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Will you be wearing a helmet this season?


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Originally Posted By: Black Mountain
Japan is such a nanny state.

I have to agree with that. But then once in a while, like Nozawa Onsen fire festival, they'll chuck the rule book out the window and go completely crazy with stuff which would never get past heath & safety in the UK and I'm guessing Oz too.
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Japan is a contrasting state...not quite a fully fledged Nanny State. It has some rules that would seem claustrophobic to us but I think in many laws they let things go that our countries would not. Its a mixed bag, in general less restrictive than our countries.

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Originally Posted By: thursday
GN, it's the law in Japan that kids need to be in a child seat.


Maybe it is but at least up this way I see kids jumping around in the back of cars all the time and mothers holding kids in their arms in the front seat. Even seen a women driving with her kid standing in her lap holding the steering wheel. Maybe it's just up here in rural Hokkaido?
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Originally Posted By: Black Mountain
This is a joke, right? I think you must be cherry picking the laws that you like to break (or rules that you like to bend smile ). Japan is such a nanny state. Maybe in different ways from Australia but I find there are so many ridiculous laws that are completely unnecessary to 'protect' her citizens.


I wasn't joking. I personally find living here a lot less restrictive than in Aus. As above it may just be living in a small country town in Hokkaido, I don't know. Maybe living in a small country town in Aus would be similar.
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  • 3 months later...

Helmets, again

 

Quote:
Sometimes I would find myself on a chairlift sitting in a row of Darth Vaders, and I would pluck up the courage to ask. Why the helmet? I murmured, and after a few days I began to get a fix on the phenomenon. Of course it is partly fashion. Helmets are in this year in the way that ruffs or codpieces or top hats used to be in. They are treated as a new must-have accessory, and much of their success – in the words of Etienne the (helmetless) instructor – is down to “le marketingâ€. You can get fur-lined helmets and helmets with stereo, and it all means good business for the ski-hire shops. But as almost everyone said, the main reason was safety. It was about minimising risk, they said; and suddenly I realised I was looking at a rich and suggestive illustration of the human herd instinct.

 

Here in the Alps, as the helmets spread from head to head, you can physically see the contagion of panic as it passes from beast to beast, and you can see how otherwise sensible people give way to an irrational misjudging of risk. Has skiing really become more dangerous in the past couple of years, when people have started adopting these glistening black craniums? On the contrary, the steady improvement of skis and bindings has made the sport safer than ever. Of course there was the sad case of Natasha Richardson, killed in a freak accident on the nursery slopes. But then there are always injuries, and if anything I imagine it might be even more painful, if you are on the downhill side of the argument, to be walloped by an out-of-control skier equipped with a plastic battering ram on his head.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colum...woolly-hat.html

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actually we were talking about this when I was up in Niseko, seemed every Aussie (so everyone else who was there wink ) had a helmet on and we were wondering if it was just an Aussie thing, obviously not.

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Seeing as it has been raised again...

 

*Keeps my head warmer than a beanie would.

 

*Saved my Powder Baby getting his head smashed open when he scorpioned on Thredbo Ice and the snowboard edge whacked good and hard across the back of the helmet (and dented it!). [Aged 7 at the time]

 

*Has been invaluable while our boys tried out rails/boxes/kickers and landed on their heads...

 

*Handy for deflecting branches.

 

*Useful for absorbing some of the impact from ski's and stocks as some dufus in front in the queue slings them over their shoulder onto your head.

 

*Also absorbs impact when you are not sitting back properly and your lift companions brings the safety bar down without warning.

 

*And lastly makes a half decent handbag at the end of the day, when you can stuff it with your gloves, face mask, beanie etc and store it under the table in the bar biggrin

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