet if you want to check out what Niseko has to offer.

While extolling my Niseko winter experience, I am already looking ahead to the next place I'd like to WWOOF. There is a environmental education center here in Hokkaido that is currently the lead candidate piquing my interest at the moment.

I think that the range of places, experiences, and people that are offered through the WWOOF program are what make it so appealing. In return for a few hours of work a day you get room and board but you also get a lot more. It is a chance to truly broaden your horizons. My friend said to me when I told her I was going to volunteer ("You mean, like, no money?!") that I was crazy. Having now experienced it to some degree I would say that I am more than fairly being compensated. I am learning new skills, a new language, and a new side to Japanese culture.

I'd say I've also learned not to go out drinking with the guys the night before an early flight.

Matt Uchimaru is a former English teacher and present vagabond WWOOFing his way around Japan. He can be reached at mattuchimaru at mark hotmail dot com.

For more information on the WWOOF program in Japan contact:

WWOOF Japan
Honcho 2-jo, 3-chome 6-7
Higashi-ku, Sapporo
065-0042 JAPAN

Website: www.wwoofjapan.com