Orijin's ex-part

A shared bath, spicy soup, iPod speakers and a broken spine. Wings international student society proudly presents the annual ski trip. 40 people and a 14 hour round trip coach journey with the usual suspects from november's laugh riot adventure to the countryside ended with a few interesting stories to tell.

Nagano prefecture, home of the 1998 winter olympics and Japan's skiing mecca, greeted us from beneath weary overnight-bus-trip eyelids with equally weary snow burdened houses and blanket white scenery. In the name of fun, we were not allowed the simple liberties of normal bus journeys; such as selecting who to sit with or freedom of speech. Instead, we drew seat numbers out of a hat that had been cheerfully decorated with amusing statements in Japanese. Mine said 'Who knows? You might be sitting next to a fit guy...'. Wishful thinking on their part. Chandra is a massively dull and not particularly conscientious neighbour to sit with for seven hours straight. With the generous three inches of space granted by him after blanking most of his inane, slightly offensive questions about my Japanese language proffiency level, I managed to bag a grand total of two hours sleep before day one of skiing. As the sun began to rise the bus continued through quaint villages, barely visible under thick drapes of snowfall. As you might be able to guess, the raw beauty of the surrounding scenery rolling past as we climbed was not met with stunned silence, but a chorus of pantomime asiatic shrieking and sighing. I would have found it more amusing if I could feel my legs.

Mercifully we arrived soon after and stumbled our way to the 'hotel'. Those burdened with the cheap beer for 'drinking party' that evening occasionally fell on the ice resulting in erruptions of laughter, photo taking and accompanying 'v' signs. I was hoping to get on the slope as soon as possible, but the Japanese are not as efficient as capsule hotels and bullet trains might lead you to believe. Apparently all the information I provided in advance about shoe size, weight, height, 'did I need a ski jacket?', 'would I be drinking beer?' (what a stupid question) needed to be asked again whilst we waited around an industrial strength gas heater to get our ski equipment. 'Ski trip' is a misleading title. Ninety percent of Japanese people snow board and so consequentially, due to an apparent lack of demand, the skis on offer were all older than me. Bored of waiting in a corridor for two hours to get some neon pink planks selected for me, I took it upon myself to have a rifle through the collection on offer and proudly emerged with a late nineties pair of carving prototype skis.

The ski lifts in Japan, or at least where I was, are hugely annoying. There is no safety bar, which if it went more than ten metres off the ground at any point might be a reason for alarm, and far more concerningly, every other pylon knew exactly how to ruin my day by playing the worst form of japanese pop music to ruin the view. Initially we were placed into groups. Unbeknownst to most of us, this was so that they could take our previously provided information about ability level and then assemble groups of mixed ability so that we could teach people who hadn't been before. Cruel but inventive. After an over expensive, high carbohydrate lunch (some things do translate from european skiing....except there's more rice... and you cant read the menu...and what I ordered was not what I expected when it arrived on the plate.....and there's no chips), the farcical group system disbanded in favour of 'expart' and 'biginner' crews (sign writers in Japan have not yet worked out that they can ask any foreigner, use a dictionary, or even google how to spell words).

Skiing ended at five. After team meeting around the gas heater, most people decided to go to on-sen (naked bathing...same deal as last wings trip) and pass on the option for night skiing under floodlights because they had had little sleep on the bus and many had spent the day falling over after their unwilling 'teachers' had buggered off and left them to their own devices. Guilty. Orijin (pronounced Origin...which makes for many amusing jokes, about as funny as the ones people made about 'WhyNot' in first year) had spent all day obediently teaching his girlfriend to snowboard and hadn't had a chance to 'tear it up'. So in an epic decision making moment, a bit like the Carling 'You know who your mates are' adverts, four of us dragged ourselves away from the increasingly popular gas heater and headed out again.

What was orijin-ally (I just made that up....) a crowded piste full of those bastard snowboarders who sit around in the middle of the run and get in the way, was now floodlit by pastel coloured lights and totally empty. We did the first run in less than two minutes and continued to bomb down for the next hour and a half. We came back to find everyone returning from the onsen, the japanese girls crying out with awe at the four idiots who had gone skiing again. In the hotel itself, there was a smaller bathing area that fits four people. I really wanted a bath, but this meant an entirely more awkward version of the naked bathing I did last wings trip. Just me, Orijin and Eric. Two guys who I hang out with on a regular basis, chatting, drinking, laughing..and most importantly clothed. For them, it seems, clothed or not clothed, its business as usual. So I enjoying a bathing experience cupping myself and discussing run of the mill topics, imagining what it would be like if I did this with my flatmates last year...or more importantly, what everyone would say if they saw it.

The 'drinking party' followed supper, and I felt completely hammered after two beers. I sat around making tired monosyllabic chat in japanese until twelve thirty and put myself to bed.

Orijin had gotten away from the girlfriend and had free reign to do his own thing the next day, so he woke me up enthusiastically at seven thirty. Recurring theme with these trips I feel. Breakfast was not continental, as Swiss had told me it sould be, utterly convinced, the night before....but a bowl of rice, a fish and some rank soup. We caught the first lift, and made the most of the morning by taking the 'expart' run straight off. Unfortunately Orijin fell quite a long way onto a path, landed on his back...and broke his spine. This slightly dampened the morning, with the arrival of blood wagons and such. Whisked off to hospital, it was announced later that he would be ok, but had to be horizontal and would have to spend a month in bed recovering.

I taught snowplow for a part of the early afternoon, and was chuffed with the resulting semi-confident skiier I created. A few final runs after lunch, and at three we had to end to catch the bus back. Its not as extensive as alpine skiing, but clearly not as uneventful. My whole body is still in pain, but that hasn't stopped me from googling my options for another weekend's ski before the snow goes.

Two thousand and temple

New year, new perspectives...and I should probably have thought about jotting down a resolution or two. Maybe use moisturiser more often.... Thats not as entirely random and slightly off topic as you might think. I had been warned that Japan turns very cold and very dry around this time of the year, and they werent bloody lying. Outside my window (the jungle below has lost all its leaves to reveal that in fact it was more like two massive trees hiding yet another cabbage patch...so apologies for the misinformation) the sun is shining and the skies are clear. Now that I have a heater in my room it is far too easy to trick myself into believing that it is pretty mild outside. I have but to look down at my dry white hands to remember the feeling of standing outside the liquid rooms on new years eve, hardly able to hold the tinny that had been tactically purchased to minimise costs (turned out to be a plaster for a bullet wound)... now they look they might be used for fingerprints during an autopsy on CSI.

New years eve itself was a blast. I have already written about japanese clubbing, and I'm in a lazy mood... so just refer back to that. Usually on new years the Japanese have a tradition of going to one of the larger temples and ringing in the new year, with a very literal bell ringing ceremony. I have already done this once, and to be frank, judging by the reports from some of my friends who opted into it this year.. it hasnt changed much. However, I felt that there deserved to be a cultural element to new years in Japan (when I say 'I'... I really mean, that it was someone elses idea that I have chosen to hijack as my own for the purposes of this blog).

The day after new years day, the Emperor of Japan comes out onto his balcony and greets the nation in four bitesize installments throughout the day. The palace is usally shut off to the public, and so the police presence was massive. Riot vans, jeeps, the ones in suits with curly wires going into their ears that you reckon have definitely killed someone before, bag searches, body searches. You name it, they had it. Although just like everyone in Japan, all the police look totally unthreatening. I can even imagine the mean wire-in-ear CIA style ones totally wankered in an izakaya sporting the asian glow that comes with half a pint and ends with pock marks of vomit down every major street in shibuya come 3am. Never the less, they carried themselves with polite japanese efficiency... even giving me a smart salute after gingerly patting down my trouser leg for fear of some organised gai-jin attack of the royal family.

I hate the way you are forced to walk at major public events. The Queen's Jubilee, Notting Hill Carnival and now this... the awkward shuffle walk of thousands of well wishers to the soundtrack of hundreds of police men trying to keep camera toting tourists from stopping every five seconds to capture more 'moments'. Every single person who entered the palace grounds was given a Japanese flag to wave by some ultra nationalist OAP volunteers. By the time we reached the emperor's, frankly rather bland looking crib, the courtyard beneath his balcony was a sea of Japanese peole....and by some higher power's grace we arrived with only five minutes before the emperors lunch time appearance. An unspoken swelling of tension, like the type you get before they announce theyre bording group A passengers for an easyjet flight, ended with an erruption of calm and collected flag waving signalling the arrival of 'E dogg' himself. More controlled explosions of flag waving follwed his new years message... and the whole courtyard of people calmly shuffled off in the same awkward fatiguing fashion as they had entered.

Every time I see a side of Japan that shows their deeper emotional and spiritual personality, it is juxtaposed almost immediately by something completely incomprehensibly stupid. This time it was the queue of about a hundred people in ginza to get into the new abercrombie shop that had three bouncers on the door and staff who are made to dance all day and promote a party atmosphere. We only went there because we wanted to get a polaroid with the new topless model at the entrance. Robin.