Skiing in Japan

Nowadays there doesn't seem to be much "skiing" in Japan from what I've seen and heard. At least, among the youngest generation everybody has gotten into the snowboard trend. Which is dandy but also sort of funny. In the US there are tons and tons of people who suck at skiing and snowboarding, but those people at least look like they suck. In Japan, on the other hand, everybody looks like they're super awesome, like they could pull fifteen 720s in a row and not break a sweat awesome. Why is this?

Its because of their ghetto-fab fashion sense (see below):

Both boys and girls are tricked out in baggy, bright attire with suspenders straps hanging down and loads of pockets that aren't actually pockets. A lot of people opt to wear their goggles on their foreheads and not their eyes because that looks cooler. As for the people who use their goggles, they keep them on at all times and put a bandana over their mouths like a cowboy.

I finally realized that clothes say nothing about how good you are when I saw 20 people fall getting off the lifts. I haven't been skiing in the US in a while and so I don't remember if that happens there too, but there seemed to be a huge number of people falling down on Hachi Kita slopes.

I wonder why. Is snowboarding a fairly new trend in Japan, or do people start out on skis and then move to boards when they're teens? Or maybe its harder for teens in this area of Japan to get to the slopes.

There were other differences between ski mountains in Japan and the US that I noticed. For one, gear rental shops in the US seem to be affiliated with the mountain, but here there were tons of rental shops set up at the mountains base, all competing with each other for business. I don't know if that was special to the mountain we went to or not, though.

The major difference I noticed was that there didn't seem to be any large, main lodge. After renting our gear we stashed our bags in the rental shop. For food, people don't bring their lunch but instead buy it on the mountain. There were about a dozen independent, small cafeterias on the slopes.

Next month I'm going to Sapporo for Yuki Matsuri. woo. I'll try skiing again there :)