Day 166 in Japan - Hakuba Happone skiing

Today we had our last day of Hakuba skiing in Happo One (pronounced "Happ-oh Oh-nay") snow first runs of the morning. Absolutely beautiful wonderful snow for our first run. As we were reasonably early, we got to do the first runs on the roughly 30 cm of fresh overnight snow. It was so beautiful!

From the door of the drying room

Looking up the street on the way to the bus stop

Too much snow - ended up swimming in snow three times. Once was a real epic fail - I tried to go down about a 25 m drop of deep snow, and got bogged about 3 metres in. 3 very vertical metres, so going back up wasn't an option. Instead, I had to wade through about 20 metres of snow that was at times up to my neck. I was so angry by the time I got out of the bottom.

I trekked through Siberia to get these photos, but they are proof I did the Olympic run.

Haters Gonna Hate (thigh deep snow)

The boys also decided to take on a challenge in our last few runs. There was a little jump mound in front of a big patch of fresh snow, which they decided was the perfect launch pad and landing spot. I decided that my skills were better matched to filming them make the jump, but it was pretty amusing watching them soar up in the air, and then hit the ground like sacks of dirt.

By end of day, legs were wobbly and tired, and I actually got pretty cold for the first time skiing this trip. I was sad that the trip was over, but I think that my body was happy for a bit of a rest.

We went to visit the onsen again for another lovely night of soaking our aches away, sitting outside in the open air bath and getting uncomfortable hot, then rolling in the snow, and meeting new friends We had an Indian Feast to celebrate the end of our skiing trip, but a relatively early and well-behaved night.

Food Highlight of the Day: Overpriced but tasty curry.

Day 165 in Japan - Tsugaike skiing

Sadly, after doing his knee a bit yesterday, Simon sat out again today. I think he made a good call, because it was a harder day of skiing today. We had a lot of snow last night, which continued to fall today, which made for absolutely beautiful snow, but really poor visibility, and some really deep snow drifts to navigate. Jodie ad Fiona joined us again today, and it was nice to have the girls around, even if we did split off from them to head higher up the slopes fairly early.

Tsugaike was an awkward resort to navigate - it was a lot bigger than Iwatake, but we had to do lots of awkward traversing to get across to try various slopes. Would have been a nice place to find a good spot on the mountain and stick to for a few hours, but I think we must have skied on about 70-80% of the slopes all up - I don't know if we repeated anything more than a few times.

One odd thing we saw today was the KFC Colonel riding on the gondola. We thought it was odd enough when we saw a KFC on the snow - it's odd in Australia to see a major fast food chain on snow. But then we were riding the gondola up the mountain and spotted the colonel riding his own sled strung up on the gondola line, riding up and down the mountain. Weird advertising. But we did eat KFC for lunch, so maybe it worked?

After today's skiing, we decided we needed to go to the onsen to soak away some of our aches. It was so, so beautiful - they had an outdoor bath, and we sat in the hot water with snow falling al around us looking up into the night sky. We even went for a quick roll in the freshly fallen snow, and threw some snowballs over the wall into the boys side of the onsen, along with our new friend from Cairns (Linda). It was really wonderfully relaxing, so relaxing that I was pretty much walking home asleep. No photos of this bit, of course.

Food Highlight of the Day: Catching snowflakes on my tongue in the open air onsen. Absolutely as lame as it sounds, but also just as fun.

Day 164 in Japan - Iwatake skiing

Another beautiful day of skiing today, but this time at a ski resort called Iwatake.

Breakfast was a bit more organised, and we all got bacon as well this morning. We split up today so that Jodie and Fiona could go to another ski lesson at Goryu, and I headed off with the boys to Iwatake. The snow was quite nice, and we had some brilliant warm up runs on some empty beginners slopes up the top of the mountain to practise technique for a little while. Unfortunately, Simon did his knee on one of these runs, so he had to have a bit of a sit down before lunch. And then after lunch. I think it hurt a lot. Luckily, he's a sports physio, so if anyone knew what to do to help it recover well, it was Simon.

The rest of us had a really nice day of skiing - I skied on my first powder ever! We braved the wind and the bits of snow beginning to fall and went right up to the highest lift. Overall, Iwatake was quite nice for getting away from the crowds a little, and the snow was lovely to match. A bit smaller than Goryu/47, but I probably enjoyed myself a little more today on the snow.

For dinner we walked to another backpackers pub for a pizza night which turned out to have been changed. Instead we got pies with pastry, which were OK, but it was a LONG WALK in icy roads for pies.

Food Highlight of the Day: Kahlua and milk. Jodie re-introduced me to it - it was so delicious!

Day 163 in Japan - Hakuba Goryu skiing

This morning, we got up nice and early to cook breakfast in the backpackers before heading out to the snow. We arrived about an hour before the first-timers started their lessons, so we decided to give them the quick "How to put your skis on and move" schtick. Everyone got the idea easily, so Rob and Shane (Simon's NZ friend who we met last night) and I left for the higher slopes. Venturing up to the top of the mountain was lovely - we were rewarded with a lovely view, and a wonderful morning of skiing.

Up the top of Goryuu, we discovered that we could actually ski all the way to Hakuba 47, which we had thought was a totally separate ski resort. But it turns out that they are linked quite nicely at the top. The main difference seemed to be that Hakuba 47 was decently signposted, where we could barely tell which way we were supposed to be going in Goryu.

After we met up with the others for lunch (and bought the last fries remaining in the ski resort, much to the disgust of the other customers waiting in line behind us), Simon and Carl decided to join us up higher on the mountain for the atfernoon. Our first mission was to climb to the highest point on the mountain, so we kicked off our skis and crawled in the deep snow on all fours. Simon actually had a wonderful monkey-style climbing thing, but I just slogged it out, and used my solid ski boots to kick my way up the hill. It was worth it - we sat up the top and watched the clouds roll in and then roll out to reveal the beautiful Hakuba township in the valley below. Ahhhh, Japan!

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of skiing around the beautiful mountain, catching the bus back to the hotel, having a lazy hostel pub dinner and playing pool before collpasing into bed. More details on everyone's skiing tomorrow.

Food Highlight of the Day: Fish and chips - wedges with chicken salt - the Australian way.

Day 162 in Japan - Goodbye Tokyo/Edo, Hello Hakuba/Nagano

On the 2nd of Jan, it was the day for us to head to the mountains in preparation for skiing. But the bus didn't leave until 3:30, giving us a half day spare to enjoy the last of our time in Tokyo. We debated going to the imperial palace for the once-a-year opening of the inner grounds and public appearance of the emperor, but the thought of the massive crowds put us off. So instead we visited the Tokyo-Edo museum near Asakusa. We dropped our bags at Shinjuku station, had Dotour for breakfast (third day in a row for the boys), and then caught the subway again.

The museum was a lovely way to spend a few hours. I learned a lot about life in the city of Edo,  from the ruling of the city by the fubako to the censorship and prostitution, shipping routes and the introduction of printed newspapers. There were tons of awesome little models to illustrate snapshots of life in Edo, and lots of fun hands-on displays. Jodie and Fiona and I apparently took a lot longer to took around than the boys, so we cut the tour of the most recent parts (immediately pre and post war) and headed back to catch our bus. 

The bus trip itself was around 5 hours, and we got some really spectacular views of a snow-covered Fuji about an hour or so into the trip. Nothing really eventful happened, particularly after it was dark outside. As we got closer to Hakuba, we started to see bits, then lots, then huge mounds of snow alongside the road. We had a quick snowball fight while waiting for the taxi when we got off the bus, and got into the hostel about 8:30. The guy behind the counter, Dave, is from Cairns, and very nicely let us sort out all of our ski gear tonight so that we could get going nice and early tomorrow. By the time we were done, it was past 10, and we were starving. We walked just around the corner on the slippery ice to the closest izakaya and got some food and beers before heading to bed, absolutely buggered, about 12.

A sign in a bus stop toilet. So THAT'S what I've been doing wrong.

Food Highlight of the Day: Apple and chilli flavoured Kit Kats. Not both together - There were apple flavored kit Kats and chilli flavored kit Kats. Apple was decent but not great.  The chilli ones just used chilli flavored dark chocolate for the outsides, which was ok but nit really delicious. 

Day 161 in Japan - Akemashite Omedettou Gozaimasu!

We had a nice, cruisey day today. We woke up at about 11 and it was after 12 by the time we were ready to head out of the capsule hotel to start the day. We wandered for a bit tying to find some breakfast before we gave up and just caught the subway into Shinjuku, figuring that at least something would be open there. It was, and Jodes, Fiona and I had a lovely breakfast of pastries, sandwiches and coffee. We met up with the boys who had had a slightly later night, due to foolishly deciding to walk back to the hotel insead of catching a taxi, and then started our touristy thing. 

The traditional thing to do on New Years day in Japan is to go to one of the big temples and ring the bell, pay some money, get your fortune and do all that you can do to generate yourself sme good fortune for the year ahead. We saw plenty of people wandering around with Hamaya, arrows that you can buy at the beginning of the year for good fortune, and we decided to at least visit the Temple district in Tokyo - Asakusa. We had a small detour on the subway, and ended up going the wrong way for about 20 mins, so the trip ended up being reasonably lengthy. Long enough for Rob and Simon to fall asleep, at least. 

In Asakusa, it was just as crowded as the guide books had led us to believe, and we were definitely not keen on joining the roughly kilometer-long queue to ring the temple bell at Sensoji temple. We walked alongside the queue to find he temple itself, see he little festival stalls and get our fortunes (mine is number 42 Normal Fortune - nothing brilliant, but Apparently I am fine to go on holiday, build a house, recover from illness and have my wish come true).

We decided to escape the crowds, and walked back down to the river to see the big Asahi building that looks like a beer and catch the water bus down to Odaiba. The ferry between Asakusa and the garden-y midpoint was pretty average, but he view one we got down to the bay was brilliant. We could see the Rainbow bridge all lit up, Tokyo Tower displaying it's 2011 sign, and all of the usual twinkly lights or Tokyo. 

This will be the Tokyo Sky Tree.

Once on Odaiba, we saw Joypolis, did a bit of shop wandering (and learned about the adult lucky dips that shops here do on New Years), then all hit the tired wall. We headed back to the hostel (via an Indian joint for dinner), and had a quiet and pretty early night. I spent a bit o time showing Jodes and Simon how to start crocheting a granny square and was in bed by 10:30 like a proper granny. 

Food Highlight of the Day: Lamb Curry.