Skiing in Hokkaido, plus a short story...

Last weekend I went skiing in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is the northern-most island in Japan, and it’s widely recognized as the best skiing in Asia. The mountain is, from what I’ve been told, not the best or most interesting mountain for a skier or a snowboarder, but what it lacks in terrain Hokkaido more than makes up for in quality of snow. “It’s like skiing on pure Colombian cocaine”, at least that’s how the snowboarders described it. I have never participated in any winter sports on anything other than solid ice: “It’s like skiing on Vick’s VapoRub-covered glass”. I digress.

The skiing was a lot of fun, and the resort was pretty spectacular. We skied for two days. On the first day, on my first run, my “friend” dragged me to the top of Mt. Niseko. We took the first ski lift, and went to the second to go a little higher. Then the third, and a little higher. Then we were out of ski lifts, so we took off our skis and hiked to the summit of the mountain. I mean summit -- there was a pile of rocks to commemorate those that had come this high! After much cajoling, he shamed me into “skiing” off the top instead of walking back with tears in my eyes. I say “skiing” because there really was very little that resembled the sport. It was me falling, rolling, feeling around in the powder for my skis and poles, trying to put them back on while upside down in the powder, struggling to stand up, falling a little farther down the mountain, and repeating the process. It takes a good skier about 30 minutes to get down the mountain from the summit and it took me 1 1/2 hours. FUN! But the rest of the weekend I just skied on official trails, and it really was a good time. It’s a very nice place, and skiing in powder really is a pretty amazing experience. I won’t spend any more time on this story, because there are no pictures with me in it (it was too cold for my camera to work consistently, something like 10 below zero). We had some guys from Colorado take our picture, but they have yet to email it to me.

This picture is from the summit, looking back at the hike we just covered. The top of the last lift is out of the frame to the left. To get a sense of scale, can you just make out the guy hiking up the ridge on the right?

And this is a random guy with his snowboard, looking down at the view from the summit.

Now onto what really made me want to make another blog entry: a nice short story.

Born in 1973, Bob grew up in Columbus, Ohio. His life was typical in almost every way. Baseball in the summers and basketball in the winters. Church most Sundays, and dinner afterward at his grandparents' house. A fist-fight in 9th grade with Billy Worth, and in 11th grade he shared his first kiss with a fat chick in his shop class.

In college, Bob started to realize that he wasn’t cool. The freshman girls weren’t interested in him, and his obsession with Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t yielding the friends he had hoped it would. He longed to get away, to get to a place that he could be himself. He took foreign languages and realized he was a quick study. He took German, Latin, and French, but grew weary of the focus on conjugations. Bob often talked to Japanese girls while perusing the comic book section of the student bookstore. They were always kind to him and rarely spit in his face, so he decided to redirect this penchant for foreign languages toward the Far East.

After graduation, with 4 semesters of Japanese under his belt, Bob took off for Tokyo to teach English. He had a great time in Tokyo, and really began to fit in. He no longer felt out of place for loving Anime, and his third-grader’s grasp of the language meant that he could effectively seduce almost any woman in Roppongi. Bob took up karate, and his sensei said he earned his green belt in record time. One night in Roppongi Bob met Yoko, a beautiful Japanese girl who found Bob’s pale skin and flowing locks of brown hair enchanting.

Yoko and Bob became inseparable, and one week before Bob’s 26th birthday he proposed to Yoko. “Hai! Hai! A thousand times Hai” she said. In 1999 Bob and Yoko were married in a purely Japanese ceremony in Yoko’s hometown of Kyoto. Yoko wore a traditional kimono, and so did Bob. On their 3rd wedding anniversary, to show his love for both Yoko and her culture, Bob officially changed his name to Hajime and became a Japanese citizen. Finally he had found a place where he belonged and where he felt comfortable just being himself.

To celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary, Hajime and Yoko went to a local photographer in Azabu Juban and had a portrait made of themselves. At home, they hung it proudly over their tatami mats in their tea room. Each evening, as Yoko serves Hajime tea, he looks at their picture and finds peace.

Meanwhile, ever the savvy marketer, the photographer made a second print and hung it in his shop window. And on a cold day in February 2009 a gaijin from Atlanta, GA walked by that shop, did a double take, laughed his ass off, and took a picture.

If I ever become this guy, I'm not sure whether I want you to pat me on the back or punch me in the face. But please don't let me have a portrait made.

Karaoke, Basketball, and Sushi

Last weekend I had my first real karaoke "experience". I'd sung karaoke before, with small groups of people, but this was my first opportunity to go sing with a majority of Japanese people. It was a great time, and I think I might be a karaoke junkie. There are probably nearly a thousand karaoke bars in Tokyo, and they're not the kind we're used to in the U.S. Here, it's a multi-floor facility with separate small rooms for groups of people from 2 to 25. On this Friday night we went to the karaoke bar across the street from my office, and got a room big enough to accommodate our group of 15 future Nihon-jin Idols. The rooms have seating around the edge, big tables, lights and tamborines, and a 19-inch TV off on the far end of the room. Frankly, they could have sprung for a bigger TV. We ended up drinking a heck of a lot of beer, and got out of there after 1 AM for around 5,000 Yen per person, or a little over $50. Not bad for a full 3 hours.

And for those of you questioning why I would enjoy karaoke so much, I submit Exhibit A:





And Exhibit B:





Your Honor, I rest my case.


On Saturday, this weekend, I went to a Japan Basketball League game about 1/2 hour train ride outside of town. It was in a prefectural sports complex south of Tokyo. The game was the Toshiba Brave Thunders (the home team) versus the Panasonic Trians. I have no idea what a Trian is. For that matter, I don't know what a Brave Thunder is either, but it does sound intimidating. These are local teams that hail from certain prefectures or cities, but they are sponsored by large Japanese companies. The cheerleaders chant T-O-S-H-I-B-A TOSHIBA!!! It'll get the blood pumping.





The game was lackluster. A veritable tour de force of two-handed layups and perimeter shooting the likes of which Larry Bird can only imagine. Truly, it was probably like watching a Division II college basketball team mid-season when the games don't really count. We did have very good seats though. Courtside at half-court. They really attempt to put on a show, and model themselves after the NBA I'm sure. But they were a little off with their multimedia. They played the exact same part of the exact same techno song each time the home team had the ball, and the exact same "da-du-da-da da-du-da-da DEFENSE" song each time the away team had the ball. And they wouldn't wait to make sure the turnover was permanent before hitting the change-song button. So often times the home team would be walking the ball down the court (TECHNO), and pass the ball into the arms of a visibly surprised guy on the other team (da-du-da-da) who would then trip and fall leaving the ball for the home team to pick up (TECHNO), who would shoot toward the portion of the court that contained the rim, hitting a disoriented away-team player in the back of the neck (da-du-da-da) only to leave the loose ball to be picked up by the home team's 6'3" center (TECHNO) and accidentally stepped out of bounds. It had the potential to become really annoying.









I was lamenting having spent 3,000 Yen on these seats for such a mediocre basketball game...until halftime. After halftime I was wondering how these seats could be half empty for such a bargain-basement price. The reason for my change of heart, you ask? Two words: Smoothie Cousin, a four-man boy band combining rhythm and soul for far and away the best half-time performance since Janet Jackson's nipple or an elementary school jump-rope squad. All the while being nearly 45% more uncomfortable than watching retarded kids play a short game of 4-on-4. Smoothie Cousin rocked, and I mean ROCKED, the house with "Your Sushi, My Hashi (chopsticks)". At least that's what I'm guessing this power ballad was called. It combined soulful melodies and harmonics with the pure sexual excitement of Japanese rap. For your enjoyment I smuggled a video, in direct contravention of the Boy Band Code of Ethics:




Today, Sunday, I went to eat sushi at Tsukiji (pronounced SKEE-JEE) fish market. The fish market itself is closed on Sundays, but the best sushi in town can be had within the market 7 days a week. I went with my friends Winnie and Masato. Winnie is Taiwanese, raised in the US and Cornell educated (so she's quite western and speaks perfect English -- and Mandarin and Japanese but who cares about those two useless languages) and works in real estate in Tokyo, and Masato is her Japanese boyfriend who works for one of the large Japanese "mega banks". Masato speaks English very well too, so guess how we all communicate! That's right, Latin.



They're both wonderful people and we enjoy hanging out together, and Masato loves to take me around his adopted hometown of Tokyo (he's originally from Osaka) to all of his favorite restaurants. He's an excellent guide and pretty good at ordering bizarre but edible food. We have eaten some strange stuff, and we plan to eat blowfish (which can kill you if prepared incorrectly) and whale in the near future. Today we had the following assortment, and I ate and pretty much enjoyed everything:


Fried, whole shrimp (you eat them like popcorn, and they're pretty good)



Mussels, really not that crazy



A sea snail, still in the shell. Delicious.



Squid, raw and cut into nice little slimy strips. I didn't really like this one. Not for the taste, but for the rubbery slimy mouthfeel. Blegh!





And by far the freshest sashimi (raw fish) I've ever eaten. That's the carcass of the fish, with its own flesh cut off and piled on top of it along with some grated-radish garnish. Check out the video below:

Who likes big, fat, sweaty men in diapers?

The Japanese do, that's who. But they call them Sumo wrestlers and they worship them. These guys are bad-asses, and they give every fat guy in Japan a chance to score a wife. It'd be like having the misfortune of looking like Brad Pitt in the States.

I went last weekend with a group of Gaijin, and had a great time! It's very Japanese, from the flags outside the stadium, to the stadium itself (which is dedicated to Sumo only). We had just about the worst seats in the stadium and still had fun, making friends with the Japanese people sitting around us and generally just taking it all in.

When you approach the stadium you see rows and rows of colorful flags, each of which represents a Sumo that is competing. They actually make a pretty picture. Each match takes about 5 minutes: 4 minutes and 45 seconds of preparing and 15 seconds of flesh-on-flesh. As soon as one Sumo pushes another out of the ring, the match is over. No points, no rounds, very simple. When you're out, you're done. So over the course of a day you might see 60 matches. And each Sumo only wrestles once a day, so right there you've got 120 wrestlers. The tournament lasts for a couple of weeks, and although the wrestlers compete over and over during the week, I'm sure there are more than 120 wrestlers and thus, more than 120 flags. Pretty cool.

Before each group of wrestlers begins their matches, they gather around for the "opening ceremonies" as it were, and a Shinto Priest blesses them and the ring.

Then each match begins with the exact same series of movements...

Then they line up against each other ready to do battle. We were at this angle for much of the day. In fact, it inspired a rather catchy simile -- we decided that my Southern accent was like a Sumo's testicle...it occasionally pops out.

And let the mayhem begin!

We went to lunch at a restaurant next to the stadium. They have a sumo ring set up in the middle of the restaurant and invite you to come up and try it out. As long as you're a man. Some of the girls in our group went up there and they yelled at them to get the hell off there. It's sacred ground I guess, and you know how a woman will mess up a sacred place in a heartbeat with all that menstrual stuff.

I challenged a Japanese guy sitting at another table to a match, and he taught me how to go through the Sumo moves. Then he taught me to respect my elders.

And here are the Sumo leaving at the end of the day, like celebrities. There was a big crowd of people hanging out at the gates waiting to see their favorites in person. And these guys know they're Huge in Japan (even more than me). They don't even make eye contact with their adoring fans or say a word to them. Hard core.

Oh, and here's a picture of me with the British Ambassador to Japan. I went to a Christmas party at his house in the British Embassy Compound back in December. That's how I roll...