I Won't Get Board of Doing This!

Snow Park Oze Tokura, Gunma Prefecture 

Thursday Feb 11th is National Foundation Day a.k.a. a day off from work. Some of my coworkers (we were a group of 7) and I met up at 5am Thursday morning to drive to Gunma Prefecture, some 250 km NorthWest of Tokyo.
I borrowed wear from my coworker, and hired the boots and board.

We started at 8.30am, and walking up the side of the baby slope in heavy boots was a challenge itself! But the real challenge for a first-time-boarder was actually getting up and being able to stand on the board! It's not easy when you're not used to it!!! It took me a lot of practice, energy, abs muscles a whole hour to finally stand up for the first time!! The next challenge was staying up on the board!! I was extremely thankful for the bum padding I was lent!!

Once I was able to get up, I found the actual snowboarding and balancing bits quite easy; I've been ice skating several times and that balancing instinct helped a lot.

We hit the tallest mountain and I managed to board down it only falling down three times! I zig-zaged my way down down for a long distance, though the that was very challenging for my leg muscles! It was extremely enjoyable to snowboard in the snow with beautiful, misty scenery :)

The weather turned after we stopped to have lunch, and the face of the mountain was resurfaced with fresh powder snow. This produced a new challenge as this increased my board's speed dramatically and I initially found it harder to control the board, but at least it made for a softer landing!!

We finished boarding at 3.15pm. Our minds wanted to keep snowboarding, but our bodies were already aching and crying out for us to stop!!

At home, I had a long hot soak in my Japanese-style bath ofuru (a short, deep bath), as it is a Japanese tradition to usually go to a hot spring after boarding.

Today at work, having three energetic kids classes was very tough on my stiff, achy body!! But even so, I can't wait to snowboard again!!

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Multitasking when snowboarding is a bad combination.