Gifu Ski Trip

Ski Trip March 2008

I hadn’t been planning to fit a ski trip into my Japanese travels. I was, to say the least, ill-prepared. I am, however, still a son of the family White and cannot pass up a good deal, whatever the obstacles to reason.

When I was thus presented with one such deal I was weak in the knees with happiness and anticipation. Sian, a friend of a co-worker who lived in Gifu near the mountains, had arranged an elaborate web of tours and coupons to get whoever could go to a nice little mountain for a few days. Coincidentally, I was already on my way to Nagoya for a business meeting and thus got a large majority of the transportation costs subsidized for me. Nothing like riding the Shink for free.

Good fortune was the mark of this trip. I had no gear and had to slap together whatever I could from friends and acquaintances. Everything came together at the last minute, but it did indeed come together. I left Monday morning for the two-day meeting. Tuesday afternoon I met Mark and Tanya at Nagoya station and then we proceeded over to Sian’s house in Gifu.

Sian herself was an interesting character. Her parents had moved to Japan when she was a kid and so she’d had seven years of Japanese schooling and the enviable fluency it entailed. Now she’s a graduate student at a Japanese university in linguistics and also an associate professor in English there. That means she’s got discounted tuition and four months of paid vacation a year. Word.

So we crashed at her house haphazardly strewn across scavenged futons from her aging Japanese attic. I don’t think those futons had seen the light of day since the Berlin Wall came down but they still served their primary purpose without giving me scabies.

We were up and out at 5:30 the next day: we had to get back to Nagoya station to catch our tour bus. Upon arrival at the bus terminal I took stock of the multitudes of Japanese boarder bunnies getting onto my bus. I found out that it was ladies’ day at one mountain so all these girls got passes for free. Some guys get all the luck. Not me, though, because it turned out not to be the mountain we were heading toward. No luck on the seating arrangements, either, as my bus buddy was Egami-san, the aged but chipper grandpa from Aichi-ken. It wasn’t a total loss, though, because he hooked me up with some ski rental coupons to ease the burden on my wallet. He also gave Mark a bag of Oreos. Unlock the magic.

We finally arrived at the mountain around 11:00, shucked our stuff and got a-skiing. The conditions were good but I was still a tinge disappointed. It was all very similar to New England skiing conditions, which anyone who has skied New England will tell you is not a great compliment. The mountain was well groomed but the snow was katchi katchi: Japanese mimetic for a pebbly feeling. No great leaps into boundless powder, just hard edges and quick legs to dodge ice patches. And not altogether unpleasant: as Mark was fond of saying, we were built for speed, not for comfort. We spent nearly the whole first day streaking down the mountain at break neck speed, just for the sheer exhilaration of it. Having not been on the slopes for near 2 years, I was happier than a bug in a rug.

The weather was perfect. Sun shining and Spring temperatures. That was a nice departure from New England. Although we were tired from Day One, we were re-energized by the arrival of the second half of our party the morning of Day Two. Sian arrived by car with some Japanese friends, and the ever-entertaining Dustin (an old comrade from my time in Tokai-West) arrived by bus an hour later… drunk and without sleep from his all-nighter the hours previous. Classic. He was genki as anyone, however, revived by the hair of the dog that bit him. Now in full gaijin force, we resumed our dominance of the slopes.

I do believe we were the only foreigners there and enjoyed the minor celebrity that entails. We also stayed for a few days so we were quite known to mountain staff, famously or infamously. For my own part I was quite impressed by the Japanese mountain-goers. You may recall last summer I went to the mountains in Nagano and was awed by the fashion sophistication girls (and guys) could maintain in such a desolate place. The change of the season hadn’t changed a thing. The difficulties of skiing and snow boarding were no excuse not to look good. Indeed, judging by the skill on most of the mountain, the primary purpose of being there wasn’t for snow anyway.

I do have this to say though: apparently skiing isn’t cool anymore (or at least doesn’t lend itself to looking cool), not in the young Japanese psyche. 90% of the mountain were boarders, most of them mediocre. The few skiers present were all good, and none under 40 years old except us foreigners and a few children. Ah well, kids these days, ain’t nothing you can do about them.

Not that I’m complaining. A done-up Japanese girl is a nice thing to see. Skiing off the lift, one is typically annoyed to see the backs of forty heads of forty boarders clogging up the immediate vicinity… that is, annoyed until you ski around to the front a take better stock of the situation. I suppose if you can’t do something so well you can at least look really good not doing it.

How better to end a long day on the slopes than with a long hot bath. We were staying in dorms above the lodge and had free access to the sentou. We could literally walk inside, dump our stuff in our lockers, grab the necessary hygiene products, and roll right over to the bath house area. No more than 10 minutes from slopes to suds. Pure heaven. On Day 2 we were lounging in there when some Japanese guys came and brought with them the best idea ever: beer. Typically drinking is restricted to the locker room (where it is in fact encouraged) but I suppose out in the boondocks of Gifu the status quo doesn’t apply. Mark quickly lost the ensuing round of nose-goes and thus volunteered himself to get round one. Round one turned into round two, three, and four rather quickly, and then we had to get out because the heat was making us dizzy and the girls were getting impatient.

Food at the mountain was incredible for a ski lodge. For 1000 yen a meal (about $10) you got a mound of rice, miso soup, side salad and the entrée of your choice. And all the tea you could drink. I’m afraid to ask what $10 would get me in Vermont. Breakfast, an all-you-can-eat buffet, was included in the modest price of the bed. Incredible. Needless to say, I didn’t go hungry for living on the cheap.

The Day 2 ski conditions had started to slog and slush by the end of it. Day 3 wasn’t looking so hot and there was even talk of chilling out and skipping it. Dustin and I, at least, were more than happy to chill in the bath house for a couple more hours. Any thought of bowing out early, however, was extinguished when I looked out the window the next morning: 15-20 cm of freshly fallen powder, no more than an elevator-ride away. The best presents really don’t come in boxes.

More excited than a toddler on Christmas, I woke up everyone else and danced my way to breakfast. I was first in line at the ski rental shop and first on the lift up with Dustin that morning. With gleeful smiles we carved the day’s first strokes into the mountain. Truly magical.

Being from New England, once again, I’m not so used to such conditions and it actually took me a while to adjust. Sharp turns had to be replaced by smooth curves, and it took me more than a few white-outs to work out the kinks. By an hour in, though, I was cruising just fine and the real fun began.

Dustin and I managed to find any and every patch of untouched snow. Moreover, we restrict ourselves to caution in assuming it’d be below us: at one point I watched Dustin launch over the edge of a precipice without a second thought. I hoped for the best and followed in kind, landing with a happily muffled thud into a deep snow bank. The exhilaration was short lived as the ensuing moguls forced immediate attention to my leg-work, but it was delightful nonetheless.

By the end of the day we had tapped about as much of the fresh snow as we could. Then I got cocky. There were three man-made jumps near the bottom of the base slope, and the third was big enough to be fun but small enough not to kill Kevin. Mark was also itching to get some air, we decided to take it on a few runs and, cameras in hand, see how cool we could look.

Just a short FYI, man-made jumps typically slope up, flatten out, slope down, and then flatten out again to the trail. The idea is to get past the first plateau and land on the down slope so as to save the shock from you knees. Well the first few runs went fine as I tested the water. Everything seemed to be in order. Not as if I’m some high-flying crazy tricked out fool but I’ve got my one relatively decent daffy that I’m happy with. Then from the lift I had to see some other skier to some snappy little edge grab and so I said to myself: “yea, I can do that.”

Famous last words. Tanya had the camera trained on me as I hit the up slope full tilt. It was the last run of my day, and in my mind I imagined I needed to get as high as possible to pull it off successfully, so there I was trying to grab my skies without giving much thought to anything else. Then I hit the ground. I’d managed to go over the first plateau, past the down slope, and land flat again on the trail. I didn’t tank immediately, but the landing slammed my feet into the front of my boots and all my toes screamed in pain, which caused me to wobbled slightly towards the side of the slope and then toppled over.

And my day was over. Mark saddled up and happily told how awesome it looked. Great, I said, but I’m out. Just to be sure I stood up to get back to the lodge and sure enough it hurt too much to make left turns, so I hobbled down on one ski to the lodge. Ditched my skies and ripped my right boot off and shoved the offending toe right into the snow. Remember my last hospital visit? Middle right toe finds itself purple after night’s festivities. Now the right big toe was similarly bruised an unhappy lavender. At least they matched.

Japanese people around the lodge got a good kick out of my performance. While I was taking a load off on the bench, this Japanese guy in a bright blue and pink jumpsuit rolls up to me and shakes my hand warmly.

“Kevin, dude, I just saw you go down. Man, that was awesome!”
“Oh, um, thanks. Hey, do I know you?”
“Yea, its me, Keitaro, from the onsen last night.”
Yea, that’s right, we had made friends with those happy beer drinking guys. I wonder why I didn’t remember him.
“Oh yea, that’s right! Keitaro, dude, sorry I didn’t recognize you with all those clothes on. You enjoying today as much as I am?”

Turns out he was. I could see now that he was a boarder, but I didn’t hold that against him. His posse came over and we had some beers and talked about how soft and white the snow was. They were some great home boys and typical of the nice people you can meet for no particular reason in this country. I wished them luck with the afternoon and bowed out to get my stuff ready for the bus back.

And that, in addition to the video already up on youtube, is a short list of the ski trip hi-lights. For those of you wondering why you didn’t see my epic spill on that video, its because Tanya hit the power button instead of the shoot button. Alas, my injury was all for naught. Perhaps its better that way…