WHILE skiing has always been the rich man’s pasttime, snowboarding has very often been the opposite. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, young, free-spirited Japanese with little cash to buy lift passes and pay for fancy accommodation would travel to ski resorts and live out of their cars. They used onsen (public hot spring baths) for bathing and survived on one of the cheapest and tastiest meals known to man – Japanese curry rice (which by the way we highly recommend for a lunch at local ski hill restaurants). They would cook the rice with rice cookers they plugged in to vending machines in resort car parks, and for that reason vending machines in Japan now come with non-standard plugs! Damn snowboarders…
This tradition of travelling and living out of cars is celebrated in Hokkaido filmmaker Neil Hartmann’s classic Car Danchi snowboard movie series. ‘Danchi’ means ‘government-sponsored housing’, and the premise behind the films is that all featured riders must be living out their cars while filming and travelling Hokkaido searching for perfect powder. Neil has given Powderlife a complete set of the Car Danchi movies parts 1, 2 and 3 to give away. To win, email a pic of a car buried in powder, like Chris Webb’s above, to [email protected]. We’ll print the winner’s pic in the next issue of Powderlife. Six runners up can win a Car Danchi 3 T-shirt.