Brutal but Fun

Woaw. All you do is look away for a moment and 2 weeks pass with no update. How did that happen?

Well I’ve been pretty busy keeping busy. Last weekend was another ski trip, and another reason why I’m glad I’m living overseas. Unfortunately I’ve no pictures of the amazing landscapes. The snow covered mountains and valleys are really such spectacular sights.

We got up at 5am, which for a Saturday morning is an event in itself. Shower & a shave saw us out the door for the 6am train to Tokyo Station. This was followed by an hour and 12-minute bullet train ride (while eating the scrumptious breakfast sandwiches Mari made) to Yuzawa, a place that has had a shit load of snow dumped on it.

The snow was piled high in the town. And I mean high. There has been an extraordinary amount of snow this year. If you’ve seen any Japanese news you’ll know that well over a hundred people have died from snow-related incidents (falling off roofs, collapsing roofs, etc.) In the center of the streets were pop up sprinklers that watered the roads to melt the snow. That was one thing I’d never seen before.

A 5-minute courtesy bus ride got us to the ski slope. Inside worked a comedian who was masquerading as one of the staff. He must have been at least 60, and enjoyed making jokes and chatting with everyone. I think he quite swept Mari off her feet, the old smoothie. I’d only gotten as far as writing my first name on the ski rental form, when he declared me to be Robert De Niro, and for the rest of the day referred to me as De Niro-san.

Mari decided to take a ski lesson so we agreed to meet up at 12:30 to eat lunch (a delicious bento box again made by Mari). I rode the gondola up the mountain to the midpoint. The upper slopes were closed because of the amount of snow. It was simply too dangerous for people to ski them. I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

It was windy and a complete whiteout on exiting the gondola. “Hmmm, interesting”, I thought. After a few seconds the wind died down and I could look down the slope at the 20 or so bodies strewn about. Snowboarders and skiers alike seemed to have come a cropper. Again I thought, “Hmmm, interesting. I wonder what happened to them. Oh well, nothing for it.” So down I went.

I quickly found out what had befallen them. Within seconds my knees were covered in snow. Then it was up to my thighs and I was tumbling over, to disappear completely under snow. The fresh snow was so deep and powdery. I’m new to skiing and have never experienced snow this deep. It was fantastic, and would have been even better if I’d had the skill to ski it. Instead I merely lost a ski and a pole somewhere under the whiteness. A snowboarder came tumbling alongside me, got up, saw me digging for my stuff and asked me if I was ok. After I answered I was all right he took off down the mountain only to tumble over again after about 40 meters.

And so the first hour was spent in a series of tumbles and ski / pole retrievals as I tried to ski a slope that was too steep, too bumpy, and covered with way too much snow.

Persistence is a wonderful teacher, but so is exhaustion. Underneath my skiwear I was soaked in sweat and my ass was getting sore, but not from the exercise. I kept landing on it. I realized that I couldn’t keep skiing here. It was way too difficult for me. Going to the ski lodge for a breather I’d decided to swallow my pride and take the gondola down to the “family” slope.

But in the lodge I met Mari, whose ski lesson group was also taking a rest. She informed me that there was another lift, so I decided to give that one a try before joining the kids in the wading pool. Ten minutes of drying the sweat out in front of the heater and a coffee and my false confidence was restored.

The 2nd lift turned out to be perfect for me. The slope was kinder, and by now much of the snow was becoming flattened by the increasing number of skiers. My second hour left me with a smile on my face on the gondola ride down to lunch.

Over lunch Mari explained some of the stuff she’d learnt in the lesson. She talked about practicing without the poles, and her and the lesson group had spent some time on doing this. Inadvertently it was to become my afternoon’s exercise.

On the first ski lift back up to the top I dropped my pole. Bugger. So I had to ski down with only 1 pole. But the pole-dropping stupidity turned out to be serendipitous. I found that without poles I could barely ski at all. I never realized how much I was relying on them. On the next ride up Mari explained what she had learnt in the lesson about skiing without poles. And so we spent the rest of the afternoon following each other down the slope to check each other’s form when using no poles.

This brought a great improvement in keeping my skis together. I finished the day very happy with what I’d learnt. Apart from the whiteout, pole-less skiing, and the deep snow, other skiing firsts for me were a jump by myself (v. small and unintentional - hardly worth mentioning), and backward skiing followed by 360s (by someone who obviously has much more talent than myself). That was pretty impressive.

We had such fun that we wanted to go back to Yuzawa as soon as possible. We have a plan for tomorrow, so this weekend was out. And next weekend’s trains were fully booked, so we had to settle for the 18th. Sigh. Three weeks between skis, but it can’t be helped. Maybe my hips will have recovered by then. I fell badly once (or many, many times) and my hip joints complain whenever I try to stretch my legs.

In other non-ski news Allan and I watched The Legend of Zorro. Leave your brain and expectations at the door and you may enjoy the silliness. At least the spicy ramen for dinner and the post-movie coffee and chat helped offset the price of admission. Plus U2 are coming to Yokohama on the 4th of April, and Ted, Sumie, Mari and I got 4 tickets to see them. And we’ll be using those tickets to see them, too. So there.

Oh, and my brother has blogged again! Yes, a little over 5 months between posts, but don't give up on him yet folks. He makes some vague promises about doing it again. Maybe a comment or two will encourage him?