WELCOME TO SNOW SPORTS JAPAN

Snowboarding is a sport that involves descending a slope that is either partially or fully covered with snow on a snowboard attached to a rider's feet using a special boot set into a mounted binding. The development of snowboarding was inspired by skateboarding, surfing and skiing. It was developed in the United States in the 1960s and the 1970s and became a Winter Olympic Sport in 1998.

Many crude versions of the snowboard were made up to 100 years before the first commercially manufactured model, but it is believed that the first snowboard was invented and manufactured in Utah beginning in the early 1970s. This claim was commemorated in 2007 by the United States mint when a snowboard theme was among the three semi-final designs of the Utah state quarter.

There are also claims that the first snowboard was the Snurfer (a portmanteau of snow and surfer), originally designed by Sherman Poppen for his daughter in 1965 in Muskegon, Michigan. Poppen’s Snurfer started to be manufactured as a toy the following year. It was essentially a skateboard without wheels, steered by a hand-held rope, and lacked bindings, but had provisions to cause footwear to adhere. During the 1970s and 1980s as snowboarding became more popular, pioneers such as Dimitrije Milovich, Sonny Sini, Jake Burton Carpenter (founder of Burton Snowboards from Londonderry, Vermont), Tom Sims (founder of Sims Snowboards) and Mike Olson (founder of Gnu Snowboards) came up with new designs for boards and mechanisms that slowly developed into the snowboards and other related equipment that we know today.