On the Slopes (2004)
Japan
I was very lucky recently to be invited by one of our customers to go skiing in Japan - no, really, it was business. We went up to Niigata, north of Tokyo, for the weekend; I found that skiing in Japan was good, but inevitably it managed to have some unique Japanese touches.
We were staying in an authentic Japanese hotel, and by authentic I mean shoes off at the door, sliding doors to every room, and sleeping on futons on the floor, four to a room - I was thoughtfully placed next to a colleague who talked (loudly) in his sleep. The hotel bathrooms consisted of a communal washing & bath area, heated by local hot springs.
Arriving on the Friday night, all 27 of us (25 Japanese, 2 Westerners) bundled into one room for a communal drink, as the hotel had no bar. Everyone had either brought various drinks with them for the evening, or raided the hotel’s vending machines - we drank them out of beer. Most people ended up with either beer or sake, and this wasn’t any old sake either; the best bottle was twice the size of an average wine bottle, coloured an opaque green, and containing cloudy white sake that was three months past its sell-by-date. Nice.
I stuck to the beers but all the locals piled on the hard stuff. I thought as the night developed that we might play a few games, or even just play some music, but no; all everyone wanted to do was sit around and drink until they dropped – literally. One guy had too much of the cloudy sake, and passed out where he sat, to no particular attention from everyone else. He rocked back and forward a bit, then finally got some attention when he fell backwards and smacked his head on the cupboard behind him.
On the Saturday morning, after a refreshing breakfast of miso soup, dried salted fish, pickles, vegetables, rice, and Japanese tea, we hit the slopes. There was plenty of snow, it wasn’t too cold, the runs were decent enough, all in all it was a great day, although navigation sometimes proved a bit of a problem (see photo). The Japanese, despite some flamboyant ski outfits, are pretty conservative skiers, so quite what they made of a red-jacketed turbo-nutter like me screaming past them all the time, I’m not quite sure. But then I never hung around long enough to find out.
Things nearly went a bit wrong in the afternoon, when we had to be back at a certain point in the resort by 4.30 to meet the bus for the 25 minute drive back to the hotel. In order to get to the designated spot in the far corner of the resort, we had to take one particular lift before skiing down the other side of the mountain. The only connecting lift was supposed to shut at 3.30, but when we got to the top and it was still running, I suggested another run back down before going back to meet the bus. One of my Japanese colleagues agreed, and started off first down the run, only for us to then realise that the lift was actually shutting after all and he wouldn’t be able to get back up. I was promptly volunteered to give chase and recover him before he got lost.
I shot off down the run, looking for my colleague, but failed to spot him on the way down. I realised then when I reached the bottom of the run that I could be in a bit of trouble; I was at the end of the run, on my own, with no way to get back to the meeting point, and was quite aware that the bus would go without me. If I went down another run, I didn’t know the name of the meeting point in Japanese to get a taxi, and I certainly had no clue of the name of the hotel if I wanted to go back direct. I didn’t even know the name of the village we were staying in (and it was pretty remote), and Hong Kong mobiles don’t work in Japan so I had no way of contacting anyone. This could be a problem.
Thankfully, after queuing up for five minutes in the huge queue that had developed for the one open lift – the one that went the wrong way - my colleague finally arrived at the bottom of the slope, as I had missed him when skiing down. I explained the situation to him, and he got to work on the lift attendants.
Now I’m not quite sure what he promised, who he bribed, or whether or not he just blamed the whole thing on the mad Englishman that he was with, but maybe fearing that there might be a diplomatic incident if one of their customers died on the slopes of hypothermia, the lift operators were convinced to reopen the lift especially for us, such that we could go back and make the rendezvous with time to spare. I tell you, it was never in doubt…
The Saturday night was spent much as the Friday, in other words sitting around talking & drinking; the people next door had a Karaoke session at full volume, but we thankfully didn’t join in. We did though play one drinking game, but it had to be one that I demonstrated to everyone else in order to get it going. Not surprisingly, I won!!
The one activity that we did do took place when it turned out that the Manageress of the hotel was a reflexologist; she took the time to feel everyone’s feet whilst they were having a drink to diagnose their ailments, naturally in front of everyone else.
Sure enough it’s not long before I get pushed forward, and she starts prodding and poking my right foot. She says something in Japanese which earns a roar of laughter from everyone else – apparently she reckons there’s something wrong with my digestive system. Yes thanks for that. She continues to prod away then literally touches a nerve as I feel a shooting pain in one of my toes.
This provides more amusement for everyone else as she keeps hold of that toe, leaving me writhing on the floor on agony; all she can diagnose from the particular toe that she is hurting that I have something wrong with my shoulders and neck. I am asked if I have any complaint but I say no; she then replies, well maybe you have a problem but you don’t know it. I want to shout at her that “The only problem is you’re trying to rip my bloody toe off!” but keep quiet through clenched teeth until she lets me go and finds another victim. I remain unconvinced about the merits of reflexology.
More skiing followed on the Sunday, before returning to Tokyo. There was enough in the day though to remind me that the Japanese love everything to be small; when I went to hire some skis in the morning, I was told that they didn’t have any skis big enough to fit my boots. I know I have big feet but I’m not that bad; the staff scratch their heads and tell me that all they can do is threaten me with a pair of their own boots, half a size too small, to make do instead. I’m not too keen on this, so thankfully they eventually give me the biggest skis in the shop, with the bindings set to the widest setting, and manage to shoe horn my boots in. I am told not to take the skis off for the rest of the day and am sent on my way.
In the evening back in Tokyo I have a hotel room near the station. The hotel room, as I expected, is absolutely tiny, but had an added touch I have never experienced before – the door is at most six feet high and I have to duck to get in.
France
Having got back to Hong Kong from Japan late on the Monday, by lucky co-incidence I only had to wait until the following Friday …to go skiing again, this time to France. Before you ask:
- no I don’t have lots of money (it all goes on travel)
- yes I do do some work sometimes
- occasionally I do go on holidays other than skiing. But not very often.
Anyway France, whilst excellent, was generally fairly conventional as far as ski holidays go. But even the French have their occasional eccentric moments, and we managed to find one: step forward the man who invented Kriska, which is a local brand of vodka-flavoured beer. Kriska is sold seemingly exclusively in France to people trying it for the first time - because I’ve never seen it anywhere else and no-one ever wants to drink it more than once. Put simply – it’s disgusting.
We soon realised that Kriska, alongside it’s close cousin Desperado (tequila-flavoured beer), and some whisky-flavoured beer which we didn’t touch with a ten-foot ski pole, worked as a drink for our group solely as a forfeit for the worst moment of the day, decided by popular vote between us. We had some stupendous entries during the week - one vote was won by someone falling over right in front of the video camera, another by one guy forgetting his girlfriend’s name mid-conversation…that didn’t go down at all well, and nor did the Kriska - and true to form I managed to triumph twice during the week also.
The first day was a weaker effort I thought – all I did was misread the map and make everyone walk 20 minutes the wrong way up a red run in the cloud – but I got caught out again a little later in the week.
We were on a run which started steep then went very flat, requiring a schuss from the top to get as much speed as possible so as to avoid walking. Unfortunately again the visibility wasn’t very good so it involved going quite fast without really being able to see where you were going, but if you went too slow you had to walk…so we went fast.
I was sent off first and set off at a fair rate of knots into the mist. As the slope bottomed out and the visibility disappeared, a few bumps and dips came at me out of nowhere, followed by some soft snow and then some ice and then ooohhh@@#~#!~!##@XX@!!# and I do my best impression of a human snowball as I end up triple-somersaulting forward; I look up to find I was sitting knee-deep in a heap of snow with my skis about 20 yards behind me. My friends all skied past me laughing as I sat there, and later told me I looked like a Grandmother because I had so much snow in my hair it had turned white.
A spectacular enough wipe-out would have been enough for the award on its own, but I then compounded the moment as I trudged back to meet my friends, who had to stand waiting for me while I collected all my stuff that lay strewn around the bottom of the slope.
As I was sloping back to them, my mobile rang. Despite having smashed a previous phone two years ago when I sat on it on a chair lift, I still carry my mobile around when skiing; fearing that the call might be important, I answered it as I was walking back.
Unfortunately as a result of the cold, the snow still in my ear, and a dodgy connection to Hong Kong, I managed a bit of a Trigger-Happy TV moment.
“HELLO? I’M IN FRANCE. NO FRANCE!! WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
The woman on the other end proved to be annoyingly chatty, and I had to ski down the slope still covered in snow holding my finally retrieved hat and glasses, whilst shouting down the phone to a woman in Hong Kong who didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t the best time to be speaking and so wouldn’t shut up. The vote was a quick one that night…
Sake flavoured beer, now there’s an idea…
Ian