I learned how to ski, fi-nal-ly!

I can't tell you how fortunate I am to have landed here in Gokase. One of the reasons I feel so lucky is that "Gokase Highland Ski," the southernmost ski resort in Japan, is located only about 20 miles away from my school. Which means that eventually I'm surely going to be taking a field trip there. Which means that I'll finally learn how to ski.

The only time I've ever been skiing was when I went cross-country skiing with my father in California. And that must have been about 20 years ago! I had a good enough time skiing that day, but the experience didn't exactly leave me thinking, "Man, I've got to do this again really soon!"

Since then, I've only had two legitimate opportunities to learn how to downhill ski. By "legitimate" I mean that there have only been two times when I was at a ski resort with friends and/or acquaintances who intended to ski.

The first (fantastic) opportunity was in the French Alps (of all places!) when I took a one-week trip with a bunch of friends from Germany, where I was living at the time, to celebrate New Year's, in 1997/1998. The second opportunity was in Ohio (of all places!), back in 2000, when I took a one-day field trip to a ski resort with a high-school German class that I was observing as part of my teacher training.

But both times, I basically chickened out and didn't make an attempt to learn to ski. Then again, I was scared to death that I would destroy one or both of my knees by skiing. And since playing baseball was (and still is) far more important to me than learning how to ski, I was not willing to take the risk of injuring myself. So, yeah, I chickened out.

But last summer in Switzerland, I guess I had what you could call my skiing epiphany. I was hiking with one of my buddies and heroes, Hans B., not far from Interlaken. We were trying to get to the peak of the Sidelhorn, but there was just too much snow. We got as far as about 50 meters from the summit before we decided we had to stop and turn around, for our own safety.

On the way down, unlike on the way up, we didn't avoid the snow. We took a rather direct route down the mountain, making our way through several snowfields, which was pretty easy since the snowpack was light. Sometime along the way, Hans said, "If we had brought skis, we could have skied down the mountain!" (We saw a guy do just that earlier in the day.)

From that moment on, my somewhat negative attitude toward skiing changed completely. For the first time I thought to myself, "What a waste it is that I can't ski!" I imagined how cool it would have been to ski down the mountain with Hans, just the two of us, the whole mountain to ourselves. Since by that time I already knew I was heading to Gokase, and I already knew there was a ski "resort" there, I made a promise of sorts to Hans and myself a bit later that day that I would learn how to ski, in Japan (of all places!).

Fast forward to January 31, 2008. The day had finally arrived. I was about to go downhill skiing for the first time.

I had to be at school at 7:45 a.m. that day, which was a bit earlier than usual, since the buses were leaving at 8:00. And before boarding the buses, we, the roughly 150 students (1st-4th graders) and 15 teachers, gathered in front of the school for the, oh, Japanese-style "briefing/opening ceremony." (I'll have to write about those some day.)

While that was going on, I put on my rental ski wear. I filled out a form at least a week before the trip indicating my height and weight, but somehow I still got stuck with an XXL outfit instead of an L. And I'm talking the equivalent of American sizes! But I guess for skiing that's good. I don't really know. As I said, I'm quite the rookie as far as skiing is concerned.

What was even more ridiculous, however, was that the ski wear I got looked like something straight out of the '80s: Shiny and very, VERY purple. But one of the things I've learned in the nearly six months I've spent in Japan is that no one was going to make fun of me, at least openly. And since there were a few other teachers wearing the same outrageous outfit, including one of the vice-principals, I was in good company! Still, I wished I could have gotten one of the cooler-looking blue and red rental outfits that many of the students had.

Anyway, I changed into my disco outfit, braved the crowd to catch the tail end of the briefing (no one laughed at me!), and boarded my bus. About 30 minutes later, we arrived at the turnoff for the ski area. The road up the mountain is narrow and windy (as in curvy, not "blowy"), so we had to transfer from our big buses to shuttle buses.

On the big bus, I traveled with the first graders (about 20 boys and 20 girls) and some staff members. I did so, too, on the shuttle bus, but there was a big difference in the new crowd, besides the fact that there were now only half as many of us: There were no girls on my shuttle. This "gender separation behavior" was nothing new to me, however, so, after making a mental note to write about that phenomenon some day, I turned my focus back to skiing.

I was pretty concerned about what the conditions would be like at the top of the mountain. I really wasn't looking forward to learning how to ski on what I expected to be man-made snow or even ice. After all, all the snow from the mild storm of three days prior was gone, at least at the bottom of the mountain, and before that we hadn't had any snow for weeks. But the higher up the mountain we got, the more obvious it was that not all of the snow from the brief storm had melted, so there was hope that I could actually ski on real snow.

A few minutes later we reached the end of the road. We then changed into our ski boots and caught a ride on the first ski lift, the one that takes skiers and snowboarders up to the slopes.

When we arrived at the top, we went inside the rental shop, got our poles and our skis, and slowly made our way back outside. On my way out, I passed a group of ski instructors, and I stopped to talk to them briefly. I asked them, in English, if they thought it was easier to ski or snowboard. That innocent little chat proved to be highly valuable to me, as I will explain momentarily.

Before we could start learning how to ski, we first had to, yes, have another briefing/opening ceremony. That only lasted a few minutes, however, and soon I was standing in my skis! All the students were divided into about 10 or 15 groups, and I was assigned to a bunch of beginners, of course. Oh, and just boys, of course!

Our instructor started our lesson off with some basics to help us get familiar with the feeling of being in skis, such as walking and gliding in circles to the left and to the right, and even practicing falling and getting back up. I understood most of what was going on, because I was paying attention to what the instructor was doing and what the other guys in my group did. But I barely understood anything my instructor was saying, so I was a little frustrated. I mean, it's hard enough learning how to ski, let alone in a foreign language!

But after only about 20 minutes, my frustration came to an end when Kosaku Harukawa, another one of the ski instructors, came over and started to give me a one-on-one, yes, private(!), lesson. And best of all, he spoke English!

Kosaku and I hit it off right away. To help you understand how well we get along, let me just say that when he asked me what my name was, I told him I was Bode Miller! His reply? He was Daron Rahlves!

Kosaku taught me how to brake and how to turn to the left and to the right, and after about an hour of practicing, he took me down my first two slopes. Naturally, there was plenty of falling on my part. But like a good cowboy, I got back up on my horse and gave it another shot. Words of encouragement from the students who saw me struggling ("Yama-san, fighto!") also helped.

The last part of my lesson was how to ride the ski lift. Getting on the lift was a piece of cake, but I was worried that I would fall down getting off of it. Thanks to "Daron's" coaching, I was able to exit the lift like a pro!

"Daron" then left me on my own, since there wasn't much more he could help me with. At that point, it was up to me to get better on my own. So I took the challenge and went down the two relatively easy slopes several more times. I continued to struggle quite a bit. Turning to the left felt ridiculously natural to me, whereas turning to the right was a nightmare. Not good! I tried my best to figure out the problem, but I really wasn't getting anywhere. I figured eventually it would just click, so I tried to remain patient.

My patience ran out, however, when I fell backwards and jammed my left thumb. The last thing I needed was an injury, so I decided to call it quits for the day. I took off my skis and hiked up to the top of the slope.

After I calmed down a bit, I realized my thumb was just a bit bruised, not actually injured. So I decided to rest for a while and then give skiing another try. But in the back of my mind, a little voice kept saying to me, "Be careful, man. If you fall on that thumb again, it will be injured." And I'd also had some fairly wicked spills up to that point, including a couple times when one of my skis came off. One of those times while I was falling, I even thought to myself, "Oh, no. This is going to be bad. My ski better come off or my knee is toast!" (Luckily, it did!) Yeah, so, I was kind of back to being a scaredy cat.

I didn't ski much more the rest of the day and was very thankful on the way back to school that I was taking the bus and not an ambulance!

The next day we went back for our second and final day of skiing. I originally thought about taking the day off from skiing and sticking to taking pictures, again to avoid risking injury. But my competitive instincts won over and I decided to go for it.

Instead of setting off on my own as I had the previous afternoon, my plan that day was to stick with my group. I figured I'd probably learn some new tricks, despite the language barrier, and I'd probably be less inclined to do anything stupid if I were with a group of fellow beginners.

I definitely made the right decision. I didn't necessarily get as much skiing in as I had the day before, but going back to the slow approach helped me improve my skills dramatically. And the group support was definitely an added plus.

One time, just before lunch, when we were on the steeper of the two "bunny" slopes, for whatever reason our instructor had us follow him in single file in super-slo-mo fashion, snaking our way down. I didn't quite understand the point of that exercise until we got to the bottom of the slope. Instead of taking a right and catching the lift back to the top as we always had, we continued to go straight and paused in front of the next slope, the intermediate one, the steepest one at the resort.

For the most part, I was really excited, because I was about to finally get to play with the big boys. "No fear, baby!" And I realized our instructor was going to take us down that slope nice and slowly, in the same, snaking, slo-mo fashion that we had just perfected minutes earlier. So why should there be a problem, right?

Wrong! Within moments, I found out firsthand why everyone calls that slope "Hell's Slope." My first turn, a left-hand turn, went just great. "I can do this!" But then the ol' right-hand turn failed me once again! I was out of control, moving way faster than slo-mo, and before I knew it, "snap!" off came my left ski and I found myself skidding down the mountain on my side. Somehow I was able to put on the brakes after just a few meters.

But there I was, on a steep slope, with just one ski, the other one about 5 meters above me. So I struggled to make my way back up the slope to grab my ski. That was nothing compared to the losing battle I was waging trying to get my boot back in that damn ski. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the ski on. I kept slipping, the ski kept slipping away, the boot just wouldn't go in the binding. It was hopeless!

And all sorts of doubt entered my head during my battle: "What the hell am I doing trying to ski down this slope!?" "What the hell was my instructor thinking, trying to take us down this slope?" "How the hell does everyone else make it look so damn easy?" "Why the hell did I have to fall?" "Skiing sucks!"

What's funny is that when I fell on the "bunny" slopes and had barely any trouble getting back on my skis, there always seemed to be someone right there to help. But in this time of need, no one came to my rescue. What's up with that?

Yeah, so I had to come up with a "Plan B," which was to take off my other ski and slide on my butt until I reached my instructor, who was about 50 meters down the slope. With his help, I was able to get both skis back on again. And then it was time to try to tackle "Hell" once again.

I fared a little better on my second attempt, but sure enough, after only a few turns, I lost a ski and was eating snow once again! But that time I was on a part of the slope that wasn't quite as steep, and I landed in a big pile of snow, so I didn't have as much trouble getting my ski back on. Thank goodness!

Naturally, everyone and their grandmother witnessed my spectacular crashes. Somehow I needed to save face. The bottom of the slope was only meters away. Most of the rest of the members of my group were already there, looking at me and waiting for me. So I made like Bode Miller and attacked the rest of the slope. I handled myself like a champ, finally catching up to everyone.

But there was still one more slope to tackle before we could catch the lift back to the top. I told myself there was no way on earth I was going to fall this time. Sure, the slope was steep, but not nearly as steep as the one I had just come down. "Fighto, fighto!" I told myself.

So off I went, down the hill. And for the first time, one of the tips about turning that the instructors had given us really came in handy. I fought my way through the fast and furious turns, punching the air with my right arm as I turned to the left and with my left arm as I turned to the right. I guess some things only work when you're going fast enough! And what do you know, I made it to the bottom without falling! That was cool! For the first time in my life, I was really skiing!