A Furry Weekend

This past weekend a pile of us (10 in all) descended on the Niseko Kogen Youth Hostel (officially our favourite, most soulful accommodation option in the Niseko area) for a weekend of group boarding. It was my third weekend in a row in Niseko, which I felt might be getting a bit cliché, but having so many people along, as well as the hijinx we got up to, made it feel like anything but a repeat. Chief among the hijinx was an idea we got from Dani, another 2010 Toronto JET who came up from Chiba to board with us the first weekend in January. When we set out for the hills on the Sunday of that weekend, Dani went out dressed like this:



And she didn't last long before she got frustrated by how hot and restrictive the suit was. However, that limited stint in the furry suit was enough to inspire us. So on our way into Niseko last weekend, we stopped by the Coop in Kutchan and picked up the following:

This is not as weird as it may look. You catch people boarding in these things all the time. We saw a dude in my same batman outfit when we were in Niseko at the beginning of January, and on the hills a random girl started talking to me until she realized "Oops. Wrong Batman."

Not all the suits made it out onto the mountain, but Patrick scored the most points for wearing his Marimokori outfit both days. He also scored MASSIVE popularity with Japanese folk. The character he was wearing is one of Hokkaido's unofficial mascots: a sentient algae man with a very obvious boner. His name, Marimokori, literally means "algae ball boner." Says a lot about our island, eh?

It should be noted that I wore my batman suit all day on the hill Saturday, even when I was giving Nick Small his first boarding lessons. (Here he is as a Tanuki/Racoon(though it's so very much more than a racoon), rocking the board on his first day)

However, as I was the guy behind the camera, there's all of zero photographic proof of it.

Mark and Perry ditched the suits very quickly on Saturday, but they did wear them all day Sunday, which is a bit of an accomplishment when you consider that we went off-piste that day, through the An'nupuri peak gate, and down into the An'nupuri bowl.

There were, of course, those who elected to look like normal people for most of the weekend:

But I'm certain that they didn't have nearly as much fun.

Though it snowed for most of the weekend, we were treated to remarkably clear mornings both days. I missed out on Saturday, mostly because I hung around the lower slopes to show Nick Small his way around the board. However on Sunday, when we were once again treated to a clear blue morning, I made sure that we took the lifts all the way to the top of the mountain so we could benefit from the view before the clouds rolled back in.

And we also took advantage of the break in the weather to take on the An'nupuri Bowl: an off-piste section of the mountain, complete with trees and such, that runs down into a valley, right along beside the groomed runs of Niseko An'nupuri. It was the first time I'd really done anything like that, and it wasn't as challenging as I was worried it might be. It was a lot of fun, even when the clouds did come back in and cut visibility down to almost nothing, even when we all got separated and only Mark, Perry, and I came out the bottom: leaving Patrick to break a ski poll and Lindsay to wind up somewhere behind a hotel when she elected to follow a stranger back into the trees.

And now: random air.

Perry


Mark


Lindsay (her first time off a jump...ever)


And the whole crew:


2010 - 2011 Mountain Days 9 & 10