Glen Falting

A group of us stayed at the Canadian House for a weekend during the summer. If you're driving it would be quite good to use as a base for the whole area. It is a little distant from the resorts, but I'm sure the owner would drop you off and pick you up if you wanted to try out different resorts and you asked him nicely. He took us over to the golf course and up to the walking tracks. Also took us to and from the station. Pretty decent bloke and as we had the place to oursevles, he was happy to keep the bar open well past the official closing time. Its clean and neat and pretty comfort

Interesting comment about behaviour modification brought about by safety equipment.... "These devices provide an increased chance of survival, but you should be aware of our tendency toward compensating behavior that ratchets our risk up higher than it was before we got the new toy."

I got word yesterday that the ol' girl has been fixed up and can be collected at anytime. Actually I was kind of hoping they had lost my board so maybe they would give me a nice flashy new one. 1,500 v 12,000 mmm, definitely a business opportunity there. If anyone in Tokyo wants to get their board tuned, bring 'em around to my place and for a modest, 5,000 I'll get it sorted for you

Has anyone been in touch with Tabibito Travel in the last week or so? The email addresses don't work and neither does the website?

good idea there Siren. The shop has confirmed that the board will be ready this saturday... so we'll see what happens.

The shop guy asked me, "so when are you going to use it"?"as if, he was saying "hey mate, calm down, there's weeks to go yet"...but fatty that's not the point. It is already costing 10,000 yen for a service that isn't (according to them) going to fix the damage to the leading edge. I want my board back and Ï want it fixed! Its times like these I wish I could speak Japanese fluently so I could ring up and sink the boot in. Now I have to get my secretary to call up and express my displeasre but, she never seems to convey quite the same level of outraged indignation that I would prefer.. I thi

don't get your board serviced and tuned up by Minami Sports in jimbocho! They've had mine for 4 weeks and it still won't be ready for another 2 weeks. All it needed was a few chips filled and the front edge tuned.

Interesting article in the paper the other day pointing out that china gets billions of $ in aid from the rest of the world coz its such a poor country struggling to develop. Just wait for the squeals from Beijing if anyone tries to cut off the money flow now that China has joined the space club. The Chinese foriegn policy is so beligerent it really doesn't speak well for regional stability during the next 50 yrs. Oh, and if you're wondering about the purpose of the chinese space programme (which is run by the military), try to pick the different between a Chinese ICBM and a manned obit

Sometimes a person needs to be OTT just to be heard. Reasoned, well balanced arugements (unless they're on snowjapan!)often get lost in the background noise. Without a doubt he sensationalises the issues. The bowling for columbine bit where he has the kids confronting the supermarket that sells bullets was nothing short of exploitive. But I guess for every right wing christian group that says people shouldn't wear condoms because they don't stop aids(!) there needs to be a guy standing up for a bit of common sense.

Ocean - the number were simply to illustrate the point. Nothing more. I can't imagine not wearing a helmet. http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml99/99046.html Not sure if the attached link will work, but this contains some pretty disturbing figures on the number if injuries. Makes my head hurt just thinkng about it!

Badmigs - you might be a bit off beam with the water analogy, but you're actually right in principle. Research into injuries and helmet wearing has shown that the perception of safety actually increases the risks people take and consequential injuries. The same thing happens with defensive driving courses apparently. The secret is to wear the helmet but act as if you're not. To put it another way, helmets provide, say a 20% increase in protection from impacts, but if the wearer is travelling 30% faster than he otherwise would because he feels safer in a helmet, when he crashes, the impact

Just to add to the general whinge about gyms in this place.....you'd think that with all the old fellas standing around on the roads waving red batons, they would be able to find one male to tidy the mens change room. Is it a law in this country that mens' changes rooms must be patrolled by a Japanese grandmother on a regular basis? Also had a pool nazi once try to tell me that swimming with a wedding ring on is dangerous and that I had to take it off before I could get in the water. ...and don't even mention tattoos!

Yo Empty! - get the Sat morning 7:10 Shink from Tokyo to Gala Yuzawa. If you have you own gear its less than 1:30 hr from Tokyo station to the chairlifts. Spend all day slamming your body into the snow - then reverse the process. On the train back to Tokyo - grab a couple of beers and sit back with your mates and relax. On the otherhand, if that is all a bit too - medokusai, then find another sport or move closer to the snow. oh and buy step in bindings or a variation thereof - some say they save a bit of hassle.

Lads, I'm at work and can't access the vids and so can only go by the improbable photos. The one Badmigs just posted looks like the guy is in need of some medical treatment. It just doesn't look right. Now if they had stuck a couple of hotties in the frame as well, maybe with one of them holding an expensive bottle of french wine and both of the wearing nothing but boots and come hither smiles, well... that I could believe. But I'll take your word for it.

What's wrong with that? Damn good advice if you ask me. Its something everyone should aspire to. ah, just noticed where you live nofakie. you're already living the dream.

gotta go with Ocean on this one - completely bogus. nothing but snow porn. In some of the pictures the angles are wrong for any kind of controlled slide. To get that sort of angle on anything but something very very steep would require an awesome turn, yet some of those guys look like their heading straight down hill on a gentle slope. There is one photo on the site that has very little snow being kicked up by the board, so it must be pretty firm, but the guy is lying (at least his body is touching) the snow. Whether you're sliding on your arse or on your side, its a bit of a stre

More than for just tradition. If you understand how Latin works it helps you understand how many modern European languages work. Also, it is widely used for many branches of science and it probably comes in handy in the pubs in and around the Vatican around knock-off time.

Woywoy, it does look good. I've been tracking the daily snow reports for Mt Hotham for weeks now. They had a massive dump over the weekend, something like 30cm. It seems to have fixed a lot of the damage that was done a couple of weeks ago when it poured for a couple of days. Only 7 days to go!

Hey Powwwers I'm heading to Mt Hotham next week for a day trip. This will be my first time there, any suggestions for some decent out of bounds or tree runs for boarders? Nothing too crazy mind, this being more of an off season trip.

Not yet E-chan but I'm off to Aust next week for a whirlwind trip and a much anticipated day of snow boarding in victoria.

In this place, it is entirely possible.

Probably no other reason than the fact that the demographic audience for English language news programmes is overwhelmingly anglo-saxon. Pictures of people who look like us are more engaging than pictures of people who don't live similar lives and who don't look like us. I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons why humans feel a greater afinity for those are similar than for those are not. No point in having a news service that no one wants to watch. Maybe its some sort of genetic survival instinct or maybe its just because we grow up on a force feed diet of American culture and repond t

Sparkles, the trouble is even the BBC shunted Monrovia and Iraq off its head lines in preference for pictures of tens of thousands of Americans getting some much needed exercise. It does sometimes seem that when it comes to US dominated news, you run but you can't hide. It was a pretty amazing situation nonetheless and the imagery was remarkable, just a little unfortunate that the inconvenience of Americans seems to be more news worthy than the life and death struggles of people in third world countries, or perhaps the pictures were more likely to grab the attention of the targeted audi

Ocean, I reckon the opposite might be more correct. Basic, gentle slope kind of skiing is a lot easier to pick up than boarding, particularly if the person has never done either. If only because the beginner skier has the use of poles and can make better use of the feet to maintain balance. That said, I saw an advertisement the other day for a training pole for beginner snowboarders. Looked a like canoe paddle and totally impractical. Simply bizarre. Wally, seriously, were you honestly expecting an objective answer to your question on a website like this? No disrespect intended, but t

Fujimori is guilty of a lot of things, but I don't think mass murder is one of them. Nevertheless he really should have been sent back a long time ago. The Japanese government needs a bloody good kick up the arse. The Japan Times recently had an article about the Hibakusha who live overseas (ie korea). The high court recently reversed a government decision and forced the government to pay these people the Yen34,000 per month for medical expenses that (presumably) the local Hibakusha receive. After 4 months the money still hasn't been paid apparently because of difficulties of working