THAT'S WHY I CAME

Living in rural northern Japan can sometimes get boring. And occasionally, on days when my job is less than fulfilling, I wonder why I'm here. But at other times it's great and I know exactly why I'm living in this strange land. Sunday was one of those days.

I try to snowboard a lot during winter. Just because I can. Not knowing when I'll have another snowy I'm eager to make the most of it while I can. However I usually ride with other Westerners or a mix of Westerners and Japanese. On Sunday, however, it was just me and five cool Japanese guys. And of course my brand new awesome Burton Custom X board (see previous entry).

Makoto and Souma are friends from my town. Ryuta, I met two weeks ago on a snowboard trip, and Hide and Takeshi are friends of his. We arranged to meet up Sunday morning and hit a mountain called Omoshiroyama, which literally translates as 'fun mountain'.

The 6:00am rise to drive south was well worth it. We had an wicked day on the mountain, jumping off anything and everything we could find. All those guys were as mad as me and we were a collective mass of injuries and pain by the end of the day.

But living on this volcanic, earthquake-ridden island has the beneifits of hot-springs always being within very close reach. A good soak in these healing waters and our bones are already mending and ligaments meshing back together.

Next Sunday we're hoping to do it all again on a different mountain.