SkiBoarding

So last weekend I went snowboarding for the first time in a long while.  It turns out that it's like riding a bike, you really can just jump back in and do it again.  There's a ton more technique in boarding though, so I wasn't quite as good as before - I think I've hit my ceiling with regards to snow based sports.

Disregarding ability, fun was had.  The Tsugaike place we went to was somewhat easy - there were only a couple of areas worth a red, and the black was only black because of the intense moguls.  Not that big lumpy blocks aren't worth a black mark, it's just that I prefer variety.

As with anywhere else in Japan, the views were spectacular.

I've only ever skii'ed in Japan and Europe so I can't speak for the whole world (obviously), but the asian mountainscape seems to be unique as far as I can tell.  They just extend forever in every direction.  Korea is the same in many regards, when flying over Korea all you can see is a sea of mountains.

This isn't the best view to show that, but it's a nice picture nonetheless.

These were taken on a phone camera, so I've not bothered to edit anything.  They seem to have come out relatively well though.

We were there during a festival period, for some reason they had this jump set up with dudes doing jumps and whatnot over it, performing tricks and whatnot.  No one managed a backflip although a couple tried it.  Ouch.

Despite the lack of backflips there were some amazing fireworks.  I'm editing the videos to make a quick compilation thing that'll be up sometime in the future, but they were unlike fireworks in England in almost every respect.  There were some enormous explosions, some triple layered fireworks (I've never seen anything explode, grow and change colour, then explode again) and a lot of really cool ground based stuff.

Trying to focus using a phone camera is a nightmare.  Who knows if any of these are going to come out.

They do a really good job of putting their fireworks to music, usually classical, (and with a short enough crappy 'pop,' music section that you don't want to leave immediately) always interesting.  They also layer their fireworks really well.

The Japanese firework game is superb - they're superb at the whole thing.

This is an example of the ground based stuff I was talking about.  They layer these in the same way as the sky based stuff.  English fireworks guys need to take a close look at the Japanese scene.

So as it was a festival, they cut a lot of little spaces like this into the snow.  Every hotel or store has their little area in front filled with mountains of snow, a great way to make a small display like this.

Another small cubby with a candle.  I wonder what the fire risk associated with this is?

The above was one of these.

A rather large hotel had a front that obviously bore the brunt of the snow clearers, but at least they get to have a fun little diplay like this out front during the season.

I tried a small steerable snow thingy for the first time.  They're pretty cool but the one I rode was incredibly slow; the runner were plastic with random flecks of metal sticking out of the runners, screws not fully placed and the worlds smallest steering wheel, none of which add up for speed or control.  If you lived in an area like this presumably you'd have your own and maintain it properly.

The festival itself was fairly low key except for the fireworks (which were dope, so to speak)  but well worth checking out if you're in the area.  We came across a couple of local kids digging in some of the displays (shown above) which was a nice little slice of life, showing how people in the area live.  Worth it!