土曜日, 2月 11, 2006
With barely an hour of sleep I took off to Echigoyuzawa this Friday morning to snowboard (you guess it right!)
Almost everybody in the same Bullet Train were going either to Naeba or Gala Yuzawa. I was beginning to wonder how my Kagura snowboarding would be. Nobody seems interested here.
The ski center was small but tidy. Yes, indeed there were few people and most of them locals! My experience traveling have hinted me that I should go where the locals go and I smiled at the thought.
When I stepped out of the ropeway that took us to the ski area I was speechless. This place was like heaven for skiers. Huge?! There were few skiers and the weather as opposed to the forecast, was perfect. An elderly man who was standing beside me in the ropeway first noticed it. "Saiko!". An elderly woman whom I got to chat while we were in a lift also said the same thing.
I warmed up by taking on the easiest course, which was around 342m. This place is a no-nonesense skier's paradise. After studying the Mt. Naeba map, I couldn't decide which way to take first. The place is just so vast, and the snow~ soft powder. I decided to take the 3,100+ Gondola Course which is covered by the Matsumata and Kagura area. I wentt on top of the mountain.
There was no trying hard Emzi today. I was really tired and sleepy. My objective for the day was just to really bond with my board, trust my balance and enjoy the view.
I've past the basics and now I'm trying to bond with my board first so I can do the advanced moves. I did a very weak slow spin, my first. I also tried to practice my back brakes and the "J" move via a very slow pace. I also started trying on a more straight path. The back-side of slow snowboarding is that it would require a lot of pushing once you get to a flat terrain.
My knees & thighs hurt, a single course totaling about 3800m, truly grueling for the knees and thighs. I didn't want to push it further today.
I took a short lunch break at the Kagura Restaurant just below the Mitsumata Gondola. Probably it was a weekday so there weren't many people there.
Obviously I've been really tired and deprived of sleep. But my love for snowboarding is flaming in my heart. Truth is, doing this every week is really physically demanding and my knees are really hurting and tired. I just took it really slow today careful not to twist my knees but mindful also that I need to trust my back brake so I can relax. Skating to a "J" actually reduces the stress to the knees because it releases your body from the brake position and all you have to do is cruise. It's a shame that I'm starting to sound too technical, when I'm not in the least credible position to comment hahahaha!
Emzi is looking very tired. That's because she is!
I forgot my camera so I had to do away with my cellphone's camera, which turned out easier to use.
This probably is not my best shot but I have learned something very important from Rena Inoue, an Americanized Japanese figure skater "Kinou yori, Ima. Ima yori, Ashita"(昨日より、今。今より、明日).
Now is better than yesterday. And tomorrow than today.
Cross-mountain snowboarding. Now this is the real deal! I have to go back and stay longer to trek all these 4 mountains ~ Naeba, Kagura, Matsumata and Hakuba. I guess you could say that this place is comparable to the Alps. Just perfect!
Thanks for visiting!