Ever since visiting the Kyoto region and winning big in Pachinko I’d longed to return to Japan and experience the cartoon craziness, rich history, bizarre cultural contradictions and the food once again. And the snow. I’d heard so much about the snow in the Japanese Alps and the north of Japan. The deepest powder you’ll ever see, I was told. But my mate Brad proposed a trip there at a time I was weary from travel and enjoying the southern hemisphere summer in Australia. “Come on, it’ll be epic,” he promised. He was right, as it turns out, and for reasons other than just the awesome snowboarding. I had never been to Tokyo before, other than some short transits through Narita airport on my way to Europe, so we decided that we’d fly out of the north island of Hokkaido for the last few days of the trip and spend a few days partying and exploring in Tokyo. As it happened, on my first day in Tokyo I experienced an earthquake for the first time. And it was a doozy- at 9.0 on the Richter scale, the 2011 Tohoku quake was the most powerful to ever hit Japan.