Snow and Sumo

On Saturday morning I got up early to catch the bullet train to Nagano.  There I transferred to the JR line to Myoko Kogen.  Click here to follow along with a map.

I'll admit, I was pretty excited to ride a bullet train.  They go crazy fast, but you definitely don't realize it.  I slept most of the way.

When I arrived I was greeted by a member of Powder Recon.  They had me on the hill at the local resort to "warm up" in less than an hour.  Some of the others had already been on a prior tour, so they were off on a day trip.  This gave me a day to ride on my own.  The runs were so beautiful, the snow is so light and there is so little wind that it just sits on the trees.

That evening we packed up the van and drove to Niigata City on the north coast.  I really enjoyed the road trips--our longest was about 5 hours.  Great time to listen to music and get to know our fellow travelers.

Here we are at the first of many great dinners.  Greg is on the right, I met him in Chile.  Next to him is Bryce, the owner of Powder Recon and a great snowboarder.  Next to him is Paul, another Australian tour operator in Japan.  He was along to check out some more resorts to possibly add to his itineraries.  Last is Jan, the guide I was with most of the time.  He's a great skier from Switzerland.

As a friend of mine would say, I was happier than a pig in slop for the entirety of this trip.  Powder so light you could float through it, the best tree riding of my life, and great company the whole way along.  It was Six Australian guys snowboarding, two Aussies skiiing, one French Canadian, two guides, and me.

We hit six resorts in seven days, repeating only once.  The general areas were Myoko Kogen, Bandai (3 resorts), Geto Kogen, and Morioka, where I caught the train back to Tokyo.

Veronique, our skier from White Horse, Yukon, Canada, and our guide Jan.  The three of us were definitely the youngest and tended to hang out together.

We stayed at a variety of hotels, many of them slopeside, but this was definitely the most traditional.  We slept on the floor (made of straw mats) on thin mattresses.

Me in my yukata ready to go to the hotel's onsen.

Many Japanese drink milk after onsen.  Count me in!  The one on the left is milk mixed with orange, banana, and pineapple.  It was great.  On the right is normal skim milk.  Of course, they came out of a vending machine.

One of my favorite pictures, and a frequent occurrence.  Snow stuck to my beard like crazy, and I loved it.  When you turn hard and the snow flies up over your head they call it a "face shot" for good reason.  There were lots of those.

Riding through the trees.  So much fun.  I love the quick decisions you have to make when flying through the trees and all the little side hits and pillows you can find to jump and trick off of.

I actually won this jacket at the beginning of the season in an online contest.  The timing was perfect, and it's an incredible jacket.

A timely photo after I did a cartwheel through the snow.  You just sink into this snow, it's so light!

Part of snowboarding is injury.  On Wednesday I went full-speed into a rope across a run.  It clipped me under the armpit and whipped my arm backwards.  The pain still comes and goes, and the color spectrum I've seen since the injury is impressive, but after an afternoon of icing, I was able to get right back out there the next day.  I'm very thankful it wasn't worse; nothing broken, nothing snapped.

Veronique disappearing into the snow!  Seriously, almost every day involved runs like this.  The pow was so deep, we had snow almost every day.

On my last night on tour we went to a Korean Barbeque place.  I did this once before, and it's a lot of fun.  They bring you marinated raw meat, fish, and veggies and you cook it on your grill at your table.  It's a very social way to eat some delicious food.

Unfortunately when I fell I lost my camera, so there is a day or two missing here.  I returned Friday night and went straight to the sushi place owned by my new friend I met at Eduardo's place the week before.  After another fantastic sushi meal, we went back for drinks at Eduardo's and I fell into bed exhausted (we had been riding earlier that day as well).  On Saturday, I got a new camera and went to see Sumo Wrestling.  It was so cool!  This is the drum tower and all the wrestlers' flags out front.

The program said there are two secrets to sumo wrestling.  One is practice, and the other is the stew prepared by each wrestler's stable.  On each day of the tournament a different stable offers their own recipe for $2.50 a bowl.  It was so good!

The National Sumo Stadium.  I got there very early to get a general admission ticket.  They start with the trainees, so it was pretty empty.  It gradually fills until the higher orders wrestle in the afternoon.  The Japanese go nuts for this stuff.

They enter the stadium wearing full yukatas.  There's quite the air of tradition around the whole thing.  I caught a few of them wandering around outside and they happily posed for a picture.

The two highest orders enter wearing traditional aprons, performing something of a ritual dance.  Everyone cheers when their favorite wrestler enters.

The fights themselves are wildly entertaining.  Some last 3 seconds, some last almost a minute.  The rules are very simple: first to exit the ring or hit the ground with any part of the body other than the feet loses.  The edge of the ring is raised, and many times they push off the edge to regain control.

Watch a complete match here.  You'll see them prepare for the fight, anoint the ring with salt, and size each other up many times before the actual fight begins.

I couldn't leave Tokyo without riding a roller coaster.  Thunder Dolphin has been on my radar ever since it was build.  Intamin, who built Millenium Force out at Cedar Point, my favorite coaster, also put this one together.  It was a great ride, lots of air time and a fantastic head-chopper through a little hole in a wall.  Plus it passes through the hubless, spokeless ferris wheel which I rode for an aerial view of the city.

My last pictures of Tokyo were in a karaoke booth with my Notre Dame friend Adam who is working in the city.  We had so much fun.  These buildings are just stuffed with tiny rooms you rent out with friends to sing at the top of your lungs and order drinks.  Afterwards we went to a club and danced the night away.  We had such a good time that I slept through my alarm and barely made it to the airport for my flight, but I got out just fine.

What a great trip.  I had a blast, everything from the city to the snow.  I can't believe how blessed I am.  After 2 days at home, I hopped a plane to Florida where I caught up with friends for a couple days.  I'm currently on a plane to Atlanta where we'll connect to Dubai and on to The Maldives to do some serious diving.  One adventure after another.  Come back in a couple weeks for a post, you won't want to miss these pictures.