Indoor Snowboarding

One of the great things about Japan is the way that they borrow something from another culture and craft it into something uniquely theirs.

While I'm sure that many of the snowboarders back in America will not agree with me, indoor snowboarding is one of those things that I love about Japan. After riding in the mountains for 10 years, I was ready for a change of pace. And snowboarding inside a giant building in Japan is definitely something different.

In all fairness, this is not for everyone. Some people just love to escape into the wilderness and breathe in the fresh mountain air. Not me. I've always been more interested in what I can do in a place, rather than where it is or what it looks like. For snowboarding, this means that even though I go to the mountains all the time, I'm a park boy at heart. Instead of looking to battle the forces of nature, I look at man-made obstacles and see all the possibilities. Unfortunately, I can rarely realize those same possibilities due to a meager supply of talent.

And this, my friends, is where indoor snowboarding comes in. As they say, practice makes perfect, and inside a 3 story building is a great place to practice, because you certainly aren't enjoying the scenery. Indoors they can control the environment much easier, so you don't have to worry about coming down a run and finding that your favorite jump has turned to slush or people have scraped away all the snow on the landing, as so often happens in the mountains. Once you don't have to worry about the jump conditions changing, you're free to concentrate on whatever trick you're working on. The jump faces are hard packed so they're basically identical every time you ride them.

The runs are also much shorter (i.e. one jump), and this allows you to try the same jump over and over again in quick succession. While you're walking up the moving escalator on the side, ignoring the automated warnings in Japanese to mind your step, you can think about what you just did, and what you want to do next time, and then do it! There's no 15 minute wait where you lose focus or forget what you were trying to do. Just one jump after another, until you're plumb tuckered out. Which, indoors, is a couple of hours rather than a full day.

In fact, indoor snowboarding is such good practice that I was able to nail 2 tricks I'd been working on for a couple of years in the space of a few months. Granted, I was going once or twice a week after work, but I'm still happy with the results. After struggling with 360's for a couple of years, I finally learned to do them in all directions: frontside, backside, regular, and switch. I also learned to nail a solid boardslide on some decent sized rails (5 meters).

I usually went to Snova 246 in mizonokuchi, near where I was staying at the time. They have a 3 story building with a slope about the size of 2 or 3 basketball courts. One side has a halfpipe, and the other side has a slope, and a 4 meter kicker to practice jumps on. They also have a quarterpipe at the bottom, and they regularly add fun boxes and rails into the mix. There's a moving walkway going up the side where you can relax until it's your turn to climb onto the top of the jump platform and drop onto the slope. There are a couple of 12 year old kids there who come 5 or 6 times a week. I was so jealous, and they are going to be so good when they get older.

Now, I will admit that when I went to Hakuba after 3 months of indoor snowboarding, I really enjoyed it, but being able to actually land my favorite tricks consistently made it that much better. I was a little bit nervous as to whether or not the skills I'd learned indoors would translate to outdoors, so I was very pleased to find out that I was able to step up to the more varied conditions outdoors and still be able to fly through the air the way I wanted to.

One of the things that I really enjoy about snowboarding, and all of my other sports for that matter, is flow. When you really connect with the board and it feels like a part of your body, all your turns are effortless and you float over the snow. This level of flow is an amazing feeling, but it only gets better when you can add obstacles to your path and perform tricks while maintaining that same flow. It's one thing to be able to feel at peace with the mountain as you glide down the slopes, and it's entirely another to feel at peace with a 30 foot jump or a rainbow rail.

There's a natural beauty in motion and I love the feeling of willing my body into a complicated maneuver and having it flow effortlessly into a perfect landing.