But perhaps I should have paid more attention… as many years later when you find yourself asking the bus driver directions to the “dumpling”, something has certainly gone awry with your conversation skills in the interim. But that was my last trip and as it came to be known as the “gyoza” incident of 2008. Four years later and armed with similarly unfulfilled intentions of re-visiting all that previous study as well as a suitcase full of neck, leg and arm warmers and nothing in-between..yes I forgot my jacket… my delirious early hours of the morning last minute packing would yield more surprises- like, instead of a Japanese phrase or guide book I was distracted by future travel planning and found my carry on luggage filled with books on Europe and Spain. Didn’t think that one through! Needless to say trying to finish you evening by asking for the “biru” instead of “cheque” or “che-ku” at the restaurant will be cheerfully met with another round of beers for everyone and if that’s the worse trouble your ailing language can get in then I guess it could be worse.
My earliest memories of Japan are of cold wintry mornings, leaving home before sunrise on a Saturday and trudging to school in my looso-socksu armed with a hot can of corn soup from the vending machine. After school there would be clubs like ikebana flower arranging and tea ceremony but mostly sport practise and more lessons. Other idle time was in hiyaku yen (100yen) shops stocking up on hello kitty, totoro and kereoppi plastic paraphernalia, or in video parlours- dropping hundreds of yen coins into photo booths which churned out miniature stickers of my host sisters and me posing with creative variations of the peace sign. On the weekends we would visit Tivoli Park, a Dutch inspired Theme park in Okayama complete with spinning tea cups, cheese wheels and clogs.. and yes it was as bizarre as it sounds!
Aside from a few weekend trips, my most cultural experience in Japan was my second of three visits many years later where 3 weeks was spent riding the shinkansen bullet trains down from Sapporo in the north island Nisseko all the way to Hiroshima at the south western base on the main island Honshu. A group of us avid snow junkies had just experienced an epic week of powder and fresh turns in an almost deserted Nisseko Hirafu mountain range and what I would come to call the best snow I’d seen out of Canada- and this had been over the luxury of a 4 month long season. With fridge door and ice bars and a sprawling self-contained apartment, we left these western comforts and headed south to Osaka, Kyoto, Nara and onto Tokyo. Must sees were a National Sumo Tournament including a special guest Hawaiian Sumo who you might imagine once ostracised from his community had now found fame and fortune fighting in the round (and a material nappy) in Japan. Kyoto housed the more traditional and natural wonders where we wandered wistfully the narrow cobbled streets filled with romantic notions of a bygone empirical age… and possibly too much Memoirs of a Geisha, Snow Falling on Cedars and Kill Bill ninja movies- we were transported back the times of the Samurai at magical places like the lake-set Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Arashiyama Bamboo Forest and accompanying Spring cherry blossoms. We found tranquillity and stillness at the Ryoanji rock garden and onto Nara Diabutsu- a Giant 15m high buddah statue which stands as the world’s biggest bronze buddah… held in the world’s largest structure.. which is indoors…and made of wood.. and possibly some other clauses I can’t remember! Impressive none-the-less… and from peacefulness and introspection to inevitable chaos we followed the tourist crowd to crawl/squeeze/force through a small hole in a pillar resembling the size of the buddah’s belly button for guaranteed good luck and then discovered that feeding a few free-roaming deer in the park area with a purpose bought rice crackers is remedy for an all out stampede. Apparently these Sika deer are regarded as messengers of the god’s in the Shinto religion…. And the gods sure must be hungry!
Other notable and beautiful places of interest thereafter included a visit to the Natural Hot Spring village of Hakone, complete with novelty yet functional and very kitch pirate ship, tatami mat and futon pension accommodation and views of Mt Fuji over a sudden rise from a cable car inciting the most en masse “aaahhhh suuugooiiiii dessuuu ne” you’ll ever hear! Further south the White Egret temple Himeji Castle (if you enjoy stair climbing) and the picturesque Red Torii bridge at sunset in Hiroshima are not to be missed- again free-roaming deer beware!
But onto our most recent adventure- a whirlwind tight packed 10 days including 8 days back to back snowboarding at 6 different resorts in the Nagaono/Happo One region the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. Happo is a more civilised yet still arduous hour train and then bus and later shuttle ride out of Tokyo Narita Airport which seems to beat the extra flight and then long bus from Sapporo when travelling further north to Nisseko- but not by much-or my memory betrays me ;) … either way and despite the not so long 9 hour flight ex Sydney and similar time zone.. it is still is fair pain to get to.. particularly if you are wearing a massive woollenneck warmer, fluffy oversize ear warmers, a neck U pillow and huge Bose headphones and consequently struggling for head on neck room. Over-accessorising to the extreme!!! Travel frustration on this trip was definitely exacerbated by the inevitable lugging of pairs of snowboards, boots, bindings and helmets the weight of which seem to grow exponentially to the diminishing luggage and sporting goods allowance each year.. as well as being proportional to the number of stairs at each metro station. But worth a mention is the contribution of interrupted sleep and movies on the home stretch when a neighbouring flight passenger decides to overdose on diazepam and red wine and requires oxygen near resuscitation and regular observation with dabbing of moist refresher towel on the brow which somehow becomes your responsibility.. but wait that’s not so fair, I should explain…she was my friend and she was fine..eventually. This was despite the hazy blue light giving the resemblance of suffering a hive-like rash and anaphylactic reaction also not helped by the movie Contagion playing on an adjacent screen- cue mass viral illness and hysteria. In any case the inconvenience of a freezing oxygen tank between my legs has definitely been made up for 10 fold with embellished exaggerated dinner table stories on my return ;)
So where was i.. oh Japan. Not to bore you with too much detail of the colour, consistency and meteorological specifications of the snow that fell during our stay suffice to say it was frequent and plentiful. Soft fluffy flakes made for fresh groomed turns most days and soft-ish landings for the beginners on tour. Our second day we had booked an ambitious guide-lead back country/off- piste tour as a 30th birthday celebration expedition for one of the crew. What started with a strong interest from 7 or more, soon fell to five then four who set out not completely deterred by the need to have beacon training and carry shovels and probes in our backpacks should one of us get buried in an avalanche. Tree runs aplenty off the beaten track of Cortina resort and by the end of the day and with one retreating to the relative security of the groomers, we were four and with ruined legs and massive grins belying the struggle of digging oneself out of chest deep snow in a riverbed gully or hiking out of a tree well or through a dam wall. An actual dam. And damn well memorable! We were to return to this snowboarding mecca Cortina on our last day in an attempt to recreate some of the magic of this tour… but without a guide and with 50cm fresh on fresh powder, this day was certainly one of my most testing on a snowboard. A photo of my having fallen over and sitting buried with just my head protruding above the snow line having done everything I wasn’t meant to do pretty much sums it up… i.e. slowed down and cautiously edged downhill in tight trees when I was meant to just point the nose down and lean back… the lesser of two evils perhaps.. and one which requires a fair bit of guts and fearlessness which I’m still trying to fake with the right combination of iPod playlist. Amy Winehouse “you sent me flying” just wasn’t working for me that day. Or was it?
Unlike our Nisseko tour, there were no grinds on the top of buses in the terrain park this time, only a small bifold box in a mini terrain park on biddies on tour day out (i.e. the boys had deserted us)… I guess I was waiting for my new snowboard the top line All mountain freestyle Rossignol board a 148 “Diva” complete with Magnetraction and Freestyle Amptek, Carbon and Kevlar reinforcement and a high grade 4.4k sintered base technology to provide the technical over physical edge to turn me from hood to park rat. With chatter free charging, torsional stiffness and a wavy sidewall for grip in icy conditions… yes I watched the YouTube clips- it promised catch-free run ins, forgiving landings and no wash out however hard you carve, not to mention enough speed to reach the landing on any kicker… but unfortunately the swirly green bamboo ethereal motif didn’t pack quite the punch of my skull and crossbone 149 Forum star and I was left a little wanting for 360 and 540 air time… and only my talk was big ;)
But a word on gastronomy. A Japan snow tour is not complete without obligatory convenience store food supplies. Nikuman pork buns for after riding snacks, pocky chocolate pretzels for dessert, king size Sapporo beer cans, lemon shochu or rice wine sake for the long walk home and awesome sushi triangles which pack a surprise 8/10 good times every time. With a 5 course breakfast inclusion, we proceeded to consume our weight in ramen/soba/udon noodle broths on the mountain, shabu shabu boiled pot dinner, the freshest mountain(?) sashimi and edamame salty broad beans. Unfortunately as a lesser fan of pork, I was surprised to learn that since my last visit, fried pork cutlet seemed to have become a regional culinary specialty… or perhaps I had blocked this from my memory?! So not overly impressed after the sincere and persuasive recommendation of our Eternal Frame (..er Flame) host to catch a late night taxi out of town to a small Japanese traditional restaurant only to find the only thing on the menu was fried pork cutlet. Biru anyone?!!!
Of the more bizarre après activities (aside from the naked Onsen) was a Valentine’s day pub crawl which took us from the esteemed lobby of a fancy hotel to the upstairs dingy loft of a tiny bar and an out-house at a late night diner where toy mechanical dogs were wound up and displayed in very compromising positions …The night included 6 bars and 6 drink tokens at a cost of 4000 yen… and a priceless ride in a snowplough which I am now glad I saw the end of alive. It is a truth universally known that the only useful thing about a sake snow hangover is that your dehydration renders inconvenient bathroom stops unnecessary. But I think we all regretted stealing more drink tokens that night ;) If that was to set the bar for late night revelry, it was an understatement to say we had great expectations on our home stretch with 24 hours of play time in Tokyo.
In Tokyo, our first mistake was not having a map on the assumption street signs would be a) present and b) interpretable… so a few hours wasted ambling in various directions and on and off metros soon rectified with nil but a compass to guide us. First stop the Shinto Meiji Temple for a break from the hustle and bustle of Shibuya and the world’s busiest street crossing.. and then onto Yoyogi park and Harajuku to ogle the gothic Lolita fashion, street performers and loiterers inspired by cyber punk and comic character ‘anime’. 360 degree panoramic views of the sunset and evening sky line including Tokyo tower from Mori tower Sky deck was a highlight as well as the surprise contemporary art museum exhibition by Lee BUL- As it stated the first large scale solo exhibition of Asia’s leading female artist.. I fell in love with her beaded bodice cyborg and chain mail chandeliers which reflected a sort of ephemeral dreamscape where organic forms met metallic machines in a quest for a perfect biological and structural immortality.
But enough culture, this trip ended as any good Japan visit should with our stumbling out of a karaoke booth at 5am after a night time of all you can drink red bull, cocktails, shochu, biru and who knows what at the end of a dangerous speed dial phone line… not to mention all you can eat soft serve and satisfaction in the knowledge English language song options in Japan have come a long way since Mariah Carey’s ‘dream lover’ and Celine Dion ballads sung on request as a shy 15 year old. The high density, low ceilings and absent ventilation of department store Shibuya 109 was too much to handle after the night’s unfolding…or dishevelling, but somehow I still managed to walk away with platform yellow stilettos, 6 pairs of knee high socks and a photo of a preppy varsity jumper that reads “Mixture: Feeling by which it was mixed strangely”.. as there are some things that should probably only be worn in Japan… like socks and stilettos… together… pity it’s 37 degrees back home!!! Or HarakouldU?! 
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