Nagano Hakuba dai ski-des!

We're back and i can barely walk up or down stairs, i'm in so much pain. But it was fantastic: the powder snow (now i know what all the fuss is about for snowboarders who yearn for a fresh overnight snowfall!), the soothing onsen (hot spring) baths each night, the delicious food, everything!

We arrived at YK and Tomoe's new apartment, a cute place they rented from Tomoe's friend. Apparently the friend's husband is super obsessed with audio/visual equipment and their living room had a projector, a huge television, absolutely enormous speakers, track lights, the works! We brought them some homemade hummus in our leak-proof container as a house-warming present. Their furniture and other belongings were due to arrive in a week or so by ship ... apparently YK packed some bottles of Boddington's, his all-time favourite beer, into the shipment too as they are incredibly expensive to get in Japan.

After a yummy okonomiyaki dinner in a local restaurant (see pic) we headed off to Hakuba in our rental car, a 3+ hour drive. Even though we were told we should have snow chains, we made it up with no problems. Arriving at the hotel at 3am, we had to wake up the poor security guard to give us our room key. Excited at having arrived, but exhausted, we set our alarms for 6:30am in order to ensure an early start on the slopes.

All in all, it was a grand weekend. I can still count on one hand the number of times i've been snowboarding, but after the initial fear of speeding down a steep hill whilst standing on a thin board, it's not so bad. The first day i had a couple of major wipeouts, turning 2 or 3 times over, landing usually headfirst in a snowbank. Lucky i spent most of my time in soft powder or it would have really hurt. Soaking in the onsen afterwards was what i looked forward to most, and i was never disappointed.

On our last night we had hot pot and udon noodles in our room (see pic), and washed it all down with enough beer cans to create a mini tower. After a few rounds of Uno, we drifted off to sleep on our tatami mats.

The next day we made the drive back to Tokyo. To help pass time, we sang along to ABBA and I practiced my Katakana (the Japanese 'alphabet'). Matt taught me on our first day and i was attempting to read, albeit very slowly, words on billboards, magazines, restaurants, etc. I was so excited at the thrill of learning a new language and having the world of words open up to me, even if it took me forever to make sense of a single character.

Once in Tokyo, we stopped by a curry shop YK and Tomoe both used to frequent in Chiba. Unfortunately they weren't opened yet and the owners said they were due to be closing shop in a few days!

No matter, we took a jar of their famous curry back with us and after a hot 'n steamy lunch of ramen (see Matt inhaling his noodles with sun blazing in), we were on our plane back to HK again.

Arrigato gozaimasu!