Despite having spent three years in snowy Minnesota, I never got into winter sports like skiing. I guess no one I knew was interested, and perhaps I didn't want to go that badly. Last week, I remembered that Sachie and Rie had made plans to hit the slopes on Saturday, and that I had decided it was time to face the snow. Or put my face into the snow, as it were. My friend Yohei is an avid snowboarder, so I decided to try that instead of skiing. Snowboarding is a young person's sport—I figure I can always take up skiing later!

Anyway, we went to this place near Mt. Fuji called Yeti. The day consisted of getting up at 05:00, getting on the 06:00 train to Shinjuku, and hopping to another line to Shin-Matsuda. From there, we got on a bus that took us all the way to Yeti. Travel time was about 3 hours.

I had to rent all my equipment except for goggles and gloves, as did Rie. (Yeti won't rent either of those items, so we bought them in advance.) Rie was on skis since she didn't like snowboarding. Sachie brought her own gear and 'board.

The whole sliding on snow sensation took some getting used to. Normally when I slide on snow, it leads to falling...which is what I ended up doing a lot of. I think overriding those instincts were a big part of my first day on the powder. I never was a skateboarder, nor did I ever try surfing, so the whole balance-yourself-on-a-board metaphor is outside my expertise. The slope didn't seem that steep, but once you get on it, you start moving in a hurry. Sachie gave me some instruction, but I didn't want to prevent her from having a good time, so I told her that I would practice by myself. I must've fallen over about a hundred times by the time I packed it in.



I had a particularly good moment and a particularly bad moment. The high point was when I was able to balance, successfully turn left, and stop without falling over. The low point was after that, when I was trying to slow down and somehow caught the leading edge of the board in the snow, pitching me over headfirst. That hurt a bit. Still, I imagined what I must've looked like keeling over like that, and it was so funny that I laughed. Another not so bad wipe out occurred when I was going too fast, tried to slow down, and ended up falling flat on my back: the board kicked up a bunch of snow and I kept sliding for a couple seconds.

All the while, I was thinking, these grades seem to be pretty steep for beginners. Well, after we were done and were shopping for souvenirs, I discovered that on the site map there is a beginner's course. I had been torturing myself on the 'B' course. Ah well. Oddly enough, the spots I thought would be bothering me, ankles and knee joints, aren't, and other spots are, like my lower ribs, left shoulder, and lower back (actually it's the top of my butt, but I didn't want to say that...). Snowboarding is definitely a young person's sport.

All in all it was a fun experience, and turned out to be the best exercise I've had in a while. No wonder Yohei has a crazy metabolism if he 'boards every week. I may have to do this again before the season's over. Like...next weekend? ^_^