montoya

Sobering article on the winter-sports industry in Japan: http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030216/1/37t8e.html Most eye-opening part is that an exec at Salomon-Taylor believes over half the resorts in Japan are in fact bankrupt. -montoya

And here's another similar article, this time from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/14/national/14AVAL.html?8hpib

CNNSI has a fairly long article about the recent avalanche in British Columbia: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/siadventure/24/avalanche/

I'm on mac/pc/linux...

Here are some places in Tokyo. Probably the best (price-wise/atmosphere) is the Humax 'Sometime Pool Hall' in Shinjuku's Kabukicho, next to the movie theater plaza: http://www.wondertable.com/app/tenpo/tenpo?code=Sometime The Roppongi Bagus place also has a table or two: http://www.bagus-99.com/billiard/shop/bagus/roppongi.html If you can read Japanese, this might be of some reference: http://www.snooker.gr.jp/ -peace

You actually have a pool table in your place? those things must weigh a bit, eh? (3 slabs at 100 kilos each, plus the frame). Still, must be nice to have...

Spinning off the prior "Other activities" thread, just curious if anyone else here is into pool/billiards/snooker? Not that it has anything to do with snowboarding or skiing, of course.

Lately have been playing lots of pool/billiards. One of the few relaxing outlets I've been able to find here in downtown Tokyo.

I've never had to show ID of any kind when taking domestic flights in Japan. But yeah, carrying the Gaijin Toroku Card is a good idea.

Still a bit hazy about the DBD Club. Is it something run and controlled by Tsugaike, or an independent organization that happens to be cooperating with this particular resort this season? Also, re-reading the old Ski Japan Guide article on the Hakuba Cortina DBD Club, it mentioned there were eventually 1400 members, which is nothing to sneeze at. Anyone know if meetings are held anywhere, and if there's any on-line contact info? Getting really off-tangent here, just seems like this might also appeal to the graying population in Japan. You see tons of people in their 50's-70's hiking

for me it's gotta be the first-time things: *first time I did linked turns all the way down *first time in the pow (oh my back leg burnt!) *first time going between the trees *first time off the jumps --still haven't gotten into the back-country yet, so that leaves at least one thing I'm really looking forward to

sometimes I try to scope out the terrain while riding the lifts, figure out if the forest is less dense on the right side or left side, etc etc

I've been in Tokyo for almost 10 years, and will probably live another 10 years here. Curious about how many others feel they've set down roots and plan to spend most of the rest of their lives here.. -peace

Actually used to be into carving a few years ago and thought about buying one, but this past year I've swung the opposite direction and have gotten more into free-riding (jumps, tree-runs, powder, etc). Still, one of these days might be interesting to try a really stiff board/alpine setup for a really long, fast course, like at Furano. Btw, is there some sort of speed limits at resorts???

The DBD-Club sounds fantastic, does anyone know more about it? Is it mostly run by resorts, or an wholly independent organization? Searching Google only turned up a few links so far: http://www.tokyu-hakuba.co.jp/winter/iwatake/iwadbd.htm http://www.skijapanguide.com/2002/features/backcountry-1.html For me personally (and maybe for others in the Tokyo region), does anyone know if the DBD-Club has anything going on in the Yuzawa region? If not, it may be a great opportunity to start something there. -peace

I vote for a sticker/patch/whatever that says "Any Cheesemen here?!". *or Cheese-people, if you wanna be PC.

during the winter *threading tree-runs *bombing deep powder *nailing jumps in the spring snow *chilling out and catching rays

Just noticed that the Kagura website is using a couple of riders hiking off-piste (I'm assuming) for the main photo on their website: http://www.princehotels.co.jp/ski/kagura/index.html I'd love to email them in Japanese and ask them about their off-piste policies, if they have any back-country tours, etc. Actually, would love to have a one-page list of contact email addresses for other resorts as well. SnowJapan guys, maybe another asset to add to this already fantastic website?

Quote: Originally posted by SKI: Can you even begin to imagine the sums of money or the operation involved you are talking about here??? Totally off-tangent from the overall thread, but actually some foreign firms have been buying up Japanese resort properties lately, since value has gone down so much the past few years: "Texas fund gains Japan hotel and golf firm" http://www.iht.com/articles/83816.html hey, anyone here working at an investment bank?! -peace

Quote: Originally posted by danz: montoya... since when do ski patrollers offer bc tours/guides??? I do not know of any resort anywhere that has that service....usually it is a private guiding company that does that kind of stuff...and I'm sure you can find those for the hakuba bc as well...patrollers have other things to worry about, like their grappling and take-down skills... Got me there; now that I think about it the guys leading the off-piste tour at Tomamu did wear different uniforms from the other patrollers, so possibly they worked for a tour company. However Tomamu heavily promo

Quote: Originally posted by SKI: [QB]If you do not agree with a particular resorts policy on out-of-bounds, then it is simple to just not go there. QB] Actually this is quite reasonable: "Voting with your yen", you can call it. But it can't hurt to also be vocal about it and let these resorts know if you have special needs (eg off-piste access, back-country guided tours). Probably very naive thinking, but instead of the patrollers becoming the enemy, they'd be everyone's friend if they did lead some good back-country/off-piste tours. And probably help their resorts increase revenue. Let

Quote: Originally posted by enderzero: Montoya - you say it is disheartening to hear barok does not want to take it further, why is that? I am interested to know what positive outcome anyone thinks could come from taking it further. If anything patrollers will just become stricter about people going off course. Actually, to clarify my earlier post, what I meant to say was that I was saddened to hear that the same thing happened to another guy (jumped upon by the patrollers there). Not commenting at all about barok not wanting to take it further or not, which is 100% his prerogative.

Quote: Originally posted by Ocean11: 169 for me. One of my crew was riding a Fish at Nozawa today, and he reckons it's great for powder (although not for landing huge jumps), but horrible on groomers. The Fish is made to be shorter than a conventional board, or so I'm told. I was thinking about gettine one, but was thinking about this. Is it really that bad on groomers, or something you can sorta tolerate on the way to the powder stashes??

curious, what resorts were that???

another broad stereotype (from my freelancing point of view) is that Osaka-companies are really stingy with money, whereas Tokyo-based clients are not as bad. When it comes to paying clients, gotta say Tokyo wins out.