FAR EAST: Matchstick Productions hits Japan and China
All good trips start with a bunch of travel hassles where the person behind the counter tells you that you have too much luggage and that you are only allowed two pieces internationally. They look at you with shock and disgust, like no one has ever brought more than two pieces of luggage on board an airplane, ever. Well we had six and you would have thought the 777 couldn’t handle all of the weight.
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A bunch of hours later, we arrived at Hokkado ski station in Japan. Basically it is one of the few ski areas in Japan that encourages backcountry skiing. The big problem is that the volcano is as flat as a pancake, but with an all-star Salomon Crew of Mike Douglas, Mark Abma, Simon Dumont, and Sammy Carlson, as long as there is snow you can make anything work. For the first couple of rainy days we just scouted the area out, and when the rain turned to snow, we got out and got some really cool shots. For all you doubters and park rat haters out there, I will tell you, Sammy Carlson, “Our Special Boy”, and Simon “Hard as Hell” Dumont can rip pow just as good as an old school Alta local with a full beard and a ten-year-old jacket. That’s right, Dumont and Carlson rip lines and ski pow like old pros.
We don’t need to tell you how good Abma and Douglas are at ripping because you already know.
So after 20 inches of champagne powder, blue skies, and a bunch of sick shots we decided to leave and go explore another ski area, Hachimantai. Hachimantai is a pretty run down place—the lodges suck and most of the lifts are old—but it’s irrelevant because the skiing rocks!
Our game place when something like: Get off the lift, traverse for a couple hundred feet, drop into steep, spaced out trees and rip it up. We shot for three days in Hachimantai; highlights included Simon Dumont stomping the illest cork 3 off a cliff simply (because he’s “Hard as Hell”), Abma taking the craziest pillow line and airing a cliff with a mid-air jib (bonking of a tree), Mike Douglas making everything look smooth, and Sammy Carlson skiing lines like he had 70 trips to Alaska under his belt.
Soon enough we took our 40 bags of luggage to Tokyo (with much help from Salomon Japan, Big Boss Katsutoshi “Toshi” Shimizu, and the ever-smiling Nobu). Toshi took us out to the craziest party district in the city. If you haven’t been to Tokyo, it is by far the largest city in the world, crazy people are everywhere, it’s super clean (except for the smog) and it is amazing. Anyway we got really trashed, danced like fools and stayed out until 6am the next day.
Next it was time to head to communist China. What a trip. When we got there the Chinese were so cool they wouldn’t let us touch our luggage. The problem is we had so much, they had no idea what to do with it, and it took them twice as long as it would have taken us to load the bus. We were finally rolling, but we couldn’t get the driver to turn on the heat. Despite our begging and pleading, he only turned it on when the windshield fogged. In no time it was 10 degrees with a half an inch of ice on the windows. Luckily all of our warm gear was packed away. To top things off, the GPS on the bus broke and continued to beep steadily every 30 seconds for the five hour bus ride totally demoralizing the crew.
We finally arrived in the middle of the night and we all wanted to cry. But the hotel is nice and soon enough we wake up and check out the skiing in China. The Chinese love skiing, and we are stoked to check it out. The area is all man made snow, with a little park that our boys made due with. We all had a great time eating dog, pigeon, turtle, and who else what. Sammy held out until we could locate a McDonalds.
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After a brief ski, we decided to check out the Great Wall and then head into Beijing for the craziest dinner ever. Our host, a very rich Chinese resort owner, pulled out all the stops, even bringing the Chinese Opera to entertain us. It was a traditional old school Chinese set-up in the coolest room I’ve ever been in. Big pimpi’n in China for sure. We were all completely blown away.
I have to give many thanks to our gracious Japanese and Chinese hosts for showing us an amazing time, and extra special thanks to Solomon Japan and their crew for accommodating everything we needed and more.