"I gave up everything to live there," says Shane Peel about his home in Japan. "I was living on a perfect tropical island with pumping reef breaks back and front...the whole resort thing. But I left all that and went to Hokkaido."

Originally from the Sunshine Coast, Shane is the co-founder of Telos Island Lodge. Surrounded by perfect waves it appeared he had it made in the palm-fringed shade, but the world's best powder and a nascent snowboarding movement convinced him to pick up a camera and move to Japan. The movement - snowsurf, which is also the title of his film - has many parallels with surf culture.

Swellnet: What you're documenting is a relatively new movement in the mountains, is that correct?
Shane Peel: Yeah, it's relatively new to the mainstream, but it's been going for a very long time, I'd say it's been happening for the last 15 years.

Who's spearheading the movement?
A guy called Taro Tamai. He's a surfer and snowboarder, but specifically a snowboard shaper and designer. He's based in Niseko in Hokkaido.

What are snowsurf's defining attributes?
It's a style of snowboarding that's based around natural terrain and it has a huge surf influence. It's basically surf style on snow. So the boards are completely different to regular twin tip snowboards and the style of riding is completely different. It's had a very Japanese aesthetic applied to it. I'm not sure if you’re aware but Japanese people tend to pick a single thing and focus intently on perfecting it. So it's just by natural selection they've created a style of snowboarding that focuses on the turn and not the jump.

Sounds like a style that lends itself to older guys.
Exactly. Snowboarding is not like surfing, it's only just starting to enter its third generation now. It's like a whole generation behind surfing. What's happening in snowboarding is kinda like what happened in surfing when all of a sudden it became OK to ride a longboard or a fish. Snowboarders who want to snowboard forever kind of have no choice but to adopt snowsurf. Guys like Gerry Lopez. Gerry came to Hokkaido on his own dime to get involved in this and to ride these boards 'cos he believes that it's a significant change to design and to the direction of snowboarding.

I recently had a conversation with Michael Mackie and he drew some pretty sharp analogies with what is happening in snowboarding now with what happened in surfing a few years ago: a recognition and a revisiting of past designs.
Yeah, Mackie is neck deep in it. He's been up there, he's got the boards. His sidecut fish is taken directly from Taro's snowboard outlines. There's a gigantic exchange of design philosophies going on. Like, not last year, not last month, but right now. 

Interesting that a bunch of older guys are at the vanguard of a movement.
Remember when Nat and all those guys reinvigorated the longboard scene in the 80s? Well it's similar to that but now the young guys are getting into it. All of a sudden guys who wouldn’t have considered that style of riding, who were all about the 60 foot kicker, Alaskan back country, blah blah blah...now they're going 'hang on, this is outrageously good fun'. Same as when regular surfers started riding fishes here in Australia and America. That same discovery of functionality within a retro-based movement is what's happening. And now all of a sudden the mainstream snowboard labels have these surf style shapes in their range. That's being driven by demand.

Why Japan? Why did it start there?
It's simple, the reason it's happening in this particular part of the world is because they get the best powder snow on the planet.

Some of the powder scenes from the movie are quite amazing.
Oh dude....[Peely's voice drops an octave and gets intense]I bought a house there. I moved there. I gave up everything to live there. I was living on a perfect tropical island with pumping reef breaks back and front, speedboats, the whole resort thing. But I left all that and went to Hokkaido.

Tell us more about Taro Tamai.
So...Taro-san is a classic Japanese person in every sense of that description, but he's also very progressive. What he's chosen to do is at odds with Japanese society in general. Japanese society is very conformist, they lock into their job and they get on the train every day to go to work. But Taro and all the people who subscribe to this movement have chosen a very alternative lifestyle. They live in rural Japan, they all eat really well, they all live very, very pared down versions of normal Japanese life. In the process they've become more in touch with traditional Japanese values.

Taro is a fantastic surfer, a fantastic snowboarder, he's heavily influence by jazz and by different artists. He only makes 1,800 of this boards a year and people order them years ahead to get one. They're not like normal snowboards where the new season comes around and people go, 'Wow I've got to get the new season snowboard'. These are boards that are timeless. I saw one the other day, it was 10 years old but still utterly valid, the same way a really good longboard or a really solid resin tinted 6 ounce glass job is still valid. They're not disposable items at all.

It seems that rather than being a straight sport film, what you're documenting a bit of a social movement too?
To an extent. It's my first film and when I set out I had very, very ambitious targets. I was going to make an in depth documentary, but in the end the fun aspect of it just shone through and I couldn't contain it. So it ended up being a movie with 14 sections and 14 great songs and a narrated story that lays over the top of it. So it's not a classic snowboard film insomuch as it's got a whole lot of banging parts to music, and it's not a classic documentary in that it goes hideously deep into a subject. I'd say it's a cross between the two.

One other thing though: we completely wrote and recorded the soundtrack to the movie as well.

Sounds like you've got a whole Morning Of The Earth thing going.
Absolutely! You should hear some of the songs Jeff Leonard and Beau Young have written specifically for the movie. We recorded it all at Music Farm Studios up at Byron. Beau is going be playing live up at the Byron show which is at the Patagonia store. It's gonna be a banger of a show.

(All photos except Taro Tamai Snowsurf range courtesy of Katsuhide Fujio)

Snowsurf is premiering in Australia this week:
23rd September, Patagonia Sydney store 6pm
25th September, Patagonia Torquay store 6pm
26th Café Byron 6pm (Shop1/ 58 Jonson St, Byron Bay)
Visit Patagonia's events page on Facebook for details

Later this year the film will be available as video on demand. Swellnet will have further details.