It keeps getting better and better - I love Japan

25/01/2010
Jeez I really am leaving a long time between blogs aren’t I! Getting slack but at least I get to tell you about the most important things that have been going on as opposed to doing blogs every couple of days and they are just monotonous. I don’t wanna talk about what I had for breakfast etc...!! 
So Last blog was on Friday the 7th Jan – jeez that was a long time ago – trying to remember everything is going to be difficult. I think there had been a lot of work and only a little play in the powder, but more recently with our days off and various trips there has been a lot more to report on the riding front.
Work has been busy lots of guests to teach, I have been getting a few private requests lessons where people have wanted me to follow up with another lesson with them which has been great. I had a 4 hr private request with a really nice guy called James, Initially I taugh his girlfriend and then he had me twice for lessons and really enjoyed them – his riding improved so much with everything I taught him and the 4 hr request was just soo good because we could cover a lot of ground and get even more snowboarding done. His appreciation factor was so high and it was soo nice to teach someone like that.
I am finding the instructing to be a mixed bag, on the whole I love it but certain lessons are really tedious – teaching low level young children is really hard and you cannot get kids starting and stopping and moving as quickly on a board as ski’s therefore there is a lot of time where kids aren’t really going anywhere and they hate the learning process. Being imaginative and making it fun for the kids is key without really telling them they are learning anything. I find I am really struggling with these kind of lessons. Its something I know is an issue with my teaching I just need to address it for sure.
I managed to get employee of the month at the latest staff meeting which is something I couldn’t really believe – I am not sure if I had already mentioned this but I wont a ski-dooing trip out of it and the stoke factor on that was pretty high! I couldn’t believe it really I was just doing what I normally do!
The school is still great and most of the time I get a long with the people I live and work with – there is the occasional moment when there is a drama or 2 in the house that affects the mood. Living and working with each other means we spend a lot of time with each other – it can get a bit much but you just need to learn to separate yourself from situations which irriate you and hide for a bit until you are ready to be released into the wild that is Garmisch! On the whole I havent had massive issues with anyone, and if there is something bothering me with one or 2 of the people I am closer to in the house then I will let them know and talk it out. Its all good tho!
Our first days off were the 10th and 11th of Jan and they were both pretty epic clear sky powder days. I have memories of riding with Kay my roommate and Rach Hall – aka triple threat (because she is sick at skiing boarding and tele skiing) and I felt like I was riding like a pro – though I clearly wasn’t. It was more because I was with 2 sick skiers pushing me to my limit and talking my down lines I wouldn’t have found myself. It was epic! Another memory from our days off was riding Super ridge with Kate, Bec Farrar and Tom Summerville  Super ridge is a ridge face filled with trees which you traverse into and drop back into to get back into Hirafu onto a run called Super. We were pretty familiar with this ridge, however Kate took us down some new lines we hadn’t been down and they were so fresh and so clean – it was immense – SO epic! We then moved onto Miharashi which is a field of powdery goodness next to the Hirafu Gondola – we did a lot of filming as the sun was out and there were some amazing natural features to hit and have fun with. Strawberry fields is another fun powder area with so many drops, hits and jumps as well as trees. Going in there with Kay and Tony one day and with Kay and Bec another day we found so many fun things to do and film. Kay really does have an amazing eye for natural features and goes pretty huge. Riding with him gets you stoked for sure!
More recently I went to another resort called Rusutsu with a crew of about 16 other instructors to cater for a medical conference which had about 300 attendees. SkiJapan the parent company of NBS provides the instructors and an itinerary for the conference. We just instructed and I can honestly say going to Rusutsu has been probably the highlight of my winter. We spent 8 days there in total and I had 2 days off – both Satudays. I taught some of the best lessons there and snowboarded some amazing terrain. We all stayed in a house next to a convenience store which was handy. I shared a room with 2 good friends from Garmish – Tom Summerville who I brought over from NZ with me and Bec Farrar – aka Drumstick aka G fruit. It was a real nice chilled setup working 4 hrs a day from 10:30 to 15:30. We had a chance to ride every morning before work and for an hour or so after work. The night skiing wasn’t that great so we would ride after work just until the main lifts shut and then chilled out at home. Its funny as a resort there are more better things about resort than bad ones. The mountain is organised into 3 peaks the highest of which is around 1000 metres. The west mountain was closest to where we lived and was where the night skiing was. There were 2 lifts available on the west mountain at night, we did one night of skiing on those lifts and it was real fun, however the terrain was mellow and wasn’t as epic as the night skiing we have here in Niseko. Also the lift pass system was a bit pre historic – we had to show a liftie our pass with no electronic gates – no biggie though!
The lift system seems so well organised with hooded chairs and gondolas. There was a gondola on each peak and several chairs to help u access all of the available terrain on the mountain. Because of this organisation it meant there was so much off trail skiing available in trees between runs. On a good powder day you would have several options on runs to take and it wasn’t a super commercial busy hill like Niseko is which meant fresh snow was preserved for longer without being massively tracked out.
I was really lucky with the lessons I got, I taught snowboarding the whole week and had a high level group in the morning where the class size varied depending on who booked up on a particular day. There was only ever a max of 3, I had a girl called Claire who was a green runner when we started the week, and by then end of the week she was freeriding through trees relatively comfortably. She was super keen to progress and it was good to see her get better and better after each day of teaching her. I then had a couple of kids called Scottie and Jon 14 and 10 respectively. They could already rip but it was more about working with their technique. Later on when the group lessons finished on Thursday Jons dad booked me for a private with him Scott and Jon. It was probably the best lesson I have taught because we had a fresh powder morning and I was literally a tag along as they took me to their favourite powder spots. We were ripping fresh powder all morning and I get them small tips and pointers along the way. Jons dad Reynold had spent some time in Red where I did a season and you could see he loved the tree riding because thats all we did. Having spent some time in Red you have to love trees as they have the best in the world over there. They were kind enough to buy me lunch and then I headed to my afternoon private lesson.
For the whole week in the afternoons I had private lessons with a man called John Laidlaw, and what made this guy amazing was how humble he was with his snowboard ability. On our first run his technique was awesome! So we just worked on terrain building him for the whole week and advanced snowboarding techniques. It was thoroughly enjoyable teaching high end lessons and being able to apply my level 3 training to some practical teaching situations. He was only booked in for 2 afternoon privates, but decided after the 2 lessons we had to book me out for the rest of the week! On our last lesson, I got a bit lost in the trees and we ended up going a little too far into a valley enjoying the powder! It was terrible we had to hike out for 20-30 mins, and I thought he was going to hit the roof but he actually really enjoyed the serenity of the hike and it added to his experience. He was kind enough to give me a 10k tip at the end of the week which was amazing.
I was lucky enough to have 2 days off on the Saturdays around the week we were working and they were both so much fun. The first Saturday was an intro to the mountain where we did some terrain training and then just literally freerode through fresh powder all day because it was a sunny day. I took some turns with Chook our manager and we honestly had so much fun. Tom and I were riding with Brendan in the afternoon. Brendan is a fully certified ski instructor from NZ who works out of the Remarkables or Coronet peak in NZ (i forget). Anyone he is a machine and finds some of the best snow on the mountain – we called him line finder 3000! Good times.
Bec was lucky enough to have a 3rd day off on the Friday before our 2nd Saturday. She, James and I had to shovel for 2 hrs one evening to get our lift passes for the 2nd Saturday because technically it was a day off and we had finished teaching. Therefore we had to buy our own passes however we were offered them free for some shovelling work. We did that and it was actually quite fun though it was hard work!
Bjoern, Bec, James and I went out on our 2nd Saturday of riding rusutsu and we had some fresh snow and a shiny sunny day! It was so much fun doing laps in the trees with everyone around just having fun flying off natural hits and landing in lovely soft powder. We tried to get lots and lots of footage – sadly the ones of me were terrible, though I was pushing myself to do hits which were a lot bigger than I would normally hit on my own. I was happy with my landings it was just my aerial time was massively unattractive  - this is something I definitely need to work on for sure!!
Rusutsu doesn’t have much to offer in the way of nightlife. There are a couple of hotels one called the Tower which is a pretty standard posh hotel with a fancy restaurant or 2 and an overpriced hotel shop. Rusutsu hotel was where it was at! The place was like a carnival! We took a walk through to find some rather alternative interior design (fear and loathing in las vegas esq). There was a talking tree which was pretty trippy, a merry go round – (really bizarre) and a huge games area. In the summer there is a theme park in the resort also, its covered with snow in the winter and is closed down as mountain is open, but it was surreal to see as we were ripping down from the west mountain of the resort a huge roller coaster line just covered with snow. The run out back toward the gondola is actually through the theme park and its just crazy surreal – I loved it! On the walk Bec and I did around the hotel we found the gym where Bec proceeded to do a ridiculous night workout in her puffy – funny times! We scoped out a few of the shops and took the monorail across between the hotels. Yes there is actually a monorail in this resort – its insane!
In the evenings we found ourselves either chilling out, watching movies or watching ridiculous comedy! It was fun bonding time with Tom and Bec and we had laughs for sure. We did venture out for dinner one evening – there was a bit of a debarcle with our tempura order, but I wont go into that! We had a karaoke machine and lets just say certain people shouldn’t sing in public.
We (i say we but it was actually James Winfields idea) decided to get an ipod with speakers and run into Seiko Mart – our convenience store next door – and have a rave – I posted a video on facebook – it was ridiculously hilarious! Good times!
Since being back from Rusutsu I have had a day of work teaching kids and then 2 days off!
The first of my days off was spent CAT skiing with Kay and Niseko photography – Immense day – the sun was shining all day and we got some incredible scenic shots. We did 1 lap which took us all morning – we were dropped off at a face of a hill which hadn’t been touched and there was 800 metres of slope to play with and hike. Because we were with a photo crew we had to hike a lot of different features and hit them. So the morning was literally about the shot – I wasn’t that keen on getting footage of myself, so I told the camera crew not to set up for me – but to set up for others and I would follow up. I looked at the pictures today and there are about 3 good shots of me which I am stoked about and about 100 other amazing scenic shots and action shots. The features were amazing! I was really loving the hiking working for each hit – it was hard work but the serenity and the quietness of not being on a hill with anyone else but the crew that you were with was awesome. Not only that but the day we had was incredible – sun all day clear skies and from the top there were some incredible skyline views. I cant wait to get the pictures! We did 2 top to bottom laps in the afternoon just for fun – and they were just absolutely incredible. One of the best and most varied days on my board!!
Today I rode hard pack groomers in the morning training for my exam in April and in the afternoon rode park. I took a real hard fall today off a 35-40ft jump! I luckily got back up and carried on the day in the park and given it was my first time in a long time in the park things were working for me and got some old tricks back and a couple of newbies which I was super happy with!! Another fun day with all the crew.
I think thats all I have to report right now – peace and love people

THE POW IS HERE

07/01/2011
Well well well 21 days since my last blog, and things are crazy over here in Japan now. I was on a good vibe in my last blog and besides a few minor things everything here is pretty epic. Things in the house are still great, getting on well with everyone and making solid friendships.
Living with 27 people can get a bit much from time to time and issues arise around cleanliness and lazyiness, this tends to cause a bit of tension and drama, but other than that things are pretty good on the whole. The convenience of living right next to the beginner hill and close to work makes it amazing. There is no real excuse to go out riding, and we have been riding loads.
The way the school runs is we get a phone call when we are on in the morning or when we have a shift and it can run that way well because the full time staff live so close to the hill. Work has been going really well, I have been getting a mix of kids, adults and private lessons and have even got a few request privates. If you get requested for a private lesson you get a commission on the sale price of that lesson as you have effectively sold yourself for a lesson. The thing is sometimes at the end of a lesson I feel a little douchy selling myself but it pays off for sure. My best sale has been a private for 4 hrs, real good coin. I get like 15% of the sale price.
I have been getting a range of abilities on lessons too which has been awesome. I feel super confident taking any kind of level lesson out now and thats what I wanted to get to with my instructing. I find the training I got for my level 3 in new Zealand has really helped and I am applying the theory to practise. To be working full time is also good as in New Zealand the work was sporadic and I didnt teach a whole lot of higher end lessons like I am now. It is really great.
Thats the work, the onto the riding. Initially the snow has been pretty much like northern hemisphere for the most of December few light falls a couple of cheeky small pow days but on the whole it wasn’t the epic pow we thought it was going to be. We were still riding loads, but it was strange how often the sun popped out , but at the same time it lit up the mountain and you could see some amazing views, notably of Mount Yotei! The active volcano mountain opposite hirafu – so enchanting – so amazing. Since the turn of the year the powder has been epic and its been absolutely dumping with fresh snow – this is what we came to Japan for, this is the famous champagne powder – it was incredible. Since the start of Jan (about a week) there has been about 2-3metres of snow and it is absolutely epic. Last night I rode some of the deepest powder I have ever ridden in my life. At the same time, its so deep its easy to mess up. One wrong move and when you go down getting back up and riding again is the hardest thing. Especially when you fall on a flat section. Without momentum its hard to get going and in 80cm of fresh snow you can bury yourself quite easily. I had a scary experience last night where I fell during a flat section at night and all my friends were at the bottom, I had to basically hussle and roll out getting buried further and further. I was panicking and it was soo scary! A run that takes me 2-3 minutes took me 30 mins to get out of. It was emotional.
Socially its been good Christmas Day was so much fun, we had a pot luck where everyone made some food and we shared it around. It was a great evening. New years eve was pretty special too we all drank way too much and went to a bar next to the hill. The fireworks were incredible and it was just a great night.
My knee is doing ok, its just so physically demanding working and riding all the time, I feel my body is getting more and more atuned to it and its a good feeling.
Rode again today and it was insane riding! The powder is incredible

Much love people