Japan is the land of deep snow and deeper loyalties, but with a fickle heart for trends, are they still as mega-super-crazy-time for park-and-pipe skiing as they were a decade ago?
text Mike Berard // Photo Felix Rioux
It’s often said that life is lived in the details: telling your wife you love her every day; flossing before brushing; keeping your mistress’s lingerie collection current. But as I struggle to translate a plethora of automated functions on a toilet in one of Tokyo’s downtown department stores, I can’t help but wonder if the Japanese reputation for attention to detail doesn’t border on obsession.
Comfortably perched on a temperature-controlled seat, I press one button to emit a fragrant scent meant to mask unpleasant odour while I turn another knob to adjust the volume on a speaker system that drowns out, ahem, unexpected noises. Like everything else Japanese, the impeccably clean and well-lit bathroom is designed for equal parts efficiency, convenience and technological savvy. As if in response to a bylaw that requires a bathroom to be within crawling distance at all times—possibly because of the unrecognizable, barely-digestible sea-creatures they consume—these toilets are everywhere. In fact, second only to the omnipresent vending machine, a glimmering public toilet would be runner-up for Japan’s national symbol.
Finishing up my business, I brace myself for the utilitarian experience I’ve heard much about. I adjust the temperature dial to a modest six out of ten and press the button. A concentrated spray of titillating warm water surprisingly (and impressively) hits the bulls-eye. But what did I expect? The Japanese are nothing if not accurate.
Tatsuya Tayagaki, displaying the Japanese proficiency for accuracy
Much as I enjoy their toilets, the real reason I’ve crossed an entire ocean is for a taste of something else I’ve heard plenty—the much-ballyhooed Japanese ski experience. Like most things in this country, a reputation for fastidiousness precedes even this activity. Whether concerning toys, television or toilets, the Japanese are fanatical and easily excitable, and their outlook on skiing is no different. Stories of the New Canadian Air Force being elevated here to just shy of rockstar status are legendary; at one time, J.F. Cusson was so famous he had to be escorted out daylodge back doors in order to avoid a mob of fans. In the early ’90s, half of all skis in the world were sold in Japan. But do the same chaotic fixations still hold?
A decade after the refreshing twin-tip revolution exploded out of skiing’s stale bidet the sport has changed exponentially. Considering that Japan’s ski population has been cut in half in the last decade and many of their 600 ski hills are either closed, going under or on the block, can they still be as crazy about park and pipe as they were when New School was still new? After all, an inherent characteristic of any trend is its inevitable downfall. Something more flashy comes along, like snowboarding. Or environmentalism. Surely something more exciting has replaced the cachet of the twin-tip ski by now. So I’ve come to Japan not to witness the super-fun-craziness of the Japanese scene, but to see if it still exists.
I arrive at the tiny ski resort of Joetsui Kokusai via a 4-hour nighttime bus ride from Tokyo’s Narita airport. The bus is packed with a wide cross-section of the Canadian Slopestyle contingent, from up-and-coming Okanagan phenom Matt Margetts and perennial powerhouse Charles Gagnier, to verified legend J.F. Cusson. The air is electric, mostly due to the fact that most of the passengers—in anticipation of their first trip to Japan—are half-corked (and not in the big-air sense) on tall cans of Sapporo. The aluminum evidence cascades out of the bus’s folding doors when we unload, woozy with jetlag. We’re here for the second annual Nippon Freeskiing Open, Japan’s foremost park and pipe competition, and there’s a palpable warmth in the air. Not the good kind: Mike Douglas, Canadian ambassador of Japanese skiing and a veritable demigod in the land of the rising sun, greets us with the most hated phrase in skiing: “You should have been here yesterday.”
The past two days had been a cliché of the Japanese ski experience; deep powder, sunny skies and tons of empty off-piste that Douglas thoroughly exploited, though it eventually (and literally) caught up with him. The ski police hauled him in after he poached a short section of steep, creamy powder outside the boundaries of the groomed runs. It seems that even gods aren’t outside the law here—you may be Mike Dougras-san but you need to respect the rules like everyone else. Still, knowing who he was meant they treated him with the utmost respect—like Brad Pitt being arrested for drunk driving.
Just over 10 years ago, this might not have been the case—the Japanese were tireless in their fight against rebels skiing beyond area boundaries. Not only was it frowned upon—it was illegal. 10 years later and the climate has changed, with freeskiing came more relaxed (but still forbidden) policies. Only with outside influence did Japan start to realize the potential in their mountains and the passion they held for the sport. In addition to focusing on their own well-manicured terrain parks, some of the ski areas now not only allow but encourage tree skiing. A thriving freeski scene obsessed with deep snow and steep lines now lives on the North Island of Hokkaido. Attributing this change in the Japanese perspective to anything other than the freeskiing movement is just plain retarded. To the contrary, the evidence points otherwise. Freeskiing saved—and still is—saving the Japanese ski industry.
Charles Gagnier
We wake to sunny skies, a disgusting buffet breakfast of jellied fish and a Slopestyle practice that seems more like the comp itself. While the foreign superstars goof around in the hotel, comfortable in their domination of the field, the Japanese skiers stay focused, hucking their maguro in preparation for a big day against their heroes. Switch-1080s and sloppy double-flips are common. It is clear that freestyle skiers are still being bred in Japan. While a few of the sport’s big guns have made the trans-Pacific trip (Gagnier, Jossi Wells, Mike Riddle), most of the huge talent pool that attended in 2007 have opted instead to attend the North American Open, a new event hosted by Jon Olsson and Simon Dumont. This provides a surprising opportunity for Japanese standouts like Ueno Yuta and Shoya Okasaki to make an impression; the number of practice laps they log honing their runs to perfection is evidence that they know this too.
My previous experience with Japanese culture has two elements: watching reruns of Most Extreme Challenge and ridiculously deep powder segments in ski movies. Knowing the tendency towards exaggeration common amongst ski-movie makers, I took MXC to be the more realistic version of what I could expect here and to a point it was—a relatively large crowd of spectators shows up to watch a small group of Japanese contestants put themselves through painful maneuvers, desperate to impress the masses. And while I anticipate the large throng of onlooking teenagers, I don’t expect the mood. Far from the screaming, Cusson-adoring crowds of yore, these fans are relatively quiet. Quiet, that is, until one of their own drops into the course, at which point they lose their shit at the sight of a countryman going up against the Jossi Wells’ of the world. It seems the Japanese are still very much in the throes of freeski fascination, they simply just have more to cheer for locally. As a steady cavalcade of sick locals spin their way over the Niigato landscape, I can see why. Who needs to rely on Kiwis and Canadians when you have your own Ueno Yutas?
Frank Raymond
Three days later and the western pros are doing everything they can to reinforce negative stereotypes, turning the final awards party into a freeski Hiroshima. A generous spread of appetizers has been tossed onto a dirty floor in a food fight that only the skiers seem to be enjoying. They’ve sprayed the serving staff with beer and one of the French skiers is picking a fight with Shoya Okasaki. Okasaki, 2003 Global X-Games Superpipe winner and Japan’s most accomplished park skier, is a national treasure. But the young French skier—both ignorant of the sport’s history and really drunk—doesn’t seem to care. Finally, a photographer leans into his ear and puts it in terms he can understand: fighting Shoya here is the equivalent of waltzing into La Clusaz and spitting in the face of Candide Thovex. This seems to get through and the agro Frenchman backs off, content to trade evil eyes with Okasaki across the beer-soaked room. It’s a strange scene in a country that places modesty high on the list of virtues, along with cleanliness and pacifism. Jossi Wells and Frank Raymond walk freely amongst the crowds without getting hassled while Ueno commands his own cheering section—a shift in the Japanese focus is evident. Later on, while walking through monoammonium phospate-stained hallways where the foreign skiers discharged fire extinguishers, one of the hotel staff gives me a look of resentment. Feeling drunk and ashamed of sharing a nationality with the perpertrators I decide to go to bed and say oyasuminasai, or as the Japanese put it, “Thank you, thank you, goodnight, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, thank you, good night, thank you, ok [bow], see you in morning, thank you, good night, ok.”
JF Cusson and Frank Raymond
In the aftermath of the contest, the field scatters; the pros move onto the next event of the unofficial global Slopestyle circuit and the Japanese return to the not-so-quiet isolation of their ski industry’s talking chairlifts and tower-mounted loudspeakers. The French-Canadian contingent heads off to the northern island of Hokkaido in search of its legendary snowfalls. With them is Tatsuya Tayagaki, an amiable unofficial ambassador for the Japanese ski industry. As a sponsored skier and managing editor of Bravoski, Tayagaki is an integral cog in the Japanese ski machine. Earlier in the week, when I asked him how he was enjoying the competition, his answer was telltale of another tectonic shift in Japanese in attitude towards skiing.
“I love it, but I can’t wait to get back to Hokkaido. For the powder.” He pauses, a generous smile exposing a mouth full of bright white teeth. “Powder is more better.”
The key to understanding the paradigm shift in the Japanese ski experience might be embedded in his answer. Like any adolescent, a decade ago Japan embraced the flashy, shiny allure of a park ski that forever changed how people ski. Ten years on, like a teenager who comes to the realization that Dad isn’t the idiot he thought he was, the Land of the Rising Sun has come into its own.
“I think the scene in Japan is bigger now than it’s ever been. Maybe not in solid numbers, but the overall movement is stronger,” Mike Douglas tells me. “They used to have twice as many skiers but most of them were weekend warriors. These days you have more core skiers. They want to support their own superstars.”
He follows up with a story about a young freeskier he met on a trip last year “This guy said to me ‘We are not many (freeskiers), but what we do, we do with a big heart.” Witnessing the individual fervor of Japan’s skiers first-hand as opposed to the manic mobs of yesteryear, I couldn’t help but agree.
JF Cusson
They may no longer be the nation that almost single-handedly sustained skiing’s growth in the late ’90s or paid the mortgage on Mike Douglas’ house, but they do have something else that overshadows the fanaticism of a decade ago—a passion for the act of skiing itself. That passion is the reason the Japanese spectators roar loudly for second-place Miyuki Hatanaka and golf clap for the American in first place. It’s why slopestyle competitor Charles Gagnier is taking his kimono silky-smooth spins to the powder–coated tree jibs of the north island instead of heading to the next stop on the park circuit. It’s the reason every fat ski on the market now features a twin-tip, and everyday Joe skier is stomping switch powder landings that Cusson would have cut his beloved dyed-mullet to master back in the day. It’s the reason Tanner Hall can now accurately be named one of the better big-mountain skiers in the business. It’s the passion of the true skier, something trends or twin-tips or crushing recession can’t change—a passion that can be summed up in four simple words that need no translation regardless of which language they’re spoken in: powder is more better. A detail no skier can ever overlook. – Mike Berard
