Following Japan
Words and photos Lee Ponzio
Let me dissuade you of a common misconception in the snowboarding community: the Japanese Snowboard Team does not have an all-powerful development program to breed snowboarding superstars. The ‘Team’ such as it is, is little more than an Uber for dragging some of the best competitive talent in snowboarding around the globe to FIS contests. I feel qualified to tell you this, as I spent six years in that Uber with the Japanese Slopestyle/Big Air team from 2017 to 2023.

In 2014 I had a promising project management career in Melbourne, Australia, with a two-year-old boy and a house we’d bought in 2012. By the end of 2014, we’d sold the house, I’d quit my job and we had tickets to move to Yamagata, Japan.
Through incredible serendipity right after moving to Yamagata, I met Takashi Nishida, one of Japan’s first halfpipe riders, who later became the sole technical coach for the Japanese Snowboarding Slopestyle/Big Air Team in 2016, after the Yuki Kadono debacle. (I think Yuki is amazing, by the way. He got railroaded.) The sole responsibility of the Team is to send athletes to the Winter Olympic Games every four years and bring home medals. Easy. In order to make it to the Olympic Games, athletes must qualify according to the criteria of the governing body, FIS, which equates to attending a multitude of World Cup contests and accruing points. Thus, the Team exists to ferry a crew of riders around the World Cup circuit every season in order to assemble a squad of four women and four men that has the best chance of standing on the podium at the Olympics to hoist the Japanese flag. That’s it.
After navigating that circuit for a year by himself, Takashi realized that he needed help and asked whether I’d be interested in joining him as an assistant coach (being international competitions, all aspects of the tour are conducted in English, something that proves troublesome for most Japanese). It seemed like an offer too good to be true, with the only snag being that I would have to attend a three-day coaching course and pass a written examination. In Japanese of course. Takashi assured me that allowances would be made for my foreigner-ness, the first of many times he’d fool me over the years (including the time he tricked me into eating dog food, but that’s another story…). I made it through the course lectures with a solid grasp of everything covered, only to be told that I would sit the exact same exam as the native coaches-to-be. I failed, of course, not being able to read the questions, but would like to note that I scored higher than halfpipe legend Ryo Aono.

Having failed the exam, they wouldn’t make me an assistant coach, but still needing English-speaking help, the position of ‘Video Staff’ was created and I went on my first Japanese Snowboard Team trip in December 2017. For the next six winters, I rolled with the team as their ‘Video Staff’, handling a whole range of tasks that had nothing to do with video. Officially, I handled: rider registrations for World Cup; World Championship and Olympic Games events; accommodation and transport needs; all the international communication involved in running an Olympic snowboard team; translating, and whatever else needed English-speaking skills. At practice and contests, I’d do some filming for the coaches’ review, and if really lucky, shoot some photos along the way. Unofficially, I’d help riders with their international sponsor communications, photos for their sponsors, getting into non-FIS events (X Games, Dew Tour, The Nines, Spring Battle, etc.), communication with other riders and industry figures, and just about anything they needed to help their careers run smoothly.
Before meeting Takashi, I’d never heard of FIS World Cup events and snowboarding was just this amazingly fun thing we did because we were shit at skating and backside 360s were easy on a snowboard. This mindset of fun snowboarding was how I joined the Team, and at first, the trips were light and so much fun. When competition at the 2018 pre-Olympic Laax Open was canceled due to heavy storms, we were stoked to go ride pow. Bummer for the athletes, but no big deal for us. Having never been to Europe, the immense size of Laax blew me away and I treasured every chance to ride that wonderland after a snowfall. That quickly became my favorite stop on the circuit, with the most luxurious accommodation, decadent meals, friendly people and of course the Laax terrain. On a later trip, after slopestyle practice wrapped up, I tagged along with Raibu Katayama and a couple of other Japanese pipe boys who were going sidecountry exploring after some fresh snow. Figuring they knew where they were going, I was stoked to get a chance to ride, especially with those guys. Those boys can shred! Being used to hovering 6m+ above an icy pipe lip, blasting massive airs off anything into powder was pure playtime for them. Somewhere along the ride they admitted they had absolutely no idea where we were and hoped we’d get back to some kind of trail before dark. This caused a mild panic that I hoped I didn’t outwardly show too much, as my risk-taking threshold was multiple leagues below theirs, but it didn’t deter them from having a good time. Amid raucous laughter, they intuited their way through gully after gully, punching huge airs off whatever launch pads they could find, and we eventually made it back to the resort smiling and laughing. Laax Baby!





Those fun experiences were more frequent early on, when I still believed that snowboarding was a fun, carefree pursuit of creative self-expression. Gradually, this perception changed as I realized that my version of snowboarding and top-tier competitive snowboarding were completely different beasts, particularly under the reign of the Ski Association of Japan (the snowboard team’s national governing body). I came to understand that the stakes were on another level in terms of the risk the athletes exposed themselves to and the pressures they felt from the Association and other external sources. The career of a professional competitive snowboarder is limited to how long both body and mind can stand up to those pressures whilst continuously evolving the skill set required to remain competitive at the highest level. If you’re not at that highest level, the sharp end of the spear of performance, your competitive career and any income you derive from it evaporates rapidly.
This brings us back to the development of Japanese super snowboarders. I think people confuse the success of the Japanese with the Chinese Government’s method of sourcing talent from pools like karate, gymnastics, diving and such, strapping them to snowboards and seeing who doesn’t get broken off. There is no such program in Japan. There is no program, period. Despite the success of the “Japanese Snowboard Team” over the last decade-ish, there is no national development program supporting that success. From my experience, it’s all thanks to the parents of the kids, and a work ethic that produces results. Whether that parental support comes from a place of love, passion, or maybe a tinge of living vicariously through their offspring is debatable, but what isn’t debatable are the results we’ve seen at every level of international competition in recent years. It’s not uncommon for kids to be riding from age four, on the hill every weekend during winter and on airbags at least every weekend, if not weekdays as well when there’s no snow left. Families will sleep four-deep in a Toyota Hilux at the ski resort in winter and at the airbag facilities through summer to maximise practice time and reduce accommodation costs. Often it starts out with dad coaching until such time as the kids surpass what he can teach them, or a private coach becomes an option. If a family has the means, they may enlist their kids to the tutelage of a coach at their local airbag spot, a coach like Yas Sato, Saitama Quest owner and superstar coach to the elite.

What I found so interesting at first was how the kids approached their ‘training’ at the airbags. To older snowboarders, airbags can be a contentious topic, viewed as cheating by many. To this generation of Japanese snowboarders however, it’s just snowboarding, another chance to be on your board and getting better in the air. The kids hit the bag, review their jump on the video monitor at the bottom, decide what needs tweaking, hike back up the path (unless you’re at a place that has a motorised golf cart) and hit it again. A few hundred times a day. When you realise how much airtime can be gained in one three-hour session, it’s obvious where an incredible air awareness on snow kickers is born. Kids are undertaking this repetitive practice before they hit their teens, so it becomes ingrained in them to work at something with such high repetition, making minor tweaks to reach perfection and consistency.
It was during my first visit to a Quest airbag facility that I met a smiley 14-year-old Leila Iwabuchi. (*Quick trivia: in Japanese, there is no distinction between L and R, and it is always written ‘R’, even if sounds like an L, hence Reira Iwabuchi is her official name.) I was completely blown away to see a pint-sized girl throwing cab-900s and backside double-cork 1080s into the airbag off the big jump. We definitely didn’t have that back in Australia. I didn’t even know many guys doing those tricks. I pulled the camera out and asked her if she could do a front-3 for me. “Sure,” she said, and threw me a poked-out front three as good as I’d ever seen one done. That first impression was incredibly strong, and I believed that I was in the presence of something special. Little did we know at the time, but we’d spend the next eight years working closely and supporting each other’s careers.
The year following that first meeting, Leila and I coincidentally joined the Japanese Snowboard Team at the same time and commenced our global wanderings together. Perhaps because we were both kind of different characters in that team, we found a kinship that was later frowned upon and caused me many career difficulties. Leila is not a naturally gifted athlete (if you’ve ever seen her run, you’d understand), and for every new trick evolution, she has to work incredibly hard to attain consistency enough to risk pulling it out in competition. She came at snowboarding from a very different place to me, which I only found out years later, and it was not a happy place. Snowboarding was forced upon her from age four, and she hated it, up until around she was 16 and started finding some positives in it for herself. Hearing her story almost brought me to tears, as that was the first time I understood that not everyone found snowboarding from a place of joy and freedom. This strengthened my resolve to bring the positives of a snowboarding career to Leila and show the world what she was capable of. She effectively became my muse, the inspiration to take better photos, to keep up with the GoPro and film lines worth posting to the world, to connect with the powers of the snowboard industry to maximize opportunities, and above all, try to enjoy it along the way!





The snowboard industry is a small, tight clique, and one of my goals when joining the Team was to bring the faces of talented Japanese riders to the world. Due to their shy nature and unwillingness to speak English, Japanese athletes often stay stuck within their own circle on tour, rarely stepping into discomfort and socializing with their international counterparts. This of course can make them seem quite boring, and it’s hard for them to gain an international following when nobody understands who they really are. There are rare exceptions, such as Kazu and Ayumu, whose riding is so strong that it speaks for itself, but unfortunately, most of the Japanese riders on the international contest circuit are just interchangeable, unpronounceable names that can spin a lot. There are guys on the team now and even I have no idea who they are. More Japanese spinny boys, here this season, gone the next.
I always believed that communication, specifically, English, was a force multiplier for the careers of Japanese snowboarders, and I tried to encourage study and practice within the team. I ultimately failed overall, as I couldn’t get buy-in from the riders to spend the time and effort. A few riders made an extra effort with me, and I was always proud when the likes of Leila, Takeru, Kokomo and Kaito would tackle English interviews on their own and put their imperfect selves in front of the world.
Along with English, I subtly, sometimes not-so-subtly, tried to impart some un-Japanese flexibility onto the team riders. Being a foreigner in the Association was quite unusual, and though I understood Japanese culture reasonably well, there were always things that frustrated the shit out of me. Processes for the sake of processes without beneficial outcomes for the athletes, hard-headed traditional thinking that made operating difficult and life unpleasant for the athletes and a propensity for blindly following all rules were some of the things that created mass amounts of frustration in the team. I’m down for rules, but only if they make sense and/or protect people, otherwise, a little flexibility can go a long way. The other staff called me ‘henna-gaijin’ (strange foreigner), which, although kind of discriminatory, I wore as a badge of pride as I liked differentiating myself from the Association, which most riders hated.

Being a strange foreigner had its upsides and downsides both in the Team, and in everyday life in Japan. As noted by Cool Wakushima, “Japan is low-key kinda racist,” and the longer you live there, the more you realize it’s not so low-key. It’s not the overt, aggressive form of racism people face elsewhere in the world, but more below-the-surface discrimination and second-classness that can make everyday life irritating. I have some amazing Japanese friends I love and who treat me as any other friend, but within the Team, I always felt the difference, which I often used to my advantage, but which eventually grew so uncomfortable that I felt no option but to leave. The cultural and ideological differences between myself and some of the coaches were insurmountable and there was no fun left in the environment.
When I joined, I really wanted to do good there. As a supremely untalented lifelong snowboarder-turned-photographer, I revered top-tier snowboarders to the point of idolisation. To be working amongst them, and to be considered their peer was such an honour, and I wanted to repay that in the form of a significant positive impact on the individuals and the culture. Once I realised the heavy burden that the riders placed upon themselves to succeed, how hard they worked for it, and what was at stake for them, I felt that myself and the Team owed it to them to be an unfailing, professional source of support. I came to learn what true professionalism in a snowboard team looks like through my friend Chris Witwicki, leader of the Canadian Snowboard Team. In my eyes, Team Canada was always the benchmark of how a team should operate and support their athletes and the sport. Alas, the Japanese Team fell far short of the mark. At the time, I now realise that I took it so personally how unprofessional we were. As a lowly ‘video staff’, I expected the utmost professionalism and elite dedication from the coaching staff towards the individuals charged to our care. After all, we were an elite Olympic team. Little did I know that they were only human, making it up as we went along, making decisions that made life easier rather than what was best for the athletes or the sport. They didn’t really know what the athletes needed to thrive and succeed, and that didn’t sit right with me. How could they be the coaches of the most exciting snowboard team in the world and not know what they were doing? To hear one of them to say, “We only got one medal, and just a bronze,” after Beijing was an affront the effort those riders put in and so disappointing to me. To my detriment, I don’t handle laziness or incompetence well, and this caused rifts to develop in my relationships. This is, of course, my perception of the situation, and no doubt there is another side to the story where I’m a huge pain in the arse.

As I gradually realized that my attempts to influence the team as a whole were proving futile, I found myself focussing my efforts on the riders who appreciated what I was doing for them and my point of difference. I was warned by the head coach not to form strong relationships with individual riders or show favouritism, which I understood in the team environment, but without strong connection and mutual respect, I have no interest in showing up. I couldn’t reconcile putting effort into ten-plus riders when only a handful seemingly had any interest in or appreciation for what I was trying to do for them. So, against the wishes of some, and against my better judgement, I ran with my emotions and tried to have the strongest impact I could on those who wanted it. I like to think that through our many trips together, a few of those riders were impacted by the ideas, actions and media I shared with them.
Although I left the team feeling a lot of animosity, the years I spent on tour were full of experiences and interactions that I’m forever grateful for. Before moving to Japan, I never would have thought it possible that I’d end up at events like the Olympics, X Games and The Nines, working with some of the most exciting snowboarders in the world, surrounded by snowboarding’s elite riders and personalities. Being able to witness incredible moments in snowboarding and travelling the world with a squad of people I loved was an absolute privilege. Now that I’ve fallen off the map, the relationships I was fortunate to build with so many great people in the global snowboarding community are what I miss the most.
Working under the banner of the Ski Association of Japan with their SSBA Team was nothing if not eye-opening. Understanding how much work the individuals put in to be handpicked and chauffeured around the globe chasing the Olympic dream was inspirational on so many levels. To have worked so closely with riders of their talent, and perhaps influenced their careers in some small way was the experience of a lifetime for me. Whilst the culture of Japanese competitive snowboarding may be at odds with most people’s concept of the joy of snowboarding, as competitors, they are undeniable. I just hope that sometime soon, the riders can learn to balance the pressures applied and the gruelling work required to remain relevant in the contest scene with some level of enjoyment, pride and satisfaction in what they’re doing. After all, it’s snowboarding.






