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Volunteer
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Dateline: Hakuba, Japan A cold and snowy night in the Japanese Alps. Snow had been falling for 48 straight hours with accumulations upwards of 20 inches. The one-hour drive from bustling Nagano City to the picturesque village of Hakuba turned from a pleasant scenic tour to a white-knuckle driving experience. After arriving at the Hotel Blue Lake in a wind-swept blizzard, we tucked in our guests and were promptly informed that one of our vans was stuck in a snow bank. The time…1:30 a.m! Our interpreter, Akiro, had retired for the evening. This left the two of us and another volunteer, Willie Sanders, and two members of the hotel staff to push the van up the hill out of the parking lot. Now, anyone who has participated in the annual rite of New England winters, pushing a stuck car, can imagine the difficulty of completing this task with a group that does not speak the same language. And how do you move a car when the only Japanese word you know is 'STOP'?" For 45 minutes we wrestled with the language barrier and tire chains. And for 45 minutes, the van driver wrestled with his inability to drive in the snow. Given our lifelong experiences in the snowy winters, we knew that using the van's momentum to rock back and forth would free it. This rocking method that had worked at home lost some of its effectiveness when the driver insisted on shifting alternately into DRIVE and REVERSE. This ineffectiveness was further exacerbated when the DRIVE step was skipped repeatedly. After much shoveling, and much discussion among the Japanese, the van driver was relieved of his duties by the multi-talented hotel manager who must have grown up in Boston. He quickly grasped the "rocking concept", freed the van from the snow bank and freed us from the worst game of charades one could ever imagine.
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