Sunobodo!!

I have finally done my first winter sport. After years of living in MinneSNOWta and never doing anything snow related, other than the occasional snowman or angel, I have taken the leap. This past weekend I made the trek to Nigata, Japan to go on snowboard adventure with my friends James, David, Garrett, Yuki and Ellison. At the moment I am in a lot of pain. Like I can't-walk, breathe-or-raise-my-arms-over-my-head-without-shouting-out-in-muscle-agony kind of pain. However, it was all worth it, i'm a snowboard master. Haha, just kidding, but I can go down a moutain without falling too many times now. Our Jouney started in my little town of Togane at about 5pm on Friday the 26th. We boarded a train headed to tokyo to catch our night bus. We then took this night bus 7 hours to Nigata. It was not a comfortable ride, but I can pretty much mangage to sleep anywhere. We made some obnoxiously long reststops, but alas we arrived around 5 am Sat. morning. The place we stayed was called, get this, wait for it....Lodgey fun fun. It probably doesn't get too much better than that. So we arrived, checked into our cute little japanese style rooms and slept for 2 hours. We got up at 7:30 am to get our boards and boots fitted (I rented the board and boots this time, I wasn't quite ready to drop that kinda cash). I, however, purchased a pair of snowboard pants before the trip, probably my most sound investment to date. Along with the pants I purchased some hardcore knee pads, snowboard gloves, wrist gaurds, a neck warmer, snowboard socks, snowboarding thermals and a cool looking hat. Then we all hopped on our little shuttle to the mountain. We arrived at Mt. Naeba around 9:00am. It was snowing! How perfect. Although I don't miss snow, It was nice to see it for the first time in over a year. David and Garrett and pretty good snowboarders, so they gave us all a quick tutorial on getting on and off lifts and then I was pretty much on my own. I thought lifts were going to be so scary! Everytime I see them on TV people end up jumping off from really high up, it turns out that is not the case at all, however, it is quite difficult to dismount with a board. I ended up falling pretty much everytime. I made it flawlessly only once. My first trip down the mountain was a tragedy. I was quite frustrated that I was not picking it up faster. I could find no balance and found myself flat on my back and face more times than I can count. After about 5 hours I had finally accomplished getting down a run without falling!! SUCCESS! It was pretty amazing. I only however have semi-mastered heel side breaking. Toe-side breaking will have to be worked on next time. Some of the runs were way too steep for my ability. I just continually fell down those, but the not so extreme runs were not too shabby. You'd be suprised how slowly you can actually make a snowboard go. I didn't think it was possible. So we ended the day with some dinner from Pizza-La and headed home around 4pm. After arriving home I was quickly talked into heading down this other slope located near our Lodgey fun fun. I ended up completing two pretty decent runs...I only fell maybe 3 or 4 times!! and trust me, thats a VERY low number of falls. When I woke up the next morning I was in A LOT of pain, but I decided it would be prudent to suit up and do it all again :) Today we were going to ride DRAGONDOLA.haha. This is one of the longest gondolas in the world. I thought we could just get on and ride, but silly me, the entrance was on the other side of the mountain. We had to board to just get on the thing. The day started quite shakey. I had lost many of my previous day skills. In frustration I ripped off my board and stomped down a hill. Then I took a chill pill, put it back on and things were fine, my moderate skills eventually came back to me. Here is a picture off the internet I found of Dragondola (I don't have mine all loaded yet, i'll post them soon!)


This thing was AMAZING. What an incredible view. Anyways on this new mt. we did some more boarding, ate some more food, returned the way we came, at a pizza la again and ended our snowboard adventure. It was much better than expected and I did things I never thought possible for myself. I made some new friends and can't walk up stairs anymore. All and all and excellent way to spend $200 and my weekend.