Once I took a road trip to Tahoe that involved a really gnarly fourteen hour
drive that we powered through all night. When we got to Tahoe in the morning
I was totally wrecked with exhaustion from being on the road for so long.
It only took like half a day to recover because we were still in the same
time zone as we started in, but at the time I remember thinking that I had
never been so wrecked before from traveling. Then I went to Japan.
It's March 29th in Japan and we just arrived in Hakuba at 6:30 this morning.
Our motley looking group had been on the road over 36 hours and skipped through
like 12 time zones to get here. Our biological clocks were working overtime
running on adrenaline and confusion over the daylight. Our bodies told us
it was night and sleep deprivation was wearing heavily on us. One more taxi
ride and we would be at the hotel meeting up with Jeff Fulton and some of
the coaches who we'd be hanging out with for the next ten days. But before
we get to this point in the story let's take a step back to the journey here.
YAKUZA DUDE
"I think that guy behind you is a Yakuza," photographer Jimmy Clarke whispered
to me. I slowly began to turn around. "Don't look yet," he whispered a little
louder. "One of his fingers is cut off."
I waited a second and then turned around. Sure enough there sat a Japanese
looking Al Pacino complete with tinted sunglasses and a freshly bandaged
pointer finger--well, half of one anyway. The other half was missing, apparently
a sign that he recently screwed something up and paid the price with a little
bone and flesh.
Our trip had just begun, but already I felt like we were in a foreign country.
We kind of were--we had an hour layover in Vancouver--sitting in a room full
of Japanese people, introducing us to how white we would feel in fourteen
hours after we touched down in Tokyo.
Jimmy and I were on our way to spend a week at one of the first American-run
Japanese snowboard camps, Jeff Fulton Snowboard Camp, where we would view
the scene through very American eyes.
THE LAND OF LINES
The taste of culture shock we received in Vancouver hit full force upon stepping
through the doors in Narita. And this is where the lines began. Japan is
such a crowded country that lines are a key factor to everything. The only
other place I have ever experienced such a need for order was in New York
City. I guess this is what happens when your in a city with 12 million or
so people. Chaos doesn't sit well and so lines become the means for order.
The lines don't mean much to American snowboarders though, especially those
that aren't used to waiting, and we quickly learned that cutting into them
was the only way to get anywhere.
The first line was all about showing our passports. It turned out to be a
good delay because we found a familiar face in the holding pen with us, Kris
Swierz aka Sweez55. He had no idea where the camp was happening and was
completely stoked to find us. The three of us shuffled from line to line
through the airport maze, thankful for any English words on signs covered
with Japanese chicken scratch.
Kris Swierz and his posse. Yes, he's big in Japan, and drinking and smoking are very popular. |
It's a little bit nerve wracking to stare at a sign and have no idea what
it says. But this was an obviously unavoidable obstacle for us to overcome
and would leave us looking like bumbling idiots at various stops on our way
to Hakuba.
Once we got all of our bags through customs we tried calling the snowboard
camp. No one answered. We were off to a good start. Too tired to worry about
it, we decided to try plan B--ship our bags to the camp and then head into
Tokyo. It was about this time that we found another familiar Seattle face,
Bruce Mullinax from Rift Snowbaords. He was on his way to coach at the camp
with Sweez. He was also about as clueless as to where to go, so together
like the blind leading the blind we stumbled through Narita airport formulating
a plan.
We stood in another line and then haggled with the shipping company trying
to explain to a guy through sign language that we needed our bags in Hakuba
by the next day. "Maybe one, maybe two day," he informed us, walking away
to let us know that was the end of the discussion. It was either send them
or haul them around for the next twelve hours as we made our way a good 400
miles across Japan. We gave in and sent our seven bags with everything we
owned for the low, low bargain price of 12,000 yen. Translation--a little
over 100 dollars. Ouch. Would we ever see them again?
THE ROAD TO HAKUBA
After an hour train ride we found ourselves in a hectic area of Tokyo called
Shinjiku at 9 o'clock on a Friday night. We wandered for ten minutes around
the station before figuring out that we needed to go across the street to
another station. There we stood in front of a row of ticket machines with
no English cue cards to help us figure out what kind of ticket we needed.
In Japan when you are lost you have two choices. The first is to stand there
looking like a total tourist, asking every person who passes by if they speak
English. And then when you find someone who might know a few familiar words,
you try and play the guessing game with them volleying questions back and
forth until a somewhat understandable answer is achieved. The second is to
look for a ticket window and pray that it's open. If your lucky enough to
find a person selling tickets, you can count on them not speaking English,
so you can once again play the guessing game with them. Either way you're
lucky if you get an answer within ten minutes. Patience is a necessary Japanese
coping skill. We missed the train to Matsumoto by about a minute, due to
standing in another line, surprise. The conversation to get tickets to Hakuba
was like every other one we'd experienced so far. "We go Hakuba," said Jimmy
speaking in his best Ja-English accent. This is when you drop as many words
out of sentences as possible in hopes of making more sense to someone who
probably doesn't speak any English, so it makes no difference anyway. The
guy looked at the clock, which said 8:55, and looked at us and pointed to
the time schedule which had two times, 9:00 and 11:20. "We missed it?" Jimmy
asked, to which the guy pointed at the 11:20. We would have a three hour
wait before we got on an all night train to Hakuba.
We wandered the brightly lit winding streets surrounding the train station
for the next few hours. They felt like a cross between Vegas and Europe with
the bright flashing billboards everywhere and narrow windy streets packed
with millions of short dark haired people in business suits. Women wore platform
shoes with insanely high heels, men chain smoked cigarettes, and the noise
was non-stop. Car horns, ambulances, the basic hustle of 12 million people
was intensified by our exhaustion and awe. With three hours to kill we headed
to the arcades. There was one located on every other block, six stories high
of video fun to drain all our money in no time. You can't help but plug the
machines with coins as incredible graphics flash across mega screens tempting
every last bit of change out of you. Fortunately we had only so much time
to feed the addiction and a couple thousand yen later we were cutting a line,
and playing dumb tourist to get on a crowded car that we hoped would get
us to the resort.
So far so good. We slept sitting up in a cramped car filled with Japanese
people headed for the brown spring slopes. The train ride from Shinjuku to
Hakuba is around 50 dollars American. We had heard that there wasn't a lot
of snow on the mountain this year but judging by all of the people on the
train with their skis and boards, this must not have been much of a concern
to the Japanese. I couldn't help but wonder how many people in the U.S. would
snowboard if it took a seven hour, fifty dollar, all-night train ride to
shred flat brown slopes. Snowboarding is not a cheap hobby in Japan. Then
again nothing in Japan is cheap.
While speeding past apartment buildings, Jimmy informed us that the average 200 square foot apartment (one room and a bathroom) in Tokyo rents for around 2,500 dollars a month. It's hard to imagine this price tag coming from a place like the Northwest where a whole house rents for under a thousand dollars. In fact the whole concept of money in Japan is a hard thing to comprehend. Everything costs at least a third more than it costs in the U.S. At least McDonald's was pretty close to the same price, but the frightening looking over-processed beef patties are at least a third the size of those in the U.S.
But back to snowboarding in Japan: snow was the last thing on my mind as
I was feeling the more than 24 hours of travel and sleep deprivation attacking
my nervous system. I curled into an upright fetal position, closed my eyes,
and spent the next seven hours drifting in and out of sleep as the train
shuddered along the tracks toward Hakuba. We didn't even know what direction
we were headed in. I assume it was North.
At 5:30 am we were awakened by a little tinkling melody that sounded like
the music in a babies nursery. This must have been the wake up alarm for
the train because everyone starting moving and organizing their stuff. My
first sight that morning was some funny looking, extra large Banzai trees
next to the train and mountains covered in snow and stick trees devoid of
foliage. The first stop brought us to a resort called Kitoshiga Hites. We
looked at a flat dirt covered hill with brown snow and hoped this wasn't
our destination. A voice announced the next few stops with Hakuba about three
away. Fortunately every stop brought a little more snow into sight, but it
was still not much more than Timberline in the summer.
By 6:30 we were standing in the middle of Hakuba playing the sign language
game once again. The taxi drivers were all calling on their radios trying
to figure out where "Hotel Kam-e-roops," or Hotel Kamloops as we had been
told, was at. Five minutes later one of the taxi drivers triumphantly announced
that he had figured out where we were going, so we piled into his Toyota
Cressida, leaving an army of taxis waiting for the next train.
In Japan drivers sit on the right and drive on the wrong side of the road,
like in England. Whatever the reason for this is, I have never figured out.
Could it possibly be us who sit on the wrong side of the road? What came
first, the egg or the chicken?
Pulling up to the log cabin pension was an incredible relief after the long
journey. We were slap happy and so far beyond sleep, I don't think any of
us thought rest would even be possible. Jeff Fulton, Tom Nordwal, Josh Barrett,
B, and an Australian named Phil left us for a few hour session at the pipe.
We collapsed. No more lines, no more sign language, only relief that came
with finally arriving.
Stay tuned next time for more adventures from the land of many laws while
Shanti checks out Japanese pro snowboarders.
For more information on the Jeff Fulton Snowboard Camp in Tsugaike: www.hitpark.com