Snowboarding -- It always hurts the first time

I used to hate winter sports with a passion. Might have something to do with the fact that as a kid I had tackled a black diamond hill after only a day’s worth of ski lessons, and then proceed to try to steer using the `snow plough` method (skis in, making a `V`) while going about 100 km/h. It didn’t go so well. Thank god there were large bags of leaves marking the way – I managed to grab one of these and hold on tight as I rolled down the rest of the hill, my skis sliding gracefully ahead of me. As I slid to a stop at the base of the hill my mother came running up to me pale and clearly on the verge of heart failure at having witnessed the whole thing, and when she saw I was alive, started to yell at my brother for having let me go on one of the toughest slopes. The bag of leaves had to be pried away from my arms. I was around 14 when all this happened and I had not set foot on a ski slope since then.

The thing is though, Japan has lots of good skiing and snowboarding places really close by and it seems that everyone goes. It is the thing to do in winter. Last year I managed to avoid going by hibernating in Shimabara with a bottle of whiskey. Though I did go hiking in the ice of Unzen one time, which turned out to be lots of fun. This year however, having been persuaded through Aaron`s numerous tales of winter fun, I decided to finally give snowboarding a try.

And so it was, last Saturday morning, Aaron, Hayden, Shawna and I all set out for Tenzan, which is a small ski resort about two hours away. Aaron and Hayden are like pros and can do all kinds of fancy crap with their boards. Shawna didn’t have much experience but given that she’s one of those people that can annoyingly do anything she tries well, she was soon taking her board off jumps and stuff too.

As for me, I went to the bunny slope, tied myself in, tried to stand up, slipped, and slid into an ungraceful pile with my board now lying on top. Trying kindly not to laugh at me, Aaron offered to give me some lessons. Lucky for me, the guy is a good teacher and soon I had learned to stand up, stop and slowly turn. After an hour Aaron thought I was ready to tackle the real hills. Suddenly getting flashbacks to my youthful experience I looked at him apprehensively. He appealed to my pride though (by insinuating that my samurai spirit was lacking) and so soon I was defiantly, though nervously, sitting on a ski lift to the top of the mountain.

Getting off the lift is no easy thing either and Aaron warned me that I would fall because everyone does. Still a fall would have been a step up from the face-first-board-over-head, highly unladylike flop that resulted. On top of that, my tangled body couldn’t move fast enough out of the way after and so the people behind me on the lift ended up taking flips over the obstacle that was me, resulting in a bit of a mountainous pile up. I felt sheepish, but after a few billion `Sumimasen`s and `Gommennasai!!`s, I was finally ready to descend the slope.

The first time down was slow and I spent more of the descent on my ass than on the snowboard. The second time was a lot better though, and by the third and fourth times I was doing something that actually resembled snowboarding. And you know what? I loved it! It is one of the most fun things I have ever tried and I totally want to keep doing it. Over the next few weeks I already have two more trips planned.

That night, after a brief stop at a much needed onsen (I am getting very good at power-onsening lately) the four of us were ready to go out. We went to a packed party in Nag and proceeded to get drunk. I was exhausted but managed to bounce back with some music and a few drinks. The next morning was a whole other matter though – immediately upon waking I suddenly became aware of the fact that I couldn’t move at all. Everything hurt and large parts of me were bruised as well. The next few days were decidedly painful but I pulled through. I am hoping next time will be a faster recovery time, but thankfully I just got a new shipment of Canadian grade painkillers, so if it’s not, I will be too drugged up to know.