Interview with Kentaro Watanabe
There are many people who are trying hard to improve their snowboarding because they want to become a professional snowboarder at a young age and want to be noticed as a snowboarder.On the other hand, you may be vaguely worried, "What if I couldn't become a professional snowboarder?" "If I became a professional snowboarder, how long would I be able to do the job?"
I think it's very good to be a professional snowboarder and to pursue your dreams.But is it really important?
If I couldn't become a professional, wouldn't I be able to enjoy snowboarding?
Kentaro Watanabe. A snowboarder who went abroad XNUMX years ago and became a professional while working as a coach for overseas ski resorts.After retiring from the line, he now runs a company that sells wood stoves in Shizuoka prefecture through trial and error.
What is Snowboarding, Lifestyle for Kentaro Watanabe, who works differently while separating professional snowboarders and taking time to face snowboarding as part of his life?
① Please tell us about Kentaro's career and movements when he was a professional snowboarder.
After working part-time for a year in the snowboard magazine Snowing, I went to New Zealand for the first time in 1993 with a working holiday visa.At that time, it happened that my English teacher was New Zealander and my brother Matthew was working at Edgewater Resort, so I went to Wanaka on the South Island for that reason.
Since 1996, I have been skiing at a ski resort called Cardrona while staying at the house of Peter and Liz, the owners of a shop called Mo-dean in Wanaka.
In that year, he was taken up by NHK as Japan's first snowboard patrol (Iwahara) and became a professional snowboarder in the 1996 Fine Cup (1997th place in the professional competition). Since 2002, he has been working as a halfpipe coach for Cadrona, winning New Zealand Nationals, New Zealand's biggest tournament at the time, and retiring as a professional snowboarder at the age of 28 in the spring of XNUMX.
(XNUMX) Have you ever decided to draw a line as a professional snowboarder?
It was when I retired from the front race due to a fracture of the clavicle at Sony PlayStation NIPPON OPEN Big Air in 1997.
③ After drawing a line, how did you decide to face snowboarding?
While I was snowboarding, I was able to make money, work, and time, so I was able to divide it into work, tourism, export, import, English conversation skills in New Zealand, and save money at a snowboard school in Japan to study and study in Australia and the United States. Decided to spend for.
④ Now, while running a company, I'm snowboarding with my son. What does Snowboarding mean to Kentaro?
I think snowboarding is all my career. I hardly snowboarded for XNUMX years from the time I retired from active duty at the age of XNUMX until I was XNUMX years old.
However, when my child was XNUMX years old, I taught snowboarding because I wanted my son to acquire some special skills and gain confidence, and I was completely immersed in the charm of snowboarding. The number of days greatly exceeds XNUMX days (laughs)
For me, snowboarding has changed from the fast-moving active era to something like walking while unraveling and biting again.
Business and snowboarding have some things in common.Thinking about how you can do what you can't do, overcoming it, reviewing it, getting into the habit, thinking about what you are good at and what you are not good at, and developing priorities.
The feeling of opening a business may be like a strangely sized World Series kicker, but I think it's like plunging into it, dreaming of an uplifting success and throwing it away.
Compared to the lives that were thrown away many times, the life-threatening of opening a business is not actually killed.I think that the desire to have a cooler life than anyone else is actually the same as when snowboarding and the driving force that springs from the roots.
I often think of replacing it with a snowboard when I'm having trouble with business.I think the answer to how to be more successful than everyone else is always simply having fun and walking the halfpipe.I think the reason I teach my true snowboarding is that I want to convey that experience to my kids.
I want my kids to enjoy snowboarding. Snowboarding is extremely suitable for absorbing the thoughts of various people around the world who want to live abroad after the age of XNUMX, and I am already lucky to be in an environment where I can teach it. I think it's a sign.
You don't have to be a professional or compete in competitions.Of course, that would be more fun for him, and it's better than that, but I think it will be necessary for us to have a different culture in ourselves in order to live in the future.It's both mentally and economically.So I think snowboarding is everything in my life for me and my family.
⑥ Do you have any advice for those who want to enjoy snowboarding while having a job and balancing?
First of all, create an environment where you can enjoy yourself.I don't think it's a problem if my parents snowboard, but if I only have one, I need to try to improve the software.Hot springs, meals, a little extravagant accommodation, warming up this area and going out for snowboarding on holidays are the most enjoyable days.
Then, if you hate children, you have neither a former nor a child, so if you set a goal and reach it, you will only be given the joy of improving with the strategy of reward.Actually, I think it's enough to have warm cocoa or something that doesn't have such a feeling that you can sit in the passenger seat.
As for work, I think it's best not to get injured.I don't have the sharpened feeling that I had when I was a player, so I think it's important to stop with a challenge that doesn't fall.
Involuntarily in front of young rider's children, I have a personality that I hate to lose, so I'm going to go crazy, but when I put out the rodeo XNUMX now, the risk is too big, let alone gain (laugh)
So I think it's enough to feel that you are pursuing astringency with B360 or B180.
⑦ Finally
I will visit you anywhere in JapanHaas + HaasPlease buy a wood stove at (laughs)
And I still support my snowboardingMatsumoto waxPresident Matsumoto Pro Shop BellsThank you, President Okumura!
Lastly, I would like to mention five points that I have been impressed by teaching snowboarding to children.
・ When you get on the lift together
・ When you can make a turn
・ When desperately following behind to overtake
・ When you notice that the turn looks like you when viewed from behind
・ When two people entered the rest house of the ski resort (Cardrona in my case) that was the base in the past.
I certainly think.Each person has their own way of enjoying and facing snowboarding, and it is important how long they can continue to enjoy snowboarding as a part of their lives.And it's great to continue snowboarding yourself and have your child experience various things while snowboarding someday.
In the same way, SBN pursues that the history of snowboarding will continue to be carved, more people will enjoy the fun of skiing on the snow, and snowboarding as one of the fun of Lifestyle will become more established. It was an interview that I felt I wanted to do.
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Interviewed and edited by
