Seismic goes to Japan with Skateventure

Skateventure is about having fun, meeting great people and living crazy experiences. These guys travel country to country with just their backpacks on, pushing and searching out new cultures and new spots, skating the world, one country at a time. As they explain on their website: “Skateventure was created out of the love of longboarding and a passion for adventure travel. By embarking on our journey, we hope to inspire people from all over the globe to chase their dreams and never let anything stand in their way.”

This project started on January 2011 in Northern Thailand and has already visited countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Peru and Chile.

Troy is one of the guys from Skateventure who just recently came back to his natal New Zeland from Japan in one piece.

I hung out with Rob Thomson in Northern Japan for a day and then began my skate south. I camped in the funniest places, In Sapporo I camped in the equivalent of central park New York. The police had no clue what I was up to and I couldn’t speak Japanese so they let me get away with everything. I slept by lakes, rivers, on mountains, abandoned warehouses, toilets, couch surfed , but spent most of the time getting invited back to locals houses.

One day I was exhausted after 13km on the road, I sat down at a tourist stop and bought a coffee. My body ached, my energy levels were lower than Antarctica. A guy named Yoshi came over to me, introduced himself and had a yarn. He was a soba-noodle technician and living legend. I ended up going back to his house having soo much delicious food, chilling at a local hot spring, visiting a samurai temple and drinking many different kinds of sake. This kind of thing happened every second night or so. It’s awesome – usually Japanese people will not invite people into their houses, not even friends. But as I was doing something so crazy and awesome, they broke all the rules. Stoke is a universal language.

From there I was always up to fun and mischief , unsuccessfully camping in a bear infested reserve, skating down Mt. Fuji, eating sashimi and kobe beef, winning karaoke battles, arm wrestling black belt karate champion (and winning) and getting invited as guest of honor to enkais (partys).