Will post more soon, but the main news is that I got married, to my Japanese snowboarding boyfriend! We are currently negotiating a mortgage for the house we want to buy, and so far have managed to avoid having a large, sparkly party. We may get wedding photos done at a studio next weekend, we haven't decided yet. If so, we will rent a tuxedo and large and utterly ridiculous gown and have some photos taken by a professional (my husband has a coupon, apparently, so hair and make-up is included).
Other than that, can't wait for it to get just a little warmer on the weekends so that I can go swimming in the sea again. For health reasons, I can't join my other friends, who are hiking up and still snowboarding on the higher peaks, even this late in the year.
We had that much snow last winter!
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Monday, 11 March 2013
2 years after the quake
I'm still here living in Japan.
I re-read some of my posts from 2 years ago today and the feelings all flood back. I think at the time I had a tremendous sense of disbelief, despite feeling the quakes and aftershocks. I wanted to stay positive, and at the same time I felt like I needed to be alert, to act sensibly in any crisis that arose. I didn't really allow myself to dwell on the fate of the people who were consumed by the tsunami. I thought more about those people over the course of the months that followed, and I still sometimes think about them at times. Last year I often went to the seashore at weekends and I visited my boyfriends house. The village there is right across the road from the beach, at the foot of some hills, with a lighthouse on a rocky outcrop. Two family members were lost to a tsunami there about 20 years ago.
It seems that there are still people in the areas hit worst by the 2011 tsunami who are still living in temporary housing and are despairing of their lives getting better. I hope that the spending that the current prime minister has been talking about can be used to help them.
I still want to be positive and look forward. I still want to live in Japan and snowboard and learn Japanese and carry on with my life, whilst contributing to society here. I have spent some of the happiest times of my life right here.
This winter has been an epic season for snowboarding, and it is still snowing! There continue to be blizzards and deep snow. It has been less than good news for the city of Sapporo, as they have spent millions on snow clearance. On the other hand, the Snow Festival this year was a great success. The residents of Hokkaido that shovel snow have been getting some crazy muscles keeping entrances to houses and garages clear. I am kind of in awe of the little old ladies busily chucking huge shovelfuls of snow around like they are weightlifters or something!!
This season has been kind of different for me personally, too. I blogged a little bit about this before, but in the past I counted the number of days I snowboarded and had a target of 100 days, and I had tricks I wanted to learn etc etc.
This year, I had to see how my arm mended before I could get into the season, so I decided to take the pressure off. I also wanted to ride with my boyfriend, who doesn't live in Sapporo, so I ended up going to lots of different places and focusing on free-riding, rather than the same hill and trying jumps or whatever. When I have been doing jumps, I took a couple of coaching sessions and I went back to working on basics again. Same with the boxes and rails.
Here's what I've noticed. I've still had great days, and I've had fewer days when I've felt really frustrated about my abilities.
It's hard at my stage to see when I've improved, unless I acquire new tricks that I haven't done before, but I feel like this season my skills are more established and I have a more solid base to progress from, so to speak. I haven't scared myself so much, so I haven't had so many adrenaline rushes, and I've kind of missed that, if I'm honest. I also haven't had so many times when I've been trying something entirely new and felt like I was in the zone...until last week when I went to No Rickers snow park and worked on boardslides and suddenly got a whole lot better at those and it was so satisfying.
I think now that we're getting closer to the end of the season, I'm looking back and thinking that this season was probably the most enjoyable overall. I haven't had so many adrenaline "hits" and psychological goodies from that, but it has been really fun and productive. I was originally planning to go back to being more goal-focused again next season, but now I want to re-consider what I think of as "goals". Probably in the past I've just been too overambitious and taken the fun out of it.
The next couple of months will be when the powder snow gets scarcer and the landings of jumps get that bit softer. There has been so much snow this winter that I think that Nakayamatouge ski area might be open at the weekends until almost the end of May...so there's still plenty of time....
I re-read some of my posts from 2 years ago today and the feelings all flood back. I think at the time I had a tremendous sense of disbelief, despite feeling the quakes and aftershocks. I wanted to stay positive, and at the same time I felt like I needed to be alert, to act sensibly in any crisis that arose. I didn't really allow myself to dwell on the fate of the people who were consumed by the tsunami. I thought more about those people over the course of the months that followed, and I still sometimes think about them at times. Last year I often went to the seashore at weekends and I visited my boyfriends house. The village there is right across the road from the beach, at the foot of some hills, with a lighthouse on a rocky outcrop. Two family members were lost to a tsunami there about 20 years ago.
It seems that there are still people in the areas hit worst by the 2011 tsunami who are still living in temporary housing and are despairing of their lives getting better. I hope that the spending that the current prime minister has been talking about can be used to help them.
I still want to be positive and look forward. I still want to live in Japan and snowboard and learn Japanese and carry on with my life, whilst contributing to society here. I have spent some of the happiest times of my life right here.
This winter has been an epic season for snowboarding, and it is still snowing! There continue to be blizzards and deep snow. It has been less than good news for the city of Sapporo, as they have spent millions on snow clearance. On the other hand, the Snow Festival this year was a great success. The residents of Hokkaido that shovel snow have been getting some crazy muscles keeping entrances to houses and garages clear. I am kind of in awe of the little old ladies busily chucking huge shovelfuls of snow around like they are weightlifters or something!!
This season has been kind of different for me personally, too. I blogged a little bit about this before, but in the past I counted the number of days I snowboarded and had a target of 100 days, and I had tricks I wanted to learn etc etc.
This year, I had to see how my arm mended before I could get into the season, so I decided to take the pressure off. I also wanted to ride with my boyfriend, who doesn't live in Sapporo, so I ended up going to lots of different places and focusing on free-riding, rather than the same hill and trying jumps or whatever. When I have been doing jumps, I took a couple of coaching sessions and I went back to working on basics again. Same with the boxes and rails.
Here's what I've noticed. I've still had great days, and I've had fewer days when I've felt really frustrated about my abilities.
It's hard at my stage to see when I've improved, unless I acquire new tricks that I haven't done before, but I feel like this season my skills are more established and I have a more solid base to progress from, so to speak. I haven't scared myself so much, so I haven't had so many adrenaline rushes, and I've kind of missed that, if I'm honest. I also haven't had so many times when I've been trying something entirely new and felt like I was in the zone...until last week when I went to No Rickers snow park and worked on boardslides and suddenly got a whole lot better at those and it was so satisfying.
I think now that we're getting closer to the end of the season, I'm looking back and thinking that this season was probably the most enjoyable overall. I haven't had so many adrenaline "hits" and psychological goodies from that, but it has been really fun and productive. I was originally planning to go back to being more goal-focused again next season, but now I want to re-consider what I think of as "goals". Probably in the past I've just been too overambitious and taken the fun out of it.
The next couple of months will be when the powder snow gets scarcer and the landings of jumps get that bit softer. There has been so much snow this winter that I think that Nakayamatouge ski area might be open at the weekends until almost the end of May...so there's still plenty of time....
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
A belated Happy New Year!
We had an epic December in Sapporo, one of the snowiest on record. In Niseko, even more snow.
I was lucky to get the OK for my wrist just in time for some amazing powder days.
In Rusutsu one day, I even had a bit of a scare.
It was snowing like crazy, tracks filling in quickly right after they were made, visibility nil. My goggles kept freezing between the lenses (3rd season of wearing the same cheap goggles which have been brilliant up till now) and the wind was also blowing up a storm of white. On our way back from Isola, we took a wrong turning and wound up across from the gondola with what looked like a bunch of bushes in between. There was a 'keep out' sign but we chose to ignore this, and cut across. I got stuck amongst the bushes and signalled to my friend how to get across so he made it out, but then I managed to unstrap my board and was trying to wade across. It was hip-deep everywhere, but suddenly, I dropped down and there was nothing under me, I held the board across some branches to keep myself from sinking further, and flailed like crazy, grabbing at branches which were small and frozen and kept snapping. I was up to my neck, with one arm across my wedged board, and one foot with a hold on the inside of what must have been a tree-well, but the other foot had nothing underneath, and my other arm couldn't get hold of anything solid. I held on for a moment and then gradually started trying to get myself out, moving slowly so as to not slide down further. I got more and more exhausted, and the wind was howling and I couldn't see the course several metres away where my friend was waiting. I was quite frightened at that point.
He said later that he occasionally could just see my head and one arm, and then the snow would blow across again and he couldn't see anything.
It took me about half an hour to struggle my way onto relatively solid ground. I was totally spent, and flopped over in the snow. After a while I was getting cold so I got up again, and made a vague effort to complete the last few metres of the journey back to the course, and then had a melt-down, crying and swearing. My friend waded out to where I was and helped me drag my board to where it was knee-deep rather than hip-deep, and I strapped back in to slide the last 50 metres or so to the gondola steps. Part of my cheek had turned white from cold and my hair was all frozen except under my helmet.
Lesson learnt. Respect the mountain.
A little after that, the boyfriend and I went to Niseko Moiwa. It was another deep powder day, with some sunshine from time to time. This was when he suddenly found his powder legs and he never looked back after that. He's addicted and wants to go off-course whenever possible. We've been back to Niseko Moiwa about 3 times since then and it has been so fun every time. Niseko has at least 9 metres snow depth, it's a lot even for Hokkaido. The snow is higher than the car roof wherever you drive. Another time we went to Niseko Chisenupuri, my first time there. It's a one-lift ski area with lots of powder and a truly great hot springs at the base of the mountain with 11 outside baths. There's a campaign at the moment to try to keep Chisenupuri open, because it's so small they are having trouble making ends meet, despite having some amazing conditions and lots of people who make the trip specially to go there. It's one of the most outlying and natural parts of Niseko.
I think I'll invest in an avalanche training course next season if I can.
We had a few warm days the weekend before last, swiftly followed by another dump of powder snow, about 60cms in 4 hours according to my calculation from digging the car out. This has meant that all of Hokkaido is on avalanche alert and last weekend there were high winds, which didn't help matters as the wind carved out some hollows under heavy slabs. I heard on the news that some people ignored warnings and lost their lives as a result. There is plenty of snow, but it needs to stabilize.
One of my intentions for this season was to take more lessons to improve my technique. You would think that, after spending money on it and fully intending to get something out of it, I would be the most teachable student in the class. Not so. It turns out that I get very frustrated with carving. I don't have the sort of meticulous attention to detail that many people here have. I want to see results fast, and if someone tells me something isn't right, I want them to explain what isn't right, and then give me lots of tips on how to fix it, dammit. My main problem initially was that I was sceptical about whether learning to carve properly would help me to...er...do cool tricks. Because in fact, I didn't realize until now that a major reason for snowboarding for me is that I want to be able to rock some jump tricks with style and ease...isn't that why everyone wants to be a snowboarder?
Well, for some people here, carving is a cool thing in and of itself. For them, the centrifugal force of the turn is the big thing. They even embrace the wearing of hard boots.
I don't think I will ever be filled with enough enthusiasm to go that far with carving, but I have noticed that since taking these lessons, my control at speed has improved a LOT. I can also see how carving will help my approach to jumps. My attitude in lessons still kind of sucks, though. I don't like practicing lots of turns. Whenever I'm doing that, I'm thinking about doing a jump or something else, and I'm frustrated about jumping because I haven't practiced that much yet this year. Next week I'll get going on that, and hopefully get a free-style lesson at Asarigawa-onsen ski area. I love the hit park there.
I'm trying a new thing this season where I don't track how many days I've snowboarded. In previous seasons, the goal was always 100 days, and it was a good way to motivate myself to get out of bed on days I wasn't really feeling it. This season I haven't set much in the way of concrete goals, which is contrary to many sports psychologists' thinking. I want to improve my skills, but I don't want to do so many night sessions practicing by myself because it can be demotivating for me. I need feedback and positive vibes from riding with friends.
Just snowboarding was a big deal the first few seasons but when you want to hit jumps and no-ones there with you, it isn't easy to get your dander up, it's much easier to keep putting off trying something new. It's also difficult to judge what speed to hit a jump when no-one else is hitting it before you. Not many people were hitting jumps at all the last few times I went.
I guess my thing with not setting hard goals this season comes from getting frustrated with missing goals in the past to the point where I couldn't focus on doing what I needed to do to improve. I just got angry with myself and had to stop altogether and do something else instead. I know what tricks I want to do without needing to set a timescale to it, I think about those tricks a lot anyway, probably every time I snowboard, so there's no point. I think I might enjoy snowboarding more if I spent less time thinking that way and more time just being in the moment and aware of nature.
The weekend before last, I was snowboarding in the deep powder amongst the trees a bit further out from the courses, where we couldn't hear the music or lifts or anything anymore and the snow ahead of us was totally untouched. The sun came out and everything sparkled in the silence. I turned to my boyfriend and said 'Do you feel that?' and he said; 'Yes. Nature.'
I was lucky to get the OK for my wrist just in time for some amazing powder days.
In Rusutsu one day, I even had a bit of a scare.
It was snowing like crazy, tracks filling in quickly right after they were made, visibility nil. My goggles kept freezing between the lenses (3rd season of wearing the same cheap goggles which have been brilliant up till now) and the wind was also blowing up a storm of white. On our way back from Isola, we took a wrong turning and wound up across from the gondola with what looked like a bunch of bushes in between. There was a 'keep out' sign but we chose to ignore this, and cut across. I got stuck amongst the bushes and signalled to my friend how to get across so he made it out, but then I managed to unstrap my board and was trying to wade across. It was hip-deep everywhere, but suddenly, I dropped down and there was nothing under me, I held the board across some branches to keep myself from sinking further, and flailed like crazy, grabbing at branches which were small and frozen and kept snapping. I was up to my neck, with one arm across my wedged board, and one foot with a hold on the inside of what must have been a tree-well, but the other foot had nothing underneath, and my other arm couldn't get hold of anything solid. I held on for a moment and then gradually started trying to get myself out, moving slowly so as to not slide down further. I got more and more exhausted, and the wind was howling and I couldn't see the course several metres away where my friend was waiting. I was quite frightened at that point.
He said later that he occasionally could just see my head and one arm, and then the snow would blow across again and he couldn't see anything.
It took me about half an hour to struggle my way onto relatively solid ground. I was totally spent, and flopped over in the snow. After a while I was getting cold so I got up again, and made a vague effort to complete the last few metres of the journey back to the course, and then had a melt-down, crying and swearing. My friend waded out to where I was and helped me drag my board to where it was knee-deep rather than hip-deep, and I strapped back in to slide the last 50 metres or so to the gondola steps. Part of my cheek had turned white from cold and my hair was all frozen except under my helmet.
Lesson learnt. Respect the mountain.
A little after that, the boyfriend and I went to Niseko Moiwa. It was another deep powder day, with some sunshine from time to time. This was when he suddenly found his powder legs and he never looked back after that. He's addicted and wants to go off-course whenever possible. We've been back to Niseko Moiwa about 3 times since then and it has been so fun every time. Niseko has at least 9 metres snow depth, it's a lot even for Hokkaido. The snow is higher than the car roof wherever you drive. Another time we went to Niseko Chisenupuri, my first time there. It's a one-lift ski area with lots of powder and a truly great hot springs at the base of the mountain with 11 outside baths. There's a campaign at the moment to try to keep Chisenupuri open, because it's so small they are having trouble making ends meet, despite having some amazing conditions and lots of people who make the trip specially to go there. It's one of the most outlying and natural parts of Niseko.
I think I'll invest in an avalanche training course next season if I can.
We had a few warm days the weekend before last, swiftly followed by another dump of powder snow, about 60cms in 4 hours according to my calculation from digging the car out. This has meant that all of Hokkaido is on avalanche alert and last weekend there were high winds, which didn't help matters as the wind carved out some hollows under heavy slabs. I heard on the news that some people ignored warnings and lost their lives as a result. There is plenty of snow, but it needs to stabilize.
One of my intentions for this season was to take more lessons to improve my technique. You would think that, after spending money on it and fully intending to get something out of it, I would be the most teachable student in the class. Not so. It turns out that I get very frustrated with carving. I don't have the sort of meticulous attention to detail that many people here have. I want to see results fast, and if someone tells me something isn't right, I want them to explain what isn't right, and then give me lots of tips on how to fix it, dammit. My main problem initially was that I was sceptical about whether learning to carve properly would help me to...er...do cool tricks. Because in fact, I didn't realize until now that a major reason for snowboarding for me is that I want to be able to rock some jump tricks with style and ease...isn't that why everyone wants to be a snowboarder?
Well, for some people here, carving is a cool thing in and of itself. For them, the centrifugal force of the turn is the big thing. They even embrace the wearing of hard boots.
I don't think I will ever be filled with enough enthusiasm to go that far with carving, but I have noticed that since taking these lessons, my control at speed has improved a LOT. I can also see how carving will help my approach to jumps. My attitude in lessons still kind of sucks, though. I don't like practicing lots of turns. Whenever I'm doing that, I'm thinking about doing a jump or something else, and I'm frustrated about jumping because I haven't practiced that much yet this year. Next week I'll get going on that, and hopefully get a free-style lesson at Asarigawa-onsen ski area. I love the hit park there.
I'm trying a new thing this season where I don't track how many days I've snowboarded. In previous seasons, the goal was always 100 days, and it was a good way to motivate myself to get out of bed on days I wasn't really feeling it. This season I haven't set much in the way of concrete goals, which is contrary to many sports psychologists' thinking. I want to improve my skills, but I don't want to do so many night sessions practicing by myself because it can be demotivating for me. I need feedback and positive vibes from riding with friends.
Just snowboarding was a big deal the first few seasons but when you want to hit jumps and no-ones there with you, it isn't easy to get your dander up, it's much easier to keep putting off trying something new. It's also difficult to judge what speed to hit a jump when no-one else is hitting it before you. Not many people were hitting jumps at all the last few times I went.
I guess my thing with not setting hard goals this season comes from getting frustrated with missing goals in the past to the point where I couldn't focus on doing what I needed to do to improve. I just got angry with myself and had to stop altogether and do something else instead. I know what tricks I want to do without needing to set a timescale to it, I think about those tricks a lot anyway, probably every time I snowboard, so there's no point. I think I might enjoy snowboarding more if I spent less time thinking that way and more time just being in the moment and aware of nature.
The weekend before last, I was snowboarding in the deep powder amongst the trees a bit further out from the courses, where we couldn't hear the music or lifts or anything anymore and the snow ahead of us was totally untouched. The sun came out and everything sparkled in the silence. I turned to my boyfriend and said 'Do you feel that?' and he said; 'Yes. Nature.'
Saturday, 17 November 2012
First snowboarding 2012!!
I had a slow start to the season as I needed to wait for the doctor to check my 3 months X-ray of my wrist which had got smashed in 3 places. It turned out better than normal last Thursday and I was given the green light to snowboard, or indeed do any sports to which I felt inclined. I think there were a few reasons why it turned out well; I was wearing a wrist guard when I fell, my surgeon was very good, I got the cast off and started moving it about a week after my operation, I had experience from breaking my other wrist a few years ago so I did a lot of rehabilitation exercises that I learned back then, I took up crochet for a while(!), and I was lucky.
My first day snowboarding this season was at Teine. It snowed much more than usual this December and the conditions were really nice, a lot of off course areas have filled in that would normall be a bit dicey at this point in the year. We got some sunshine at one point so it was an enjoyable day out. As usual, I felt a bit worried that my skills weren't quite where I remembered them being at the end of last season. I rode my new board for the first time (it's a Gnu Ladies Choice) and it was also the first time riding with my boyfriend....actually, I think it's the first time I've ever snowboarded with a bona fide, official boyfriend!
The main risk with snowboarding with a significant other is that they may be significantly more or less skilled than you are and someone could get fed up. My boyfriend is pretty good but he's only been snowboarding about 3 seasons from time to time, whereas I'm on my 5th season in Japan, snowboarding fairly consistently all season, with two previous seasons of on-off snowboarding whenever I could get to the mountains. This represents a skill gap, so we were both a bit worried before we went. However, he grew up with the snow here, he did a lot of skiing when he was younger, so it turned out to be OK from a snowboarding point of view, and we both enjoyed it overall. I was really happy about that. I needed to ease in gently to the season, my fitness being nowhere near where it should be, whereas he has been jogging and mountain-climbing all summer and so was OK physically, and he had a steely determination to do his best. It was the first time he had ever snowboarded outside the course in deep powder so he had a steep learning curve the first couple of runs, especially in learning how to get up once down, and he dealt with it. We were both really exhausted by about 2.30pm, having got first lift in the morning.
I kind of expected him not to want to go again on Sunday because he had originally planned to do something else anyway, but when we got up, it was dumping snow, crazy big flakes and lots of it, and he just said 'Let's go!!' Awesome. We had another great day in Teine.
My first day snowboarding this season was at Teine. It snowed much more than usual this December and the conditions were really nice, a lot of off course areas have filled in that would normall be a bit dicey at this point in the year. We got some sunshine at one point so it was an enjoyable day out. As usual, I felt a bit worried that my skills weren't quite where I remembered them being at the end of last season. I rode my new board for the first time (it's a Gnu Ladies Choice) and it was also the first time riding with my boyfriend....actually, I think it's the first time I've ever snowboarded with a bona fide, official boyfriend!
The main risk with snowboarding with a significant other is that they may be significantly more or less skilled than you are and someone could get fed up. My boyfriend is pretty good but he's only been snowboarding about 3 seasons from time to time, whereas I'm on my 5th season in Japan, snowboarding fairly consistently all season, with two previous seasons of on-off snowboarding whenever I could get to the mountains. This represents a skill gap, so we were both a bit worried before we went. However, he grew up with the snow here, he did a lot of skiing when he was younger, so it turned out to be OK from a snowboarding point of view, and we both enjoyed it overall. I was really happy about that. I needed to ease in gently to the season, my fitness being nowhere near where it should be, whereas he has been jogging and mountain-climbing all summer and so was OK physically, and he had a steely determination to do his best. It was the first time he had ever snowboarded outside the course in deep powder so he had a steep learning curve the first couple of runs, especially in learning how to get up once down, and he dealt with it. We were both really exhausted by about 2.30pm, having got first lift in the morning.
I kind of expected him not to want to go again on Sunday because he had originally planned to do something else anyway, but when we got up, it was dumping snow, crazy big flakes and lots of it, and he just said 'Let's go!!' Awesome. We had another great day in Teine.
Autumn took a long time to arrive...
But arrive it did. The leaves changed color and Hokkaido University, known locally as Hokudai for short, was transformed into a place for taking photos and strolling with your loved ones.
My arm has continued to improve and I have got back almost full movement in my wrist, but I was surprised at how tiring it has been during that time. First, because I was using my other arm to carry bags and things, which made that arm tired, and then my back got sore, because I was doing everything in a way I wasn't used to, and then, I got the movement back and the whole process was reversed. I get another X-ray on December 13th and hopefully the go-ahead to go snowboarding after that (even if I don't get the go-ahead I'll probably go anyway, I'm that kind of girl).
Contrary to expectations, Onze has re-opened under new management, so some people were there on the 11th November for the first few runs of the season. The weather has been quite warm compared to last year, so they've since shut and re-opened this weekend. There has been a smidgeon of snow on the top of Mount Teine visible from time to time, but until this weekend not much of the good stuff.
This morning I woke to thunder, lightning and large flakes of snow falling, but it melted upon hitting the street. The top of Teine must be getting quite a lot, but it's also windy so I don't know if it will have a chance to build up. Kokusai apparently got about 40cm this weekend already.
Talking of Teine, the Hit Park is at long last moving to Olympia this season, which means that it will be possible to session the jumps at night after work. This was possible a few years ago but possibly due to a management change there were no items for the last few seasons, until last year, when the Hit Park was up at Highland but not open in the evenings. This bodes well for this season (but possibly not so well for my bionic wrist held together with pins...)
I'm starting to finally get excited about snowboarding again, can't wait for December. Otherwise, I was just making lasagna and doing other domestic activities, occasionally riding the scooter and looking at pretty views with my boo. Pleasant, but slightly out of character.
It's getting on for 5 months that I've been seeing him, so we've updated our relationship status on Facebook, which the pessimist in me feels a little uneasy about, in case that jinxes it. What the heck, we all know the real relationship test will come when we try and snowboard together...
My arm has continued to improve and I have got back almost full movement in my wrist, but I was surprised at how tiring it has been during that time. First, because I was using my other arm to carry bags and things, which made that arm tired, and then my back got sore, because I was doing everything in a way I wasn't used to, and then, I got the movement back and the whole process was reversed. I get another X-ray on December 13th and hopefully the go-ahead to go snowboarding after that (even if I don't get the go-ahead I'll probably go anyway, I'm that kind of girl).
Contrary to expectations, Onze has re-opened under new management, so some people were there on the 11th November for the first few runs of the season. The weather has been quite warm compared to last year, so they've since shut and re-opened this weekend. There has been a smidgeon of snow on the top of Mount Teine visible from time to time, but until this weekend not much of the good stuff.
This morning I woke to thunder, lightning and large flakes of snow falling, but it melted upon hitting the street. The top of Teine must be getting quite a lot, but it's also windy so I don't know if it will have a chance to build up. Kokusai apparently got about 40cm this weekend already.
Talking of Teine, the Hit Park is at long last moving to Olympia this season, which means that it will be possible to session the jumps at night after work. This was possible a few years ago but possibly due to a management change there were no items for the last few seasons, until last year, when the Hit Park was up at Highland but not open in the evenings. This bodes well for this season (but possibly not so well for my bionic wrist held together with pins...)
I'm starting to finally get excited about snowboarding again, can't wait for December. Otherwise, I was just making lasagna and doing other domestic activities, occasionally riding the scooter and looking at pretty views with my boo. Pleasant, but slightly out of character.
It's getting on for 5 months that I've been seeing him, so we've updated our relationship status on Facebook, which the pessimist in me feels a little uneasy about, in case that jinxes it. What the heck, we all know the real relationship test will come when we try and snowboard together...
Sunday, 14 October 2012
OK, so the summer round-up is as follows....
I was thinking of taking a trip either to New Zealand or else some other part of Japan this summer but in the end I stayed in Hokkaido. This was due to a number of factors such as; I got busy and forgot to book anything before it got expensive, I started dating a new boyfriend (hurrah!) and....Hokkaido is awesome all year round, there is always something fun to do.
One of the things I love is to go to the beach and just swim in the sea, I did that a lot this summer. I didn't go surfing, which is kind of a pity, I plan to get my own board next year if I have the chance, but this year I did a lot of stuff just to relax rather than to be really sporty.
I took a small road trip to visit a couple of places I hadn't been before. The first stop en route was Otaru Aquarium. I have always liked aquariums, not sure why, and this one does not disappoint.
One of the things I love is to go to the beach and just swim in the sea, I did that a lot this summer. I didn't go surfing, which is kind of a pity, I plan to get my own board next year if I have the chance, but this year I did a lot of stuff just to relax rather than to be really sporty.
I took a small road trip to visit a couple of places I hadn't been before. The first stop en route was Otaru Aquarium. I have always liked aquariums, not sure why, and this one does not disappoint.
.... Otaru Octo-man seems happy to see me....
There are lots of fish in tanks, which I always enjoy, although I felt a bit sorry for the otters who looked a bit cramped. An original, somewhat interactive experience that I haven't experienced in other aquariums around the world was the following:
You put your head inside a glass tube inside a large tank...
which looks like this...
and find yourself face to face with something like this!!!
It's very unsettling to be so close to these big, gnarly-looking long fish, and if you're thinking that the fish might well say the same thing about being up close and personal with moi, then in fact you'd be wrong because from their perspective the glass tube just reflects so they can't see you.
There are other fun things at Otaru aquarium, including a large sea lion that just turned up in the sea-lion enclosure one day at breakfast-time from elsewhere, having made his way in from the sea over the wall by himself... I liked the walruses, they are huge.
After that I headed down to Niseko for a few days and went hiking. It's pretty hot in Hokkaido in the summer so it's good to get up in the mountains where it's cooler. Beautiful views. Then, I went to Lake Toya, stopping at the beach on the way and generally taking our time and having fun. When we got to Toya, I was surprised at the colour of the water, I hadn't realised that it was a caldera lake and that the water would be so blue. We took one of the kitsch cruise-ships across to the biggest island, where there was a shrine and some 'wild' deer. They seemed pretty placid and all had tags in their ears. Until someone bought the deer biscuits....they went wild for those.
We then rented a swan-shaped pedal-boat as my companion had good childhood memories he wanted to re-create. It was rather more romantic than I had anticipated, but when in Toya, ride a pedal-boat. Toya was the site of a summit of world leaders a few years back. Somehow I can't imagine them getting into a big plastic swan and pedalling across the sparkly blue water. Ha, it must suck to be a world leader and miss out on all the fun.
From thence, back to Niseko, and a chance to do the air bag jump at Hanazono. It looks like this:
It's pretty scary. The day I went, they closed it before I could do it, due to strong wind. I went back later in the summer but didn't have much luck with it. I mainly did the box in the practice area next to it.
Niseko is really great for hanging out in the summer, there aren't so many tourists but there are lots of nice cafes and restaurants and lots of outdoor stuff like rafting and so on.
A couple of weekends later, I went to Shakotan for the first time. I have a friend who works in that area, but who was back home in the US when I was there.
We had a barbecue. One of the things that Japanese people excel at is preparation, and so when we had a barbecue, the person who brought it had every conceivable tool and implement as well as enough charcoal to last for a couple of days. He achieved a whole new level of preparedness when he produced a flame-thrower to get things started. No risk of the charcoal failing to catch, even in the rain. After we had a barbecue on the beach, and more swimming in the sea, we headed to an onsen to clean off the sea water, and then on to Shakotan peninsula itself. It's truly beautiful, this photo doesn't really do it justice.
You can buy Shakotan Blue Ice-cream at the peninsula. It is bright blue, to represent the blue sea, and tastes better than normal ice-cream. It doesn't have a specific flavour, it's just delicious.
Next on the list was another foray to Rising Sun Rock Festival, at Ishikari. It is ridiculously close to where I live, but I decided I wanted to camp there in order to enjoy the experience more fully. As per the photo above, I strapped a 3 person tent, a sleeping bag and all the other paraphernalia I needed to myself and my scooter, and buzzed over there. My friend had the forethought to book a good camping space and we pitched two tents on it. His tent was only slightly bigger than he was.
Rising Sun is a unique rock festival because it only features Japanese bands. The first afternoon we generally chilled out and I discovered the holy grail of beverages, IMHO. Coffee beer. It's beer made with coffee, has something of the Guinness about it, and tastes of both beer and coffee simultaneously. We sat on some straw next to a machine producing lots of tiny floating bubbles and watched our first band of the day while drinking coffee beer. They were called Curly Giraffe and were pretty mellow. The best act of the first day was probably Denki Groove. "Fuji-san!Takai-zo!" being sung by a man in an erupting Mount Fuji costume is an impression that may possibly stay with me for the rest of my life. The second day, I watched the come-back debut of the hugely popular Eighties girl rock band; Princess Princess. Some fans still had scarves from concerts back in the day, and the big thing during one of their songs is to throw your scarf in the air and catch it again. Lots of die-hard fans for that one.
However, I felt the best band of the second day was The Back Horn. They were pretty epic. Please check them out on YouTube. The weekend was pretty gruelling overall, hardly any sleep, very hot until the middle of the night, lots of jumping around and walking and stuff. But totally worth it.
Not such good value, although I enjoyed it because of who I went there with, was the ShiroiKoibito chocolate factory. You would think that a chocolate factory would have little trouble making itself interesting, and from the outside, it does look a little bit like Roald Dahl's Wonka's factory, however, I didn't find the displays of old biscuit tins and peering through a small glass window at people sorting cookies into boxes as exciting as I thought it would be. There was also a whole section devoted to antique toys, which gave both me and my friend the creeps.
The best thing in the place may just have been this sign.
To me it suggests that the real business of running the chocolate factory may be carried out by enigmatic cats. Which would be greatly preferable to oompaloompas, obviously. Although it might be difficult to keep their hair out of the goods.
I also went to a small safari park near Jozankei where there were lots of different animals. I was really amazed by how many types of animal they had, including this armadillo.
I did not know how little I knew about armadillos until that moment...
What else happened this summer? Well, I ate lots of ice-cream, went to the beach again, swam in the sea again, climbed Mount Maruyama twice in one day for reasons to banal to mention, visited most of the parks in the city and unfortunately broke my wrist in 3 places... after which immediately began the hottest September in Sapporo since records began. I can't begin to express how unpleasant it is to have a cast on any part of your body in hot weather. I had an operation and some metal stuff inserted. It was an unpleasant operation because I chose nerve-blocking over general anaesthetic. Less than a week after the op, I had my cast removed, it was a bit early but I was desperate. The good news is that my wrist is almost back to normal. I need to get the metal removed in another op next year, but I'll start to worry about that in approximately 10 months time... and I should be able to start snowboarding again from mid-December. Phew.
So, that was my summer. Thanks for reading!
Thursday, 2 August 2012
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