We made the short trek from Tokyo to Sapporo no worries, except for the gnarly turbulence we experienced on the exact same flight last year, then jumped the last train from the airport into Sapporo to meet up with my fellow photog mate Lee Ponzio.
Ponzi had been staying with some Japanese homies in the suburb of Teine so we decided to get a hotel there so we could go ride the local ski resort (Teine) in the morning. The snow was suppose to be good.
I was pretty much loosing my shit once we got on the hill as I hadn't ridden decent pow for a while, and the times I was in those conditions I was too busy being a photo gimp!
I ran to the lift frothing at the mouth only to find I had set my bindings up backwards in my typically busy, 3 am annual pack before the 6 am flight whilst leaving Melbourne. Amateur mistake.
The first few laps reminded me why snowboarding is my favorite thing in the world. I was hyperventilating like a fish out of water and was actually choking on a few turns until I got my breathing pattern right to inhale between face shots! No shit.
We only had one day at Teine, and it was epic. The next morning we headed up to Niseko by train, and the way it was snowing by the time we reached Otaru was a very accurate sign of the awesome conditions we copped for the following 10 days..
Commute. Bottom right, Mike found a iPhone app called paper toss, kept him entertained for days.
I believe his current record is 22 on Medium!
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View from our Hotel above Teine train station looking towards the mountains.
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Frantically swapping my bindings around. Photo: Lee Ponzio
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Mike and Ponzi. Mike is bigger in real life!
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Dumping its guts off at Otaru station.
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Same.
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