Jack and I got up super-early on the Saturday morning to get the 5:30 (!!) train to get to Shinjuku for 7am but we were confident that it would be worth it for some Japanese skiing action. Any train at that time on a Saturday in the UK would surely be quite quiet with unfortunate souls that work ungodly hours or people on the less-attractive side of the night before. Not in Japan. The train was rammed with either young people and their snowboards, or chirpy middle-aged and older passengers all tooled-up for a day's hiking.
Each of them was more smug than the last
We arrived in good time and after navigating through the hoards of Japanese students and twentysomethings all ready for a day's slope action, Kaori located our coach and we settled back for our 5 hour jaunt along the Japanese highways. After a couple of hours, we stopped at a motorway services, Jack and I were pretty excited (I'm sad to say) to see what the place had to offer - see below.
It as like a rubber/fish disc with edamame inside it, an interesting prospect but pretty grim for a coach journey
To Jack's disappointment, there were no Ginster's pies or any kind of sausage rolls, but there were these things which were like soft, rubbery prawn-crackers with sesame seeds and edamame. Jack also had an interesting octopus thing on a stick!
Our delightful coach...
The guys behind us had clearly got up at the crack of dawn too...
This was our awesome accomodation...
Yes, it does look a bit like something from The Shining!
Jack limbering up
you can't teach style like that
Mark, Kaori and Jack geared-up and ready to go
you're either born with it or you're not
I pretty much owned the hill by the end of the first day
Mark took a nice tumble on his snowboard, hitting his left eye. What he hoped would come up as a nice shiner, only coloured as a couple of black lines like some thickly applied eyeliner. However hard his pose it, it was the gayest black eye ever!
Dinner time - Jack gave us all (priceless) commemorative ET necklaces
Dinner was nabe - a large pot with stock in, then they brought over a large plate with raw pork, dumplings, vegetables and tofu which we cooked in the pot, which we had with rice. It was really good wholesome stuff.
Day 2: enjoying the lift ride
Jack and Mark hired ski-bikes - it was second-nature to Jack after his youth of mountain-biking and he was bombing it down the slopes.
These things were so awesome, best discovery of the weekend behind my skiing ability
PLAYAZ
I took on a blue run prematurely and over-turned and clipped out of my skis and couldn't get the blighters back on so had to walk down to a flatter part. I felt a little unsteady and couldn't understand why, and then the boys told me to look down...
They're really keen on their snowboarding in Japan, even wearing little dinosaur suits to do it!
After our final run, we hit the pancake hut before taking our skis back and getting the coach. This was their 'special' - ice-cream, bananas, strawberries, chocolate sauce and cream - beautifully modelled by Kaori...
Japan is awesome. FACT>
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