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.