Sky Valley

One of the things that becomes immediately apparent the day after you go snowboarding is that it utilizes muscles and muscle groups you had no idea even existed. This realization comes at approximately the same time you first open your eyes and try and sit up. Your abs scream blue murder, and insist you’re being way, way out of order exerting them in order to do something as extreme as sitting up, so you roll to one side and put down an arm to steady yourself, only to have a million tiny daggers of pain shoot up the muscles in your arm. From then on it’s a downhill roller coaster ride to finding new and interesting ways of appreciating just how much your body resents you being an unfit bastard. Note to self: Me hates me.

Right now, my neck hurts. The inside of my neck. I’d love to know since when you’ve been able to strain the muscles in your neck and how the fuck you do it while boarding? I’d also like someone to fill me in on why it hurts more on the second day after, than the first. I’m in pain here, I demand answers.

So, yeah, boarding. Monday morning at 1:15am, Glebe and I huddled around with a bunch of other people in the freezing concrete wasteland of post-midnight downtown Sannomiya, waiting for the bus to take us up to Sky Valley in northern Hyogo. The bus rocked up right on the dot, and we crammed into its cramped and overheated interior for the ride up to the snow. Got to the valley around 6:30, hung around until 7 when the rental shop opened and then cut sick on the slopes until four.

The weather was gorgeous, blue skies and lots of powder on the sides of the runs. The view from the summit was like nothing I’ve seen in Japan before, mountains stretching for miles and down to a sea of cloud. We stopped for a late lunch at a tiny shack on the side of the slope, where we tried the master’s specialty (“It’s disgusting. Don’t order it. Disgusting! What’s disgusting in English? Yes, it’s that”) of pickled yellow radish on thick buttered white toast. It was actually quite tasty and didn’t even give us food poisoning. Result! Better yet both of us managed to get through the day without killing ourselves. Roll on Tsugaike.

Posted in Japan on Wednesday January 11, 2006.