Hakuba - Day 2

Earlier today I was thinking about what to write in my blog, and I was going to make some quip about how in the last few days I've scaled a 'peak', eaten genitles, and today my butt hurt. Trust me, you would have bee in stitches.

Unfortunately to make a joke about how much my butt hurts kind of takes the attention away from what's really gone on today. But first...

After touching down in Tokyo yesterday (and picking up 200 cigarettes in Taipei for $20) I passed through customs and proceeded on my journey to Hakuba. An old friend of mine whom I went to Japanese school with last year moved to Japan back in December last year and has been working in various jobs at a couple of snow resorts. Hakuba is located pretty much in the centre of the main island, I'm staying at a very nice hotel next to Mount Happo-one, (pronounced Hap-po-oh-neh). The journey from Tokyo to Hakuba was incredibly stressful and I unfortuantely didn't do enough research before I got here.

Basically at 6:17pm I took the express train from Narita airport to Shinjuku terminal, this took an hour and a half, so I arrived at Shinjuku (Tokyo) at 7:43pm. I had to transfer to a bullet train at 8:00pm. English announcements were abundant at the airport and I felt quite relieved, and I didn't struggle too hard to understand the gist of the Japanese announcements. Unfortunately Shinjuku had much less English to go by, and I couldn't find my platform for about 10 minutes. Around 8 o'clock in Japan is still pretty much peak hour, and there were heaps of people aroud. My back pack was a constant annoyance and by the time I found the train, it was about 2 minutes from leaving.

Seats on bullet trains are reserved, and I had was reserved for the very first car, in the very first seat, right behind the very first wall. I had no room to stretch my legs out which was very frustrated. I tried to get comfortable, and settled in for my 2 hour and 43 minute trip to Matsumoto, the last stop for this bullet train, but still not close to my hotel.

When I arrived at Matsumoto there was virtually no English, and my ability to read any of the 3,000 characters in the Japanese 'alphabet' is even worse than my ability to speak (I really should have studied harder). I managed to find my platform, and then boarded the train on that platform. This wasn't a bullet train, it was a regular commuter train and seating was limited. Id had no idea if I actually wanted this train. I was still 2 hours from my destination by regular train, and didn't want to go the wrong way.

Feeling frazzled after 10 hours in transit from Taipei to this little country town called Matsumoto, I proceeded to put on my best Japanese and asked an older man for assistance. When he acknowledged my request, I proceeded to ask him if this was the train to Hakuba. He started at me. It seems I'd done something wrong with a relatively simple request. I pulled out my train ticket which said Hakuba in English, and asked again while pointing to 'Hakuba' on my ticket.

He response was like machine gun fire. I was able to get enough of it to think that this guy said "This train stops at Hakuba before the end of the line", roughly. Unfortunately this is a topic that i always sucked at in my Japanese classes. There's a Japanese word for 'before' and there's a Japanese word for 'after', of course, but I always got these two mixed up. But, I didn't realise at the time and said my thank yous to this kind man.

He stared at me again.

I was thoroughly confused. He walked past me to a map on the wall, and pointed it out to me; "This train stops before it gets to Hakuba".

I paniced. I said thank you and was about to step back out onto the platform where this tenacious fellow was even kinder in telling me that this was the last train for this night. I either went to the last stop, or I got out now and 11pm and tried to find somewhere to sleep in this little country down. I went for the last stop.

He stared at me again but I turned around. I was sure he thought I was a idiot, but I couldn't explain my situation to him fluently enough, so I went with stunned silence.

I arrived at the last stop at 12:30am. I proceeded to a cab and asked the driver, in Japanese, if he spoke English. He gave a resounding 'No'. I told him my Japanese was bad but I would try my best. I asked him how much it would cost to get to Hakuba, and he fired another machine at me. We both tried our best and pretty soon I was on my way to Hakuba, a journey which took 30 minutes and cost me AU$110.

Shortly after arriving I picked up my key and my friend came around and we had some beers. I went to bed at about 3am and woke up at 8am and went off to the slopes.

This was the first time I'd even seen snow, so you can imagie how terrible my attempts to stand up on a snow board were. However, after the first time down, I went back out an hour later and managed to stand straight up. I feel like I picked it up pretty well, and slowly travelled in increments from 10meters to 100meters before falling on my arse.

Unfortuantely that's where my problem started. Most of the time when I'd fall I'd land to my right hand side. Throughout the course of the day I noticed more and more a pain developing in my right shoulder. It was at the end of the day when I was walking back to the hotel that the pain started to get stronger and stronger. Thinking that I'd just strained some muscles (it was my right arm that I used to stand up every time after I fell) I proceeded to have a nice hot bath.

This is when everything went sideways. After the bath I layed down and immediately the pain was 100 times worse than anything I'd ever felt before. I tried to get comfortable and couldn't, but it was time to go to dinner. I went downstairs and ate a very nice five course meal as best I could with only one usable arm. Following that, I went back upstairs and called my friend and cancelled our plans to go to the pub that evening, and went straight to bed.

While lying in bed the pain got worse and worse, and I was convinced something was terribly wrong. The level of pain I was feeling without even moving my arm was enough to bring me to tears. I went downstairs to my (very small) hotel's lobby and asked the lady there (who really only spoke Japanese) if there was a doctor nearby.

Hakuba is _very_ small, and today is a public holiday. There was nothing that could be done and I was about to go upstairs to try and sleep it off with a couple of beers in me (I love self medicating) I was fortunate enough that an Oseteopath (sports injuries doctor) was staying in the hotel. He looked me over and caused me even more pain, but luckily it looks like just inflamation of my back shoulder muscles. If I'm lucky, the pain will subside over the next 48 hours. If I'm unlucky, I've ripped a tendon but I won't know until the pain either subsides or doesn't.

The really sad part is, I'm only in Hakuba for another 2 days, and I've been instruced that I can't snow board at all for at least 48 hours.

....