If you find yourself flying All Nippon Airways this month, you can read my story about trying - and failing - to learn how to snowboard in Niseko, a very very snowy area near Sapporo. Yes, indeedy, I tried to snowboard, and tried the patience of my poor snowboard instructors.

this is a snowboarder in Niseko

unlike this woman
I was wearing snowpants I bought on eBay
so I looked much less cool
but a whole lot more cold

An activity I found myself better suited for was snowshoeing. I went snowshoeing with a really cool woman named Mieko Shiraki who runs an outdoor education school that specializes in low-impact outdoor activities (low impact on the environment, that is). We snowshoed around this beautiful frozen lake and looked for fox tracks. Our snowshoes were made of two pieces of bent wood and some twine. Mieko said they are traditional Hokkaido snowshoes that were made by a 90-year-old man, and he is one of the last people who knows how to make these snowshoes.

this is Mieko

and these are the snowshoes
on my very own feet
you can see the cuffs of the eBay snowpants, too

and finally
this is a vending machine that sells hot cans
of Boss brand coffee

I’m a freelancer so I don’t have a boss
but if I did it would most likely be coffee

posted by Arin at 10:32 pm & filed under All Nippon's inflight magazine, Japan, Uncategorized, bloggy stuff, snowboarding, snowshoeing, travel stories, weather, wildlife |