Snowboarding - Niseko Grand Hirafu
My body survived the snowboarding (barely) but my pride and dignity died on the mountain as I spent an untoward amount of time gracefully sliding on my butt. Apparently to actually qualify as legitimate snowboarding the board itself has to contact the snow rather than your knees, hands and butt. Not sure what I ended up doing is really called, there was snow and a board involved … also pain, perhaps - “Uncoordinated goofy white guy sliding down a (rather flat) hill with board attached”. You think they’d name the hill something macho like “White Hill of Snowy Death” so you could at least salvage some pride by saying the name of the place that almost killed you, but no, they named it “Family” and it is serviced by the “Ace Family Pair Lift”. The tougher run up the mountain a little is accessed via the “Ace Pair Lift #1″ and is deceptively named “Slope for Family”, personally I think “Vertigo” would have been a more apt name. Anyway, the people were friendly, the instructors great and the lift tickets brutally expensive. Paying for those almost hurt as much as bouncing down the mountain.
If you are going to try snowboarding I would recommend knee pads, a butt pad and maybe even full body armour.