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.