Day 6
The day dawned as forecast without the howling gales and dumps of snow of yesterday. It was travel out day and our options were to go via the snow monkeys, cram in another four hours of skiing or make our way toward our next stop in Kyoto.
With the weather being absolutely perfect, we decided that we simply had to ski. Everyone except Sam was keen to get out there and having had a day off the day before, I made Sam come with us. We wanted to get up to the highest point that we could to get some photos given the inability on previous days to see too much. We'd headed up there on day one and nearly been blown off and that had scarred Emily's memories of the place such that by the time we made it to the top she wasn't interested in being there and Sam was giving us the 'I'm here under protest and I don't have to talk to you' treatment. Ah the joys of family holidays!
(I'm only skiing becauseyou made me!)
Sadly the cloud blew in whilst we were up there so we quickly skied back down and headed for the kids' favourite runs in and around the trees. A quick break and some ice cream (Some of the food options were interesting) cheered most of them up and we abandoned Sam inside for a while and had some more fun.
By the time that we collected Sam to head back to the hotel to leave his mood had improved and the fun of getting off the side of the runs and into the powder among the trees soon had everyone smiling. Thomas won the Greenie award for tree-hugging when he tried to stop, speared a tree with one ski (which popped off) and ended up cuddling the trunk. By the time I saw him he had one ski off, one buried to the bindings in the powder and he was sprawled everywhere.
We headed up for one final run, looking back wistfully over our shoulders at the gorgeous mountains, wondering when next we might be able to afford to fit some skiing into our lives.
A final pack and we sent all our ski gear off to be collected later at the airport (thanks for that awesome tip Kayleen!) and rode the bus back to Nagano. From there it was a three hour 'limited express train to Nagoya where we transferred to the Shinkansen for the final rail-based leg of the journey. A train that goes super-fast and serves beer? Yes please, I'll take one! Surely the most impressive thing on the train though was the button that automatically lowered the seat for you! Pity that there didn't seem to be anything but a manual mode of lifting.
The changing scenery throughout the journey wasn't bad either. Starting in Nagano and heading out through 'rural' Japan with small individual homes and plots of land with either orchards or snow-covered ground crops and gradually progressing through until at the end of the journey we were certainly in 'Modern Japan' - tall buildings and dense living. The mountains never really seemed all that far away and there were plenty of tunnels along the journey.
We arrived in Kyoto at about 8pm, checked into the hotel (The Kyoto Brighton - a rather swish affair I must say) and then finally thought about getting some dinner. We'd bought some random sushi and a pork cutlet sandwich along the way, but the connections were short enough that we hadn't really thought too much about dinner ... deferring it until we arrived in Kyoto.
By the time that we completed the check in, organised ourselves and were ready to go out in search of food, preferring to look for something local rather than bankrupt ourselves at the hotel restaurants. It would seem that within a short walking distance of our hotel that there weren't too many options at that time of a Saturday night. We found one place that Caroline seemed to think would be ok, but as no-one else was particularly keen on it we searched further. We found a number of shrines and lots of tiny little businesses, but sadly none of them were of the 'we provide yummy nourishing food' variety. That just left big hotels with big prices. With Caroline having pushed her knee to the limits skiing our walking pace and distance were significantly reduced from normal, we gave it up as a bust and retreated to a convenience store. 2 minute noodles, instant pasta (pasta soup to be precise) some strawberry jam and a loaf of bread was the answer. WEll, I say loaf of bread, but it was rather different from what we're used to. It consisted of about 8 slices, each approximately 2cm thick. It was like, I can't be bothered making a sandwich with two a piece of bread top and bottom, I'll just slice it less and have all the bread on the bottom! It certainly filled a hole.
The scratched-up dinner was consumed and the kids were content, but Caroline suggested that maybe some fries were in order to top off the day. I called dwon for room-service only to be greeted by a message that eventually got around to tell me that their services had finished for the night! What sort of big hotel has room service that finishes at 11pm on a Saturday night? I mean, the after hours menu is only on for 1 hour! Crazy.
I couldn't help but think that it was "Welcome to Kyoto, sorry we're closed."
We retired for the evening with a plan to see what we could come up with in the morning.
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