I went at the end of last week with Alan who was up visiting from Kyoto. (Alan and I went to high school together.) That was a nice easy day – Alan wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous.

Sunday night Michael and Bjorn knock on my door and ask me if I want to go to to Yamagata Zao for a couple of days. 17,000 yen (about $150) for 2 day passes, two home-cooked meals, and a place to sleep. Not too shabby.

山形 (Yamagata) Zao ski resort has about 40 lifts, 5 of which are gondolas, and what looked like some pretty promising boarding. Equipment problems, 70 mph wind gusts and temperatures below -10 C changed that, though.

I had borrowed a board from the school, and the bindings were giving me all kinds of trouble, and my gloves quickly turned into mittens after fingers start to freeze together.

The first day, the top of the mountain is closed because of wind, but we had a few good runs around the mountain. The second day let us see the top (with almost zero visibility – you could only see about 5-10 m away), and a couple of 30 degree slopes. Powder was pretty good in some spots, but there was ice aplenty.

I just got back from a little trip to my favorite resort (面白山 Omosiroyama), where they still had some of the foot of snow they got this week. Powder was pretty solid in spots, more equipment problems, but I felt pretty good overall. I found myself tackling some slopes I didn’t think I would be able to handle this season. A few sections were steep enough that you could reach out horizontally to touch the mountain as you’re riding down! That was pretty awesome.

I left a little early (around 3), and while waiting for the train, a couple in their 50′s approached me and started making conversation. We talked about where I was from, and my major, what they did before they retired, etc., and then the woman remarked that I looked like Tom Cruise. “He looks like he could be his kid!” the man replied.

Call me crazy, but I think I’m a far cry from Tom Cruise (I’m pictured in what I was wearing at the time):

The whole thing reminded me of the following Family Guy clip:

I admit that when I first got here, I had some of the All-Japanese-People-Look-The-Same syndrome going on, but now I find it pretty easy to recognize my Asian compadres.

- Tom Cruise

The site I use to get all such information (http://snowjapan.com), said that they are in fact a resort, and gives me all this information, including that they are 5 minutes from the nearest train station (八ツ森駅). The price is right, and it’s not a 2-hour trek like the last place I went to. (To which I went, I suppose.)

8:10 – Hop on train. ~35 minute ride ahead
8:50 – We haven’t stopped, but everyone carrying a snowboard (about half the people on the train) is still on, so hopes are up. Internet information is sometimes wrong, after all.
9:00 – All the boarders get off the train, at a station whose name I don’t recognize. There is no one to take your train ticket (they use the honor system a lot here, and don’t make a fuss if you’re dishonest. Especially if you’re a stupid 外人 – lit. foreigner, more along the lines of “white devil”.) I walk about 10 meters, following the other people, and I find myself at a ski lift. I may have my ski trip after all.

I had been planning on using the ATM in the town I was planning on visiting, but this town doesn’t have one. None of the businesses I’ve come across in Japan take credit cards, and ATMs close at about 6:00 PM, and don’t open until about 9:00 AM. (I thought the point of an ATM was that it doesn’t need to go home and eat dinner with its family. I can understand them being closed if there are a lot of muggings, but this is Japan.) I’m told the nearest ATM is two towns (and train stops back the way I came), so I keep my ticket, and just hop on the next train back.

I get back to the resort Omosiri-yama (面白山) with money around 10:00, get a rental, a coin locker, and I’m on a lift by 10:10.

I fell a lot on my first run, but after that, I fell maybe 30 times the rest of the day. I played it pretty easy at first, getting warmed up, and then I decided to try and hit the powder (of which there was A LOT). There were these little hills I guess you’d call them, lining the runs, and just stacked with powder, so monkey see other boarders doing this, monkey try. They’d get up the velocity and either try to go up and jump to the other side, or just come back down with a huge velocity. A lot of crashing, but to my surprise, it’s soft and cushy! There is no pain – only cold powder spraying your face and getting in your coat.

I spent most of the rest of the day on the intermediate and advanced runs where I got a lot of powder experience. The speeds and slopes I can handle are really really picking up, and I felt really good on a lot of the runs.

Biggest achievements:

1. Improved speed and balance.
2. Standing up parallel to the course instead of standing up, stalling, and then turning the board.
3. No yard sales.

Next weekend I’m taking some friends back, because it’s super close, and really affordable, and great slopes and snow.

Wednesday I talked to Keith and he said that he was going skiing with a bunch of friends Thursday through Friday, and I was welcome to tag along, and so I called Collin (a kid I know from Wyoming) to see if he was interested. Keith was planning to go to the town, spend the night, ski, sleep, ski and come back, but Collin and I decided we’d try to get there in time to hit the slopes, and then spend the night, go again, and then come back. Unfortunately, it was about 1:00 AM when we got everything together, and had to catch a 6:30 train.

Little sleep that night – too excited, and no sleep on the train. We get there around 10, get everything in order, get geared up and go for it. The night before I read an online “tutorial” on snowboarding, but that can only “prepare” you so much. I (admittedly a little recklessly) ignored the tutorials suggestion, and just jumped on the beginner course. A lot of wipe-outs, goggles and hat flying everywhere, but I figured the best way to learn is try it, do your best, and get my hindquarters handed to me by the mountain.

By the end of the day, I was going down the intermediate run (very slowly and wiping out a lot), but I was enjoying myself. We got some food and checked into the hotel. Speaking of which, the room we got was enormous and way way better than our apartments. Also, very Japanese.

Second day, and lots of Tylenol and Ibuprofen later, we get on the mountain just as they open, and I’m starting to go a lot faster, and catching about 1/8 the number of edges as I was the day before. Go up to the very top (all intermediate runs), and the view is spectacular. Almost as beautiful as the Rockies, but not quite.

We had to stop around 3:30 to get our rentals in and catch the last bus at 4. We get home around 7, and I stuffed my face, went to bed, and then when I woke up, all my joints had turned to bone.

Will I do it again? Absolutely. As much and as often as my body can afford.

It’s about $150 US for transportation, a day of snowboarding with rentals, a hotel, another day of snowboarding, and then transportation back. I don’t think that’s too bad relative to the JASSO scholarship.

I feel like a total nerd, but I actually went online and read a tutorial on snowboarding before packing my backpack and getting some shut-eye. We leave for the train station in about four and a half hours, and we should be on the mountain by 9:30 or so. Exciting!

If I’m still alive, I will post pictures.