[Warning: snowboard intense slang ahead!]

Snowboarding in Japan is definitely an amusing experience; to me at least, with 17 years of experience.

The first thing I noticed when going to Ikebukuro to hop on the bus was that there’s like a million kids all going at the same time. In the US, when you go to the mountain, there are a lot of people from all ages, but the place where we went to only had young kids from teenage to maybe late 20s at the oldest. The bus makes two stops on the way, American rest stop style, and each time it was just packed with kids coming from the mountains. Its like everyone takes a vacation at the same time, and does the exact same thing each time.

The second thing I noticed was the lack of fences — anywhere. There were so many runs that could easily kill someone if you fell off the side. It was quite exciting actually. I got to take advantage of that fact and had some nice cliff bombs.

The place we stayed at, for the price, was actually quite nice. Hard to complain when you get breakfast and dinner, of course Japanese style, and a nice bathhouse room pumping fresh mountain spring water from the aquifers that seem to exist all over Japan. We slept four to a room, Japanese style with tatami mats all over and crashing out on futons with bean pillows. It was quite nice to get out of Tokyo and get back to nature.

The rental snowboards were actually of pretty piss poor quality when compared to the US, which I found both startling and completely expected. I mean — the kids here suck [which comes later], so why would they know the first thing about what a nice board should and will feel like? The boards were mostly covered in scratches head to toe, piece of crap bindings, boots that were from the Regan administration era, and edges that couldn’t cut your skin if you hammered your fist into it.

The most surprising, as hinted at earlier, was the complete and absolute level of suck that exists. For the price, about 50 dollars for two all-day passes, the facilities and snow quality was extremely surprising. If you went off course at any point you were greeted with at least five feet of fresh puffy powder snow. With more skilled friends and my board in tow, I would have been doing glade runs all day.

But these kids suck. Seriously. They spent at least 50% of the time sitting on their ass in the snow. I know in Japan if it is not your “thing” then you are not dedicated. It is a shame really, because snowboarding really isn’t my “thing” either but yet I could board circles around 99.9% of these kids. I saw one REAL rider the entire time, and only for a fleeting second, and all he did was switch 180 on like a three foot table to a clean front side 360 on the six foot table in the only nice rhythm section in the park. I did not see anyone attempting the 10-foot table once, which was a shame because the landing was nice fresh untouched powder. Again, had I brought my own equipment I would have never stopped shredding that hit.

I was prepared for that but what depressed me the most was, as I have complained about previously, was the “sameness” to everything that we did. From the bus, to the hotel we stayed at, to the bathhouses, the mountains, rental equipment, everything had this strange sameness to it that resonated a deep chord in my soul that I really do not like.

The town the resort exists in is quite interesting too. See, Japan has a huge problem with the aging population and declining birth rate, much like other countries, and this town was a perfect example of that. All of the young kids have since gone off to college in Tokyo, and left the old people to die [seriously]. There are hoards of abandoned rotting houses. Well, the might not even be abandoned but due to the lack of footprints in the snow, that was the only conclusion I could come up with. This is like one of those towns that are always on the news in Japan, because whenever it snows really hard in places like that, huge numbers of old people die because they either freeze to death or starve.

Once again I am reminded why I am glad I am not Japanese.

The Warrior Diet
Basically this diet can be summarized into a single sentence.

Eat like a Paleolithic man.

So far I am on day 2. I started a blog on Google’s Blogger but I think I should update here when I am bored as well. I will back post day 1 and 2 for your reading pleasure.

Day 1—
Yet another one of many blogs I have spread out across the internet, this one in particular deals with the new diet I have recently found called the “Warrior Diet.” The concept is quite simple; bring humans back to the Paleolithic period, and eat like they did. For the Google Book click here.

So far, I am still eating my normal breakfast, reduced fat milk and bran cereal, followed up by some coffee. For lunch, I have a banana in my pocket. Right now, I am really hungry. Let us see how this goes!

Stats:
167cm
66kg
Military Press: 40kg
Push Press: 50kg

Day 2—
Last night I kind of splurged a little and ate Japanese okonomiyake for dinner. Basically a mix of water, flour, egg, cabbage, tuna, and little pieces of bacon all tossed together into a frying pan, lightly cooked with a dab of oil so it does not stick, and topped with some special okonomiyake sauce and mayonnaise. It was quite delicious.

Now it is about 12 o’clock and I am really hungry. So far all I have ingested was coffee. I have a banana in my bag that is looking more and more delicious as the day goes on. I do notice a much higher level of alertness than I usually exhibit at this time of day, but I must admit it might possibly be due to the coffee and nothing else.

I feel like I should be getting some better fruits that do not have a very high glycemic level. Most likely I will end up switching to grapefruit and oranges for the high fiber levels.

The story continues! 伝説をつづく

So I had this really long essay on snowboarding in Japan, but I forgot it at home. So stay tuned. Check out my flickr on the right side for the pictures.