Playing in the snow and other simple pleasures...
Last week my friend Craig & I headed off to Hokkaido for a little snowboarding and skiing. Unlike our trip to Mt. Fuji there weren't any real hitches in our departure. We met up at Itami airport in Osaka as scheduled (Craig got there a few hours early just to be safe) caught our plane with no problems. After landing in Sapporo we found a lady directing our 'tour group' and she told us where to meet to catch our bus to the resort. Anytime you buy a package trip in Japan you are officially joining a tour. This doesn't mean that there will be guides or anything else organized like that but it does mean they'll do their best to make sure you catch all your connections.
The Rusutsu Resort in snowy Hokkaido
I was a little shellshocked when I first reached the resort. It was huge! The building we were in had two large wings that were jammed full of restaurants, shops, animatronic bands, carousels, antique cars, etc. It was like a really big Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Not to mention the other buildings that were all connected via a monorail.
Most of the new cars in Japan are right hand drive.
I won't eat one but I'll still ride one.
carneys everywhere, I set you free!
After being led to our room by a bellhop we went for a little walk around the buildings to find a) the all you can eat restaurants, b) the ski lockers, c) our equipment rental shop, d) the heated wave pool and e) a comfy bar. It was in this oh so comfy bar that a strange encounter happened. Craig and I were both in full Japanese mode when it came to conversing with the hotel staff so we were momentarily stunned when a young Japanese waiter began speaking to us in extra-strength Australian English. Not quite knowing what to do I continued to speak Japanese for a little while until I realized he wasn't Japanese at all. He told us that while his mother was Japanese he had grown up in Melbourne and was just here for a working holiday. It was his first night working there and apparently he got scolded a little by the other staff for not bowing to us when he served our beers and for not coming back to pour the remainders of our beers into our glasses quickly enough. His name was Yosuke and he chatted with us for a short while.
We were hoping to have had dinner in the 'Viking' all you can restaurant but it was far more expensive than we had thought. 4500 yen was a little steep, especially for a veggie like me who would probably be hovering around the spaghetti and salad dishes most of the time.
On our first free day we hit the slopes for a little snowboarding. In fact I hit the slopes quite often and sometimes with a lot of force. Good thing I'm packing a big backyard. It was my first time snowboarding and it is quite difficult to get a hang of. I was able to stand up on my own and was able to cross the slopes facing in either direction. Sometimes I was even able to make the small turns that would allow me to cut back across the course but more often than not I fell down and had to twist my board around in mid-air while I was sitting in the white powdery stuff. Craig is a pretty good snowboarder so he would often go down the first quarter of a run with me and then speed off on his own. He was able to go down, take the lift back up and catch up with me before I had gotten to the bottom. Anticipating the amount of time I'd be submerged in the snow I didn't take my camera with me this day so there is, luckily, no photographic evidence of my 'learning curve' that curved straight down.
The next day I opted for skis. It would be a little less frustrating and painful for me, and Craig & I would be able to try some more challenging runs. I'd forgotten to mention earlier that there were hundreds of school kids on the runs with us. They were obviously on school trips and were taking lessons throughout the day. Hundreds of kids all wearing the exact same snow suits and filling up the cafeterias at lunch time. It was a little disappointing for us when the cafs would be sold out of half their food by 12 noon.
It was such a relief to be back on skis after the snowboard debacle. We went on lots and lots of runs and found some nice deep powder. This time it was my turn to laugh at Craig as he was the one doing all the wiping out on the 2nd day. It was great fun.
2 of the shorter runs.
Craig imagines he's touching his nose with his tongue.
Whereas I'm always styling. Is my nose really that big? Really?
After skiing things generally deteriorated into a nerd party. We both brought our laptops with us and we hooked them up and played a head to head game called Unreal Tournament 2004. But it was all Craig's idea. I didn't want to lug my PC all the way up there. I especially didn't want to pack the LAN cable required for head-to-head gaming. Craig made me do it.
Unfortunately we only had 2 full days of skiing before we had to head back. It was probably good that we came back when we did though as it was snowing very hard when we left and many of the flights out of Sapporo were cancelled. Craig and I both had work the next day so we couldn't stay another night. Luckily, we were flying a magically enchanted, +4 vs cold Pokemon airplane that whisked us home with no problems.
This plane did everything but transform into a fighting robot. But we were only on it for a few hours so maybe it could.
In the end I learned that fighting never solves anything, money and the new Sony PSP are the roots of all evil, and snowboarding really sucks big time. But I'll try it again sometime. Maybe Yukiko can take a lesson sometime as she has never tried it. But now I've got to focus all my ki on Okinawa and diving. Yah, holidays are great.
strange blog spellchecker recommendations:
carousels - chrysalis
monorail - manorial
Pokemon - bogeyman
soundtrack - counteract
The Rusutsu Resort in snowy HokkaidoI was a little shellshocked when I first reached the resort. It was huge! The building we were in had two large wings that were jammed full of restaurants, shops, animatronic bands, carousels, antique cars, etc. It was like a really big Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Not to mention the other buildings that were all connected via a monorail.
Most of the new cars in Japan are right hand drive.
I won't eat one but I'll still ride one.
carneys everywhere, I set you free!After being led to our room by a bellhop we went for a little walk around the buildings to find a) the all you can eat restaurants, b) the ski lockers, c) our equipment rental shop, d) the heated wave pool and e) a comfy bar. It was in this oh so comfy bar that a strange encounter happened. Craig and I were both in full Japanese mode when it came to conversing with the hotel staff so we were momentarily stunned when a young Japanese waiter began speaking to us in extra-strength Australian English. Not quite knowing what to do I continued to speak Japanese for a little while until I realized he wasn't Japanese at all. He told us that while his mother was Japanese he had grown up in Melbourne and was just here for a working holiday. It was his first night working there and apparently he got scolded a little by the other staff for not bowing to us when he served our beers and for not coming back to pour the remainders of our beers into our glasses quickly enough. His name was Yosuke and he chatted with us for a short while.
We were hoping to have had dinner in the 'Viking' all you can restaurant but it was far more expensive than we had thought. 4500 yen was a little steep, especially for a veggie like me who would probably be hovering around the spaghetti and salad dishes most of the time.
On our first free day we hit the slopes for a little snowboarding. In fact I hit the slopes quite often and sometimes with a lot of force. Good thing I'm packing a big backyard. It was my first time snowboarding and it is quite difficult to get a hang of. I was able to stand up on my own and was able to cross the slopes facing in either direction. Sometimes I was even able to make the small turns that would allow me to cut back across the course but more often than not I fell down and had to twist my board around in mid-air while I was sitting in the white powdery stuff. Craig is a pretty good snowboarder so he would often go down the first quarter of a run with me and then speed off on his own. He was able to go down, take the lift back up and catch up with me before I had gotten to the bottom. Anticipating the amount of time I'd be submerged in the snow I didn't take my camera with me this day so there is, luckily, no photographic evidence of my 'learning curve' that curved straight down.
The next day I opted for skis. It would be a little less frustrating and painful for me, and Craig & I would be able to try some more challenging runs. I'd forgotten to mention earlier that there were hundreds of school kids on the runs with us. They were obviously on school trips and were taking lessons throughout the day. Hundreds of kids all wearing the exact same snow suits and filling up the cafeterias at lunch time. It was a little disappointing for us when the cafs would be sold out of half their food by 12 noon.
It was such a relief to be back on skis after the snowboard debacle. We went on lots and lots of runs and found some nice deep powder. This time it was my turn to laugh at Craig as he was the one doing all the wiping out on the 2nd day. It was great fun.
2 of the shorter runs.
Craig imagines he's touching his nose with his tongue.
Whereas I'm always styling. Is my nose really that big? Really?After skiing things generally deteriorated into a nerd party. We both brought our laptops with us and we hooked them up and played a head to head game called Unreal Tournament 2004. But it was all Craig's idea. I didn't want to lug my PC all the way up there. I especially didn't want to pack the LAN cable required for head-to-head gaming. Craig made me do it.
Unfortunately we only had 2 full days of skiing before we had to head back. It was probably good that we came back when we did though as it was snowing very hard when we left and many of the flights out of Sapporo were cancelled. Craig and I both had work the next day so we couldn't stay another night. Luckily, we were flying a magically enchanted, +4 vs cold Pokemon airplane that whisked us home with no problems.
This plane did everything but transform into a fighting robot. But we were only on it for a few hours so maybe it could.In the end I learned that fighting never solves anything, money and the new Sony PSP are the roots of all evil, and snowboarding really sucks big time. But I'll try it again sometime. Maybe Yukiko can take a lesson sometime as she has never tried it. But now I've got to focus all my ki on Okinawa and diving. Yah, holidays are great.
strange blog spellchecker recommendations:
carousels - chrysalis
monorail - manorial
Pokemon - bogeyman
soundtrack - counteract
posted by Jason at 1:30 PM
1 Comments:
Snowboarding is fun. I am +1 novice though. Don't they say that if you go faster you get more stable? I am scared of more, more, more speed!
UT laptops. "Let's rock!" "You suck" "Nice!" And you were playing on the Pikachu airplane. Excellent, except were you able to purchase a Pokemon-themed Nintendo Gameboy?
Have fun!
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