Snowboarding at Rusutsu

Rusutsu resort offers you a wonderful blend of pretty high-end facilities, many runs spread over three mountains, great snow and hideous, nightmarish animatronics and carnival rides.





That tree thing was right there in the lobby, and all I ever heard were people saying "kowaii!" (scary!) I felt kind of sorry for the resort for splashing out on it - and then I remembered Dogs and Demons, the book I finished recently, and then I got a little depressed.

Snowboarding at Kiroro Resort

Insured and semi-ready. Back on the mountain - back in the snow:





I was delighted to find that I hadn't forgotten much, and that I could pick things up again fairly easily. Today however, is a pretty painful day for me.

Excuse me if I don't get up. I'm sure you can see yourselves out.

Tins and Fractures

Yeah, so apparently I'm not so invulnerable. And chewing on foil didn't magically strap adamantium to my bones.

NB: This is just a google image photo, not my actual x-ray.

I went to a small clinic in the middle of nowhere, where they kept the bandages in old food tins and the x-ray machine was yellowing with age, to get verification that I cracked a rib snowboarding last week. I'm strapped up, I've got cold compresses and drugs and I'm pretty optimistic I'm not going to die.

Fingers crossed!

The old clinic was very cool actually, it was clearly well run, clean and very good, it's just that everything in it was very old. I didn't mind, it was actually quite cool to see all that vintage stuff and the doctor in his modified recliner/swivel chair thing.

And now... taking it easy.

Pain from Teine

Sunday, snowboarding at Teine.





Teine is divided into two sections, Olympia at the bottom of the mountain (so named because it was used for the Winter Olympics way back in the day, that's the Olympic flame platform up there at the top) and Highland, which is at the top of the mountain. Olympia was kinda short and boring, even for me and I suck, but Highland looked interesting. However this time I found the snow unforgiving. Bruisingly so. Possibly rib-crackingly so. Ow. So, I'm in a great deal of pain today in at least... wait let me count... five places. It's not fun, but really, snowboarding was pretty fun.

Park Air! Go!

Today was the last day of the Snow Festival and also a public holiday so there was a lot going on. Park Air is a ridiculous looking snowboard jump erected in the middle of Sapporo and we got to witness the Park Air FINAL NIGHT SESSION! as the announcer informed us about fifty times. Since I have to work this weekend and can't go to the big super-star snowboarding competition Big Air it was cool to see this.

Ski-lift Self-portrait

And then today I went snowboarding and got really tired. So this is what you get.

Three Trees

Three trees at Kiroro Ski Resort:


Not much in the way of brainwork for these last two days because I went snowboarding all day, both days. I wasn't sure I could hack it but... I'm not dead or anything yet. As it was incredibly cold and snowed all day, the snow out in Kiroro was unbelievable by the end of the day. Light and fluffy and like cotton wool or clouds maybe. That's why I started snowboarding.

Snowboarding / Army / Damage

My snowboarding now is reaching dangerously extreme levels - just look what I did today:


Kapow! It was, of course, nothing too spectacular, I tried a turn I couldn't make and bent my board too much. It was fun getting a replacement disk though and showing the guys in the snowboarding shops what I'd done. My first blow out.

We went to Fu's today, which isn't great but I like it quite a lot. It's the Sapporo council owned ski slope and as such it's very cheap, is served by a full bus and often full of students. It's also really small and a bit too close to the city to get lots of good snow, but I still quite like the atmosphere there. It's mostly Japanese people, few foreigners and lots of kids who are always funny to be around. We got a lot of gawky stares today for whatever reason.

Also today was SDF ski training day:


Those guys are watching and grading his jump, most of them wiped out. The SDF is the Self Defence Force - that is, the Army. There were loads of them today, a bunch in proper camo like those guys above, and a whole bunch in plain khaki with super-plain standard issue white skis:


Actually, to be honest I'm not convinced that lot were the SDF. They probably were, but they were a less serious bunch than the guys in camo, who were hiking up hills and practicing cross country skiing too. Also the kids were cute, two of them tried to get us to understand their question by spelling out the Japanese word in English phonics which was an insane undertaking and we understood the question in Japanese to begin with.

James vs. The Snowy Apocalypse

James was like fuckin' king of the mountain when he went to Niseko last week, but even he could fall afoul of the deep powder snow. Tara took this incredible video of him dragging himself out, and I immediately pictured it as some epic journey, or perhaps the soundtrack to the end of the world:

That was ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead soundtracking that one, and next:

Danny Elfman's score to Nightbreed. Seriously, I could fill up about 2 and a half years of this here blog with these, there's just so much to work with: the lighting, the pacing, the human struggle... It's epic.

Snowboarding at Niseko Grand Hirafu

I'll put the set up soon on flickr.

The snow, it kept falling

Happy Birthday Akihito! Today was the current Emperor's birthday, which means it's a national holiday, so me and Yuki went snowboarding/short skiing. Yuki has these kinda half-length skis that don't require sticks and she was incredibly comfortable and natural swooshing from side to side down the mountain while I slowly ground down that learning curve.

The coolest thing today was the weather, it just did not stop snowing from the moment we got there to the moment we left. Here, Yuki demonstrates:


The theory here is that snow falls from the sky in big clumps and thus you have fresh snow to ski or snowboard on all day! Genius! Also, since it was a national holiday there were ten times as many people as I've ever had to deal with before and this time I was involved in zero collisions (last time a couple of people ran into me). I did still fall over a few times and, yes, fucked up my arm again as was probably inevitable, but it was very good practice for snowboarding around people without hitting them. Also, more snowboarders and skiers meant more beginners so there were some people worse than me, which was a new experience.


And yes, this next picture - while it seems blurry and possibly faked - is an actual shot of me snowboarding, caught by Yuki:


Hey! Guess what? It's totally Christmas eve tomorrow.

Rusutsu: Come for the winter sports, stay for the child-stealing ghost-ladies!

In winter in Hokkaido, there is lots of snow - this much I have made abundantly clear. And on the island with "the best powder snow in the world" (quote from... just about everybody), winter sports are a big deal. There are countless ski resorts in Hokkaido, so how, pray tell is one even supposed to tell them apart?

I saw posters for Rusutsu resort plastered all over the subway at the start of December, and I'm sure there'll be posters up for other destinations too, but as I was climbing out of a subway entrance I noticed that there were free DVDs stapled to one of the posters. I snagged the last one, and was delighted to find that rather than a boring tourism video, it's a weird collection of three slightly arty short films made to publicise the resort. The shorts are all set at the resort, and I think they might be having some kind of Short Film Festival out there this year, so I guess this is a nice tie in.

There are films from three different countries: Taiwan, Australia and Japan. I don't know how they chose those three countries to contribute, but it possibly ties into the fact that they are the three biggest tourist targets for Rusutsu. I mean, that might, maybe have some slight bearing on it. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

The Taiwanese film is the best. I mean, that's not saying much, but it's saying something. A cute Taiwanese girl eats a snickers bar:


...goes home, and reminisces about her recent holiday to Rusutsu. She went there on her own, apparently with no intention of skiing, but after a bunny-based meet-cute with a big-chinned Japanese hunk, she heads to the slopes. They have fun, she goes back to Taiwan and looks longingly at the snow-globe he gave her. It ain't gonna win the Palm D'Or, but it was nicely made and the girl was cute.

Don't worry, I can say that, my girlfriend thought she was cute too.

The Australian one was where the DVD lost its way. An Australian man returns to Rusutsu, where it seems his son went missing - presumed frozen to death or eaten by huskies or something - the previous month. It turns out that the kid was stolen by a snow-ghost-woman-thing, for reasons unknown, and that he wasn't returned because the father's hope was so tiny and futile. Look, here she's asking him:


If he had had a strong powerful hope, his son would've come back to him! So when he finally allows himself to hope that his son might be alive (when he's right in front of him), the son comes back to life and they play in the snow. There's a nice story in there somewhere I think... but this involves shoddy ghost effects and crap singing. It's shit.

Finally the Japanese short was a kind of comedy drama, where a new recruit to the Rusutsu ski patrol longs for adventure and excitement, and despairs of her goofy colleague. Of course when excitement comes calling she gets conked on the head by a ski and her goofy colleague turns out to be a stand up guy.


Oh, you'll eat those words missy.

Who knows, now that I'm learning snowboarding I might head out to Rusutsu this winter, and frankly this collection of weird films is a better ad for me than some kinda skiing/snowboarding montage could ever be.

Snowboarding on a Monday

Ah! Look at that! It's a beautiful day! The sun is shining, the sky is blue, there's fresh snow on the ground from yesterday - it can only mean one thing! :

Tastes like snowboarding!

So, this was my second time ever snowboarding, and man am I gonna hurt tomorrow. Seriously, it is not going to be pretty. I took one or two peachy falls today, and a whole boat load of smaller ones, so I'm pretty sure I'll be paying for that in the near future. However I had a fantastic time, and it was well worth the agony to go. Thankfully I also improved some again - I even linked some turns, rode both sides of the board and actually descended some parts of the mountain like an actual snowboarder might do, were he a particularly shit snowboarder. I mean I still feel like I've got a lo-o-o-ong way to go, but I have at least found some sign posts guiding me in the right direction now, mostly thanks to Sara, god bless her, who pretty much coached me for half the day. Luckily we weny on a Monday, early in the season so although conditions were perfect it was really quiet and I didn't have to worry too much about hitting other people. Which considering my board control is a real possibility.

Of course a lot of my motivation for learning to snowboard is to get closer to, to commune more with the snow. To learn it, love it, know it, be one with it... ahem. And the snow was gorgeous, although a couple of times I did go off course and ended up in a big white fluffy drift, which is softer on the arse but murder to climb out of. And also I want to go up mountains and high places, and boy do I get to do that:


Click to embiggen, then squint... that's the coast and the sea curving away in the distance. Views like that are so wonderous, it's worth the bumps just for them.

Countdown to Alex making a tit of himself!

Hey! These arrived today:


Yes, they're snowboard boots. I know they look like those special "Critter Stomping" boots you can get, but I assure you that these are snowboarding boots. I probably could stomp critters pretty good with them though.

And what this means is that I'm edging ever closer to actually going snowboarding again. And heaven forfend, actually taking it pretty seriously. It will end in tears, though whether they will be mine or yours, and whether they will be of joy or of woe - remains to be seen.

Snowboard Shopping on a Monday

You know what I'm going to do? God help me I'm going to go snowboarding this year. Like, more than once. I decided that since I love snow so much, I have to find a new way to worship at its altar, and that way will be painful and expensive.

Because of course if I'm gonna be serious I need the gear and that ain't cheap. I'm pretty sure I can do it financially, but just finding stuff in my size here is proving really difficult. Today I trekked around a bunch of places with some success, but plenty of frustration. Boots in my size? Just utterly impossible to find here. The clothes I should be ok for though.

One of the places we went to was the Ario shopping mall, because someone told someone that there was a snowboarding shop there. There wasn't but still we had fun. Ario was really quiet because it was monday, but there were still a few people:


I found some snow-sneakers in my size but couldn't bring myself to buy them... I'm splashing out so much on the snowboard gear I need to pinch a lot of pennies I reckon. Tara however, found THE WORLD'S GREATEST SHOES!

Do they work?

Kind of!

On our way back to town we had to take a tunnel under a railway line. I'd like to think I'm not superstitious, but the gaping maw, the orange glow and the roar of machinery that greeted our approach did somewhat make me think of the entrance to hell. Olivia and Tara had to hold hands:

Also fun was that we popped into the other Evisu store in Sapporo, the one I didn't get my jeans from, while I was wearing my fancy Evisu jeans. The woman working there talked to me about them, and at one point thanked me for buying them, which was a little odd as I got them a few months ago now. Pleasant though!

MaXtreme Snowboarding X

So yes, against my physical disposition, and against my God given instincts I went snowboarding for the first time on Sunday. And of course I was lucky that I went along because I had a great time in spite of my cold, and in spite of the terrible, torturous, muscle pain that has afflicted me ever since.

I’m laying it on a bit thick, but thanks to the use of muscles that my body has never required before, and then perhaps… possibly drinking too much at Chris’s Flatwarming party, I felt today like I had been hit – not only by a truck – but by a truck filled with booze.

Gah.


Seriously, about those muscles, I’m pretty concerned. It’s good to get fit, and work out parts of your body that don’t normally get exercise; but the human body didn’t evolve to staple its feet to a plank of wood and hurtle down a hill. I’m not saying that the activity itself is unnatural, I’m just wondering if we might be developing parts of our bodies that aren’t really required in any other activity. I keep thinking of Frank Zappa’s high school pal who found the guide to muscles of the body and set about developing all the unnecessary ones, until he was a total freak. Then again I guess the proliferation of hot snowboarders out there should pretty much set my mind at ease.

The muscles that take the most abuse, of course, are your arms because you’re having to push yourself up every time you fall over. And for me that was pretty much every time. I had the hang of keeping myself upright for the most part by the end of the day, and could descend in one way or another, but my moments of perfect execution were few and far between. After I had the hang of sort of shuffling from side to side, I tried angling myself a little more directly down the hill. The speed was amazing, but I could only stop by falling over. Which, y’know… works. Ow.

Picking things up wasn’t actually as grindingly frustrating as I’d thought. Thanks to my teachers (Olivia & Sara, take a bow) and a pretty steep learning curve, I found that actually staying on your feet in the snow, which at first seems impossible, actually came pretty quickly. Also I was told things were tricky for me because of my high centre of gravity, I really had to crouch down for control sometimes. Gravity: my closest friend, my most vicious enemy. And if only that was the first time I’d had to use that sentence.

The other thing about snowboarding, or skiing even, is that it's worth it for the view alone. Seriously, somebody put a lift into the side of that mountain so you can go all the way to the top and take a look. Now all you've got to do is get back down without killing yourself. Oh wait, we're going to stick your feet to this carbon fibre board too. Off you go.

Tips for first time snowboarders:

From Yoko – keep some chocolates in your pocket. This didn’t sound so useful at first, but man I wish I’d had something up there to keep my blood-sugar up, because I must’ve sugar-crashed half a dozen times.

Bend your legs. No, more. More.

You don’t get bonus points for taking out kids. In fact, apparently you don’t get any points for taking out anyone. I’m not sure where I got that idea from, but I was pretty disappointed. Back to throwing bricks at skateboarders I guess.