SKI HEIL IN TOKYO

Most Japanese had never heard of the sport called skiing until 1902, when 200 Nipponese soldiers were lost in winter maneuvers on the snow-covered slopes of Mount Hakkota, and the Japanese Minister to Sweden rushed a shipment of Swedish skiing equipment back to his native land for rescue work. In the succeeding decades, the Japanese began to get the hang of the herringbone climb and the Christiania turn, and skiing became one of Japan's top winter sports. Last week, Japan's skiers staged a big two-day national ski meet. The ski-happy Japanese hauled 50 freight cars full of fresh snow out of chilly northern Niigata and, as shown here, heaped it atop a huge ski jump in balmy Tokyo's Korakuen stadium. The Transportation Ministry and a local newspaper, which sponsored the meet and paid for the snow, lost only 959,950 yen ($2,667) on the event.

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