MARATHONS AND QUAKES...

Growing up in an alpine nation, where winter sports traditionally play a big role, New Year's Day was inevitably accompanied by the New Year's Ski Jumping competition, which takes place every year in the German ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and is broadcast live on German, Swiss and Austrian TV stations.

There were always two fixtures in our TV schedule on this day: The live coverage of the New Year's Concert from Vienna, the first part usually while my parents were busy preparing New Year's lunch in the kitchen, the second part while we were enjoying the feast, and then the ski jumping competition for dessert.

Although Japan has lots of mountains (and its own version of Alps) and has produced a number of skiing talents over the years, when I arrived here, I didn't expect ski jumping to be a staple of New Year's TV programming here - not least because the large time difference would actually put the event firmly into the late evening hours. And that turned out to be right.

Instead, spending the New Year's Holidays at my in-laws' house over the past 27 years has exposed me to a road running relay race that is avidly being watched by my father-in-law, alongside millions of viewers across the Japanese nation: The 'New Year Ekiden', which is a 100-kilometre national race carried out in Gunma Prefecture on 1 January.

The most intriguing feature for me is the fact that the race is contested between Japan's corporate running teams. To me as a Swiss and European, in any kind of sporting events it's either individuals (such as in various skiing disciplines), city teams (most famously in football or ice-hockey) or country teams competing against each other.

But the concept of athletes competing for the company they are working for is a very foreign one to me. But it does very much represent the famous Japanese group culture and the sense of belonging here.

While in Switzerland, the emphasis is generally on the individual, and people predominantly choose a certain job, rather than a company, new graduates in Japan traditionally choose a certain company they want to work for, taking precedence over the actual job they will be doing. In a traditional system of lifetime employment, workers would enter a specific company at the start of their career and then gradually climb the corporate ladder over the years, while the company would take good care of them, until they would retire from the very same company.

Job-hopping and mid-career hiring was, until quite recently, almost unheard of in Japan, and in fact frowned upon. If someone presented a CV showing a job history in various companies, it was seen as a sign that they were probably not capable, rather than evidence of extensive experience and versatility.

Things have changed, of course, and Japan has had to adapt to global working and hiring practices. But the 'sense of belonging' to a company is still evident even today.

At job fairs held at universities, future graduates tend to flock to the stands of the likes of Toyota or Honda, huge widely-known corporations with a reputation of providing secure jobs and good pay packages. And that 'sense of belonging', I guess.

It is then hardly surprising that the relay teams from those companies tend to be at the top of the leader board of the 'Ekiden', because the reputation of the companies rides on the success of their athletes, and they will ensure that they do everything they can to foster talent and provide the necessary training environment to ensure success.

This year's winner? Toyota

The runner-up? Honda

If people feel a strong attachment to their company, then the same is true for students and their respective universities.

In fact, the race on 1 January is merely the 'warm-up' for the far bigger 'Hakone Ekiden', which some call one of the greatest races in the world and which is one of Japan's most watched sporting events, fielding teams of 10 runners from different Japanese Universities in a relay marathon race over 200 km in two days, on 2 and 3 January.

Don't even think of trying to drag my father-in-law out of the house on either of the two days!

There is one university in particular (Aoyama Gakuin), which seems to spawn a lot of great runners, as their team has won the coveted trophy 6 times in the past 10 years, and there are very lively conversations on the topic among all family members - except me, of course, because even after 27 years I still find it difficult to get excited about this race.

There is another thing that I find hard to get used to, no matter how long I have lived here: QUAKES!

A few hours after the 'New Year Ekiden' and while I was writing the above lines, my in-laws' house here in Nagano City started to shake violently and what felt like eternity, as nearby Ishikawa Prefecture was rattled by a 7.6M tremor. On 1 January, of all days!

Although there was no damage to the house, the assembled extended family was visibly shaken by the experience on what is a very special day for Japanese people, and instead of watching typical New Year's programming, which includes comedy and game shows, as well as the live coverage of the New Year's Concert from Vienna, we were being exposed to the running news coverage from the quake zone and constant warnings of tsunamis (though not a threat to us here, as we are lucky enough to be far away from the coast and surrounded by mountains). And with numerous aftershocks, all our smartphones went off in unison with the eerie alarm of the pre-alert system.

Even for someone who has lived through the nightmare of the Fukushima quake and tsunami and the resulting nuclear disaster in 2011 (though from a relatively safe distance in Tokyo), this left me quite shaken (literally!). In fact, everyone in the family - except for my wife and myself - confirmed that they had never experienced such a strong tremor in their lives. Given that my in-laws are in their 80s, that certainly counts for something.

For my wife and me, the intensity here in Nagano City was similar to that we experienced in Tokyo during the Great East Japan Quake 12 year ago, with an intensity of 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale (different from the globally recognised Richter scale, which only measures the strength of a quake, while the Japanese intensity scale shows how much the ground is actually shaking), whereby the epicentre around 200 km away registered the maximum of 7. I cannot even begin to imagine how an intensity 7 quake must feel like when you're in the centre of it!

At the time of writing this in the morning of 2 January, the threat of tsunamis has thankfully subsided, but several people have thus far been confirmed dead, and details of the extent of the damage are yet to fully emerge.

The Emperor's traditional public New Year greeting event planned for today has been cancelled out of consideration, on what has suddenly turned from a festive into a somewhat sombre mood for the nation.

But my father-in-law - alongside millions of others not directly affected by the quake - will be relieved to know that the 'Hakone Ekiden' is going ahead as planned. Life must go on. That is particularly true in a country that is certainly no stranger to national disasters of various kinds. But that's a topic for another day!