Renting Skis: An Exercise in Humility

Man, the word 'skis' looks really weird. It looks like it should rhyme with piss rather than cheese. I'm all for changing it to 'skies'. I know, I know, this is what you're thinking: "But Todd, how on Earth will I express more than one of that thing that clouds are in without completely confusing my friends and family?" I know it's hard to trust someone other than you to know what you're saying, but you have to have faith in context. Which brings me to today's story and the word that made me look foolish: mukashi (むかし）.

After a successful morning of watching Japanese dramas to improve my Japanese, I left the house with my host dad to track down some skees (yeah, that's better) for me to use this weekend. We went into a store, which was also the house of the family that ran the place, and I sat down to let my dad do the talking. The last time I went skeeing I was 10, and I never made it past the bunny hill, so renting skees and skeeing equipment would be difficult for me in America. In Japan, knowing none of the relevant vocabulary, I was helpless. I'm normally pretty good at understanding what my dad is saying, but today I just had no idea. They kept talking about something mukashi as well as other things I couldn't understand. I was so bewildered that it took me a while to process simple things the proprietor said to me such as kitemite (着てみて） and kutsu o nuide kudasai (靴を脱いでください）、 meaning "try this on" and "take off your shoes please" respectively. All in all, I performed way under my ability, and I think I embarrassed my dad a bit. I later discovered that mukashi means old, which I've heard before, but in skeeing it refers to the older, picket-fence shaped skees, while the newer ones are more of a figure 8 shape, wider at the ends for ease in turning. My dad later explained to me that the skees he owns are mukashi and therefore, dame (no good).

The lesson you should learn from this is that before you go to buy or rent something, make sure you know all the relevant vocabulary so you can get what you really want. For example, I've been needing a haircut for a little while and I came upon I nice looking hair salon when I was walking around town, but I realized I didn't know important words and phrases like "fade," "comb," and "most stylish boys haircut in Japan right now." I didn't even really know the word for haircut, so I would've gone in asking for a kamikiri (lit: hair cutting) and probably confused everyone. Point is, know your goal and come in prepared, like with this awesome article on how to get a haircut in Japan.

From there we went for a drive up into the Shiga Kogen Heights, to check out the places we'll be skeeing over the weekend. It looks kinda like this:

It's really weird. It snowed a lot yesterday. But the sun was out today so all the snow lower down the mountains where I live is gone. But after a 10 minute drive, it's winter wonderland again. Good one, Japan.