mrjamie
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Posts posted by mrjamie
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Originally Posted By: DumbStickAre you angry new jam?
no way! I'm just a forum member that's all. -
'Foreigners' overrun with misconceptions of the orient invade Niseko looking for a past that was never there -- meanwhile Nozawa tourists ignore the hypermaterialistic present of Japanese cultural arbiters, young people modeling the latest snowboard gear and snow wear, and see instead the fictitious reality half of their own making half a marketing campaign directed towards urbanized youth fed off of soda-pop dreams of nostalgia.
Next time I visit Australia I'll be sure to post some nasty comment asking why it is that a country with aboriginal culture whored itself out to the international opera community instead of fighting the good fight alongside the Mennonites and the Amish. Why oh why did they adopt a hackneyed offshoot of English culture when they cannot even get the accent right!? It's a shame they didn't stay in the Bush, oh those romantic noble savages!
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Originally Posted By: torihadacan see where they're coming from. A close Japanese friend works as a guide in another industry and works only for Japanese companies in the UK. The Japanese guides get treated pretty poorly and their pay (among other things)is way below the comparative UK guides working for UK companies. So I think guide's associations are pretty good if it gives them some clout when negotiating with companies, otherwise they'll be expected to work for free, with no holiday, for 40 years, for the good of the company.
Oh I wish, that would be really nice for them. Unfortunately for the individual guides, as it stood last year companies sent guide representatives to the NWGA meetings -- membership was on a company basis, only on an individual level for self-employed guides. The general theme of the meeting I got was that the association was intended to focus more as a pressure group on the companies operating the mountain than on employers for fair standards and pay. Talking with the same coworker that clued me in to Colorado's crazy-developed status though put me at ease: guides in the US have some pretty poor conditions too, at least river guides it sounded like. -
mm, I figured Rag-Doll was just raggin' on me.
That's ok though, the observant readers will have noticed my entire post was just one big plug anyways!
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Originally Posted By: MikePow
Do any of the members of the Niseko Winter Guide Association have formal guiding certification e.g. Canadian Mountain and Ski Guide (CMSG); International Federation of Mountain Guide Associations (IMFGA)?
They have something much more important: a virtual stranglehold over the customer base because everyone does prepackaged stuff now. Soon enough it'll be a cartel with initiation writes, such as taking annoying customers for 'long lessons' off of 'short lifts'. -
wow i ought to brush all the powder snow off, it's been a while since i posted, i almost got buried beneath the new forum posts. meanwhile super baka rose to among the top-viewed videos.yay
so you all know how i feel about nisekoI worked at NAC last year and one of my friends/coworkers was a skier from Colorado (also in the video, the lone skier). Whenever we would talk about development and Niseko he laughed and said 'Well this might be getting developed, but it's still nothing compared with Aspen.' We can moan and complain and compare and contrast and maybe even analyze, but we can't stand in the way of progress. In Niseko the Guides all realized this untenable situation and started the Niseko Winter Guide Mafia--er, Association last year. They represent an effort by the employed locals to manage themselves as an economic group stuck between the mountain owners & operators, the lodging units, and the tourists.
The mountain is overcrowded that is for sure, though it depends on the date. Towards mid-march it is completely tracked out by mid-morning on all but the most difficult to find runs, or the nice secret stashes which we all have plenty of, especially those of us with a season on the mountain in our rekishi. Even in early and mid-season, if you head to the peak on a blustery day your courage (stupidity?) will make you one of the few riders with access to knee-deep fresh powder. It's great fun, when you can see, and harrowing yet exciting when you can't (which is most of the time). One of my best memories is being first to ride nishi-sha after a huge dump, then getting blizzarded on when i tried to get up Iwao and hiking back to Moiwa in chest-deep (really) powder listening to This American Life podcasts. It was like walking through a cloud.
Nearby areas like yoteizan, iwaonupuri and chisenupuri are often great places to hit up if you don't mind hiking. Iwao has some radical terrain (look for it yerselves suckas) in one or two places, besides which the chutes are generally more interesting/more open to ride than on Annupuri. Moiwa has some great areas too, when the wind doesn't shut it down (like last season's crazy multi-day wind storms that left us with a barren moon to bump around on).
Silly thing about Niseko is if you actually go to niseko-cho (the mountain is in kutchan so they get the tax money -- but also they pay for road repairs and buses...for anyone who has lived in the town proper you know it's similar to any poor rural area in 'western' countries: tired looking mothers with dyed hair, skaters, small diner/restaurant owners, bars, etc.), just about 30 mins drive from annupuri and closer to iwaonupuri/chisenupuri access roads than the main village, real estate prices drop ridiculously low. The towns around chisenupuri ski resort also have really inexpensive, but a little more inconvenient (unless you're going to hike annupuri in the morning and take a bus to kutchan then hike back with groceries in the evening ;p) land/housing for sale.
Ironically, the influx of tourists is crowding the back country -- on Annupuri with tourists, but on Iwao and Chise with locals who themselves were probably fed up with the crowding of Annupuri. Yotei is still pretty empty, likely because of the 4 hour hike up
But it has some sweet spots and sweet powder...and it is scary as all hell to ride down from the peak when your luck goes sour and its an icy day. Yotei hiking is also beautiful in general, and I've only been blessed with the chance to lead snowshoe tours -- and thereby really get to know -- one side of it in a whole season. If I were looking for housing I'd probably look out in Makkari, closer to Rusutsu and Yotei. Lonelier, sure, but just about as far from iwao/chise etc. as the Hirafu village, cheaper land, and equidistant to the two main resorts and the tallest mountain in the region (yotei) and the steepest terrain available locally (or so people say, i haven't had a chance to ride shiribetsudake). I don't drive so I'm not sure how the highway access is; it might be frustrating trying to plan trips to asahidake, sapporo ski resorts, or rishiribetsu.I was only a Niseko local for one season, but I like to think that hiking Yotei 3 times, iwao a handful, chise the same, and spending almost every day on the mountain has gotten me a little more acquainted with the physical terrain. Working as an instructor/guide assistant and translator introduced me to the flows of money and human bodies that translate into the area's economy. I don't ride gentem so maybe I haven't drank the kool-aid, but that's my somewhat independent two-cents and a buck fifty on Niseko. In closing I'd like to say to the Ozy's, watch out for all the wealthy Europeans--they're looking to buy up property in the village. To all the Europeans, I'd like to say watch out for the Ozy's--they're looking to buy up all the beer in the prefecture. Americans are still a novelty, and Japanese riding cliques are still somewhat exclusive to foreigners. Now stop laughing and start riding. ~
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I didn't buy a new board this year because there was nothing wrong with my board from last year. ;p
we need a nice environment for plenty of cold weather and snow, support green boards or repairs & refurbished/used models. imagine if Burton stopped making new boards seasonally and instead retooled used boards for a third price every other season....mmm.
edit:
boards from last year.
and i had to buy a replacement board last year but that's not related! at all! really!
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Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger...
... seems to be the general logic surrounding the most frequent response to global warming.
People, it is said, will not change, so we need to make cuts and edits between the lines, to leave things as they are but with a friendlier, more sustainable motor coughing at full capacity under the hood. To power the motor we must discover a new fuel or mobile power supply at least. A softer, more expansive power supply that will radiate energy, just like the nuclear reactors have irradiated kilometers of soil, mega-liters of water.
I apologize for simplifying the arguments slightly, but they do tend to run more-or-less along the lines provided above, and to the tune of: Consumption is a decidedly human habit, and human habits can neither be changed, nor extinguished -- especially the bad habits. While this is a pointedly pessimistic thread of thought, it does not exclude hope, a hope for those contrivances, or rather their invention, since it seems almost as if the discovery of the oft-mentioned 'friendlier,' 'safer,' 'less-pollutive,' something is given much more thought than the actual 'something' itself.
In other words, it is the hope for more production and more consumption that feeds the pessimism. No wonder. I suppose it's just fanning that pessimism, and I don't mean to destroy what seeds of hope there are, but according to a life cycle assessment of Toyota vehicles the emissions resulting from vehicle and material production account for almost half (46%) of a fuel cell-based vehicle. The article doesn't mention how much that is in units of energy, so anyone who wants more information can have a look in this google answers thread. Good news for traditional fuel lovers: Toyota's gasoline vehicles release 72% of their life cycle emissions while being driven, relegating a mere 18% of their pollutive grab-bags to the manufacturing process. On top of manufacturing costs are the many habits which cars encourage, etc. I would go on, but the Rice Farmer blog details many of these with great exuberance.
Continuing on cars and habits, suburban-ism, drive-through windows, multinational corporations, tourism are all habits which have been developed and nourished to the point of gluttony during the last two centuries, plus or minus some decades. Many of the suburbs of manhattan were (more) local to the city and used public transportation until GM assisted in the eventual shut down of tram systems. Observe how our purchasing habits and communication habits have shifted and changed as we invented the telegraph, the telephone, the internet. Admittedly many of these changes in habit have done much more for environmental depravation than environmental conservation, but nonetheless they show that habit is nothing if not adaptable. All of this without even mentioning that the consume to produce more consumables social habit is predominantly of anglo-american culture, and that by assuming such a social norm we ignore countless other cultures, lifestyles, societies, solutions...
But ultimately, I agree that change is often a very individual decision, and a tough one at that. So if you are truly concerned about climate change, global warming, desolation of the natural environment (ourselves included), then you might at least change yourself, and by doing so show every other individual with whom you come in contact that there's another way to approach the issue than waiting for the next harder, better, faster, stronger thing.
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i'll pass it on to kei-san, who took the picture. We'll try to get more when we go to yotei or the rumored 60 degree slope near the sea of japan/korea/china.
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I ride switch with 30/30 binding angles, and the other day I saw a hard-booter with extreme angles carving tight turns in switch. That was probably the most impressive thing I've seen all season. Higher binding angles makes carving toe-side really easy switch. So easy I do it all the time. i.e., by accident.
whoops.Oyuki gave great advice: keep your weight on your front foot! And get used to sliding turns again: think of it like you're re-learning how to snowboard, with a different foot.
good luck!
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The malolo is an awesome ride, but if anything it's a little too easy to ride in powder. On piste it can hold an edge no problem -- I had hard plates on it last season, in powder and on piste -- though it does chatter, the trade for a super-light board with 'extra slash'.
I had one of the longer malolos, a 16x, but sold it to my flatmate this season after buying a 187 rad-air. Comparing two boards that differ more than 20cm in length is probably neither beneficial nor fair; no matter, the rad-air takes a little more technique to ride proficiently (and this is with soft boots), but I feel like I have a better rhythm than I did with the Malolo. Probably I just didn't ride it long enough to make friends.
good luck with your choice!
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The top picture is looking off of Chise-nupuri to Nitonupuri, Iwaonupuri and Annupuri; Yotei is deep in clouded thought in the far background.
The second shot is coming down the trees in Iwao -- There wasn't that much speed, so I put my energy into a tight toeside carve... into a flat laying down stop ;p
good thing for rapid fire cameras!
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The warm sun shone on champagne snow,
after a sparkling ascent we played for a few hours here and there.
have a fun day in the snow.
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Why not choose a board around your riding style? I'm 5'8" and 70kg, my shortest board is 16x -- the Rad Air Tanker I picked up this season is 187cm.
It seems like Japan is famous for powder and tree-runs; that might dictate the length of your board if you're not sure about style.
How long have you been riding for?
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Yea, thursday, you're exactly right, but you don't think that the many foreigners, especially Brazillians, Chinese and Koreans, who are residents of Japan deserve the same privacy rights as native Japanese citizens? What about foreigners who have married Japanese? Are citizens or residents of a 'sovereign country' supposed to forfeit every right to the whim of the country? Is Pakistan within its rights suspending the constitution because it is in the interest of preserving the rule of a specific president in a 'sovereign country'?
How the Japanese government can justify this for visitors and temporary residents I understand, or at least have to stomach, as my country of registration also fingerprints temporary residents. But how the government can justify fingerprinting residents whose only difference with 'Japanese' is their passport or country of birth, seems impossible without resorting ultimately to some form of racism of prejudice.
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When did citizens of nations become sheep who need a wolf to protect the flock?
How can governments talk about oblique ideas of safety when policies of market expansion and liberalization have stripped from millions of farmers, workers, and business owners across the world any semblance of social and financial security?
What kind of safety can the government possibly offer by holding onto my fingerprints and biometrics that it can't offer through the information it has already? Identifying my corpse if I die in an avalanche? Is that for my safety, or so my family/friends can pay for the costs?
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early december in niseko when I move up there to work
come visit! let's ride shiribetsu yama:p
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Just going through some camera-films and pictures of last season ... and then listening to the new Wax Tailor album I had an urge to put the two together.
Here's looking forward to an entire season in niseko...
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cheers.
I grew up playing video games online;
deathly allergic to sarcasm, humour,
and any other semantics when used in online forums;
I risk bringing out the 13 year old in me again.
and so, as cliche as they are,
smiles are much appreciated.
winter or summer.
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Most of the 'hardcore' riders in niseko would spend more time on Yotei or go out to the nupuri ranges, or to shiribetsu...
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I love moguls for the technical practice they give snowboarders. Icy, steep moguls.
Great riding after in the powder
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Whoops, I'm working on a collage of summer photos for my girlfriend, so I accidentally slipped up.
I meant to write 'last winter.'
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by the way, last summer Iwate in general had a horrible year for snow... so did Niseko, but in Iwate you could see the foliage on the sides of the roads...
Off piste was untraveled and pretty good when I went in February, but the piste had dirt showing in places...
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Nishimori is great, but they don't open it up unless there is a ton of snow: bring snowshoes and have it all to yourself like I did
great under the gondola runs too ...
Desperate to teachEnglish&ski a lot.........
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
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cheers for coming out and saying it though!