18.1.08

The Juice of The Oranges

Well it happened at last, we finally had a argument with Darrel.


It wasn't about the casual racism or the hundreds of other things we could take offence to but that age old argument of the washing up. Now to be fair, we are pretty slack at the washing up but not too bad but on the fateful night in question we had actually not done it because of a lack of washing up liquid, which we had just gone to pick up.



I was caught totally off guard as Darrel launched into attack mode as soon as we stepped into the door - 'can you do the facking washing up!'. I tried to defuse the situation at first by apologizing and saying we had just brought the liquid for that express purpose. He was having none of it and was swearing his tits off at me, so I decided fuck it and had a go at him instead for being a rude bastard with the manners of a carrot with leprosy. He then managed to lose all creditability in a few short words by saying we couldn't use the washing up liquid as an excuse as he had been using this....

Us: "That's surface cleaner Darrel! you can't wash our plates up with that!"


D: "Mate, mate, [meaningful point] its made with the juice of the oranges"



We couldn't hold back from laughing in his face. Ben being the more composed of us when off and got the said cleaner and quietly explained it was chemicals made to smell like orange and probably quite harmful to eat off of (due to the picture on the back explaining just that).



All in all, think we came off the better for the encounter, sure we do the washing up more regularly but Darrel was all apologetic about shouting and made himself out to be a massive plum (orange?) yet again. Water under the bridge in any case, we're all friends again but in related news we've been offered some accommodation in town, which means we may even have some sort of a social life soon (at 3 times the rent of the warebase but that's not important right?). So fingers crossed we may not live in a warehouse next week, this does mean saying goodbye to the cot though.


So my activities since last blog, apart from arguing with Darrel have mostly been snow shoveling and my god am I sick of it. The snow has really kicked up several notches in the last couple of weeks and we are getting about a foot a day on average, which means we've had to abandon all hope of ever being able to maintain the Lost Lab Japan edition (sorry whistler buddies). I do enough shoveling in my day job to not want to do it on my own time.



Aside from shoveling we've also had some sick days of riding recently. I have finally been given some guiding to do in the local awesomeness backcounty spot of Moiwa (lift access and everything) and all us NOASC bro's had avalanche training the other day which entailed a lot of photos, ridiculous powder and burying Mura (our buddy at NOASC who is kind of the company whipping boy but also really sound and has taken to patting me and Ben on the lower thigh as a sign of encouragement, we think...) in a snow cave, then collapsing it. Started out funny, then gradually crossed the border into bulling as no one dug him out for ages. Bit weird but he lived, just.


Ben: "Mura how was in there?"


Mura: "it was cold and dark and I couldn't breath because the snow was crushing my neck and I started to panic."


{Mura in a snowcave being poked by captain bro Yo-san [yes, even his name is bro'ed out], me looking on concerndingly [not a word, I know]}

That said, if they'd asked him to do it again, he would've gone straight in.


At the end of the hike we had to cross a river with a sketchy bridge as the only crossing point. Darrel was up first, shuffling along on his skis but about halfway across started to slip and so opted to fall onto the bridge in the splits position. Yes, we have it on camera and Will be uploaded once I can get the footage off the office. The memory is burned in my retina's for life I think.



Big Wednesdays (i.e. the only day when me and Ben both have a day off) involved a trip to a nearby resort called Rusutsu, which is damn cool. Based around 3 steep mountains it has much more of a north American feel to it, steeper and more spaced out trees than we've encountered so far. We're definitely going back and the other highlight of it is that the base doubles up as a theme park in the summer, so gives a healthy surreal Japanese feel to the place. PLUS little to no aussies (better watch was I type, there's a couple of prize aussies next to me right now, they can smell fear. One of them just said {about the bilingual keyboard} "awww fack, its turned to bloody Jap again" well put.)



Terry tree jib



The last topic of today's garbled nonsense is a man who should've made the blogosphere long ago, the manager of bar Splash, Shu.



Shu is a small Japanese fellow (but there all tiny ain't they? WEEEHAYY!!! sorry think the aussieness in infectious.) who clearly should have been born in Jamaica and lived his life as a rasta with poor taste in reggae. As it stands he's all those things except he lives in a tiny box room above a terrible bar made of chipboard, so basically a hobo.


He is also known to be;


- Incredibly rude, once insisting that Ben and I move down the bar so his friends could sit where we were sitting, when there is loads of other space. Confused at the request, we ignored him.


- A massive sleaze. He was sleazing a girl in splash one time and then grabbed her arse and rubbed her face with his hand. To appease the obviously disgruntled girl, he pawned her off with a free drink. A man can learn a few things from this casanova sexbomb. He also gave the girls a tip on New Year by only gave it to them by shoving the money down their tops.


- Called Sprinkles by some friends of the girls, who for some reason assumed this was his name and proceeded to call him it all the time. He doesn't seem to mind and it suits him better if you ask me, go Sprinkles.



That's your lot for today methinks. Be sure to stop by again soon for another chinwag, alternatively you can just read this again on Ben's blog. Yeah that's right Bennan I'm talking trash on yer blog, see you in Blogcourt ~ Its the dumpster down the alleyway next to Chicken Cottage in Tooting, the tramp inside wanking is the Judge.


Laters...






...on

Ben, soaring like some sort of majecstic eagle....






Pre-hike piss, textbook.



Deep pow, someone floundering in the background.



Onsen to celebrate a job well done, japanese bro's (T.P and Yo) givin' it the fair maiden for the lads....

8.1.08

La Maison du chocolat

Weeehaaaay its the first blog of 08 suuun uggghh!

The title of this latest instalment will be familiar to some of you bloggernaughts as it is the name of the hottest new drink on the London/Niseko party scene. Yakult and Pernod, served on the rocks with the Yakult on the side, half open. For smooth and relaxing times think Maison du chocolat. But credit where credit is due and Mr Creamer must take a bow as he is this tipples true innovator.





So lets get to it, new years and James (the brother) and Matt's (friend of the brother) visit are now things of the past but let us all bow our heads and try and remember the highlights of the last couple o weeks.

Their stay got off to a fantastic start, which involved rain and some of the most vomit inducing aussie behaviour to date. Including dancing on tables whilst playing didgeridoo's and generally being the most annoying people of the past, present and future. This was only made better by seeing them having dinner with their mums later in the week, fucking wankers this is 2008! Who has a mum these days eh? Twats. OK, its out of my system now. Bastards. On the plus side one of the guys had a striking resemblance to a character from Ducktales who we couldn't quite recall, y'know the kind of spazzy duck who wanted to come on all the adventures but was generally told to 'get fucked' but they other ducks? After much research we concluded he was called 'Bubba the Caveduck' (who was accidentally brought back from the past but then accepted as one of the family). Also there was another character called Launchpad Mcquack but there's no corresponding Australian to him.













- A Caveduck

Anyway, so far so bad for James and Matt who had quickly started talk of going to Tokyo asap. However, some good snow and some less annoying nights out things were turned around and they eventually had a good ol time methinks. In particular new years where, due to poor organization and dithering we spent midnight in the street on our own. As this was clearly to be the highlight of our night we ambled back to our local 'Splash Bar' which was rife with underage kids, absolutely smashed (you tube video will hopefully appear soon). So after high fiving some kids we escaped to the old gimmer lounge upstairs (i.e. anyone over 20) and shouted a lot while me and Bennan got laughed at by pretty much every Japanese person for wearing tops based on a children's TV show. Incidentally this did nothing to dispel the rumours about us being gay that have somehow developed among our Japanese work colleagues. God knows how, it not like we talk about having baths together the whole time or anything...oh wait.

Other highlights included a Paper Mario chatterthon, Ben finally resisted the urge to watch freestyles on you tube and chatted to her. Only to confirm that she is incredibly boring; but then there's not much room for personality when you are made of paper.

Matt spent the latter part of the night pretending to be aussie and was continually called a 'bogen' by fellow aussies, who next time they saw him asked after his sister and cousins, who he insisted he was out with (but didn't seem to note that he was no longer Australian and now English).

Darrel, disgusted but the underage drinking tried to put an end to it by claiming to be Assistant Manager, nice.


Speaking of Darrel, he is now in charge of these lodges that our crummy company property manages and old chumpsworth here has to clean (as you expect when you get a job snowboard instructing). The whole operation is an absolute sham but does lead to some good Darrel moments, who is sort of like fat Ross' sidekick now.


Other news, got another instructing job to supplement my terrible wage.


Ben almost wrecked the fucktruck in an awesome skid (Que Darrel: 'just down the gears mate, down the gears, down the gears, etc, etc').


The warehouse's name is now the 'Warebase' a cross between warehouse and riverbase, its two previous names. It also sounds like the layer of a really shit superhero and can only be directed to by its location to Maison du chocolat.


Cool well I think we are all done here, please enjoy these photomotos to ease the pain of parting....oh also there's a video of some insects fighting.


Paper Mario (right) and Paper Luigi (left) and unknown man, most likely aussie.














Darrel, the man, the legend.



















New years, 4 men, one street and a camera.