Friday 13/2 – Sunday 15/2:
Friday night I headed out on my second snowboarding trip in Japan. This time with friends from the YSEP program, Sheng, Josh and Ben from America and Koo and Sunna from Korea. As last time we went to Shinjuku, and tock a night bus from a big bus station there. This time the bus was heated, so I got lots of sleep before we arrived in Hakuba.
In Hakuba we where greeted with the worst rain I have seen since the typhoon period we had when we first arrived here in September. By 8 o’clock, when the lifts started the rain wasn’t so bad as earlier, and everyone was pretty energetic about getting started so we went up in hills anyway. The first lift was a long gondola trip, which was kind of nice, considering the rain. I think it was my first time riding a gondola to. We went as high up as possible in search of snow, but we didn’t have any good luck with that. I soon got pretty wet, especially having to sit down when putting on the snowboard all the time. The snow was horrible to, mostly ice. And then I got separated from the rest, so not a good start on the day.
Then things started to look brighter, the rain stopped and instead there was a beautiful rainbow. It is probably the first time I have seen a rainbow out skiing, mainly because it was my first time skiing in rain. Then I found Koo and Sunna, which I snowboarded with the rest of the day. Sunna skied, and it was her first time in a long time, so we didn’t move fast down the hills. In addition to that the wheatear worsened again and we got strong wind that closed down most of the lifts. Koo snowboarded like me, and he was really good at it to, so I tock the opportunity and made him teach me some new tricks.
I learned jumping 180 degrees, from standing still, which was easier than I thought would be. And I also learned doing wheelie, and nose and tail rolls I think it is called, or something like ollie, which is the back of the board, and nollie, which is the front of the board. I am not really sure of the names, but the point was that you used the spring of the board and switched first 90 degrees using only the back or the front of the board, and later 180 degrees when you got the hang of it. I didn’t really got completely the hang of it, but sometimes it worked ^^
After skiing we went into town in search of an after ski or at least a bar. This ski resort was a lot more touristy than the last one, and was crawling with Australians in search of snow. Japanese people don’t really have after ski in the same sense as Europe and America (Korea also? I don’t know). I think most of them only party in their hotel rooms with friends, at least that was what we where doing the last time when we where only Japanese people. We found more evidence of this, as there were almost no Japanese people in town. There were not so many Australians either, so after a bear at a bar we went back to play cards the rest of the night.
The next day the weather was good, and we made the most of our last day. Sheng fell pretty bad once, and had to go down from the mountain midday. When the rest of us finished of we found out that he was still hurt, and not able to walk. After some discussion about what was best to do, we ended up taking a taxi to get painkillers for him, and then taking the bus back to Tokyo for Sheng to visit a hospital there. Hopefully he will be all right in not too long time.
Ben and Koo
Koo was always pretty easy to find, his pants had the same color as his hat. He also used a scarf over his face that made him look like a burglar. A lot of the Japanese people did it to, and I was told it was to avoid the sun. But personally I think they use it mostly because it looks cool :P
