The Tembys Take Japan - Day 10

The weather lived up to expectations today. It started out with a bit of doubt about it, but as it went on it continued to improve and we found plenty of sunshine to ski in.

With the promise of a great day ahead of us, we mobilised all 6 out onto the mountain and set off in pursuit of fun with the only cloud being the state of Caroline’s knee and what she would be able to manage. Thomas and I had scouted out the right place, but weren’t entirely sure about getting there without demanding too much from the knee. 

We got to the top of the first lift and were faced with the choice of going up another one or skiing back down so that Caroline would be able to make a decision about the knee’s status. She opted to go higher. By the time that we’d worked our way back down to the bottom of the mountain she had decided that continuing to ski on it would not be wise. Emily announced that her legs were also hurting and so said that she'd keep her mother happy in the hotel while the boys and I went skiing.

With the weather being as nice as it was we decided to go as high as we could immediately before making our way across to the other side of the mountain. Turns out that the weather at the top wasn’t quite as friendly as it was lower down, with a vicious wind blowing. It was enough to warrant a short stop in at the café for a hot chocolate while we watched the nutters head down the men’s downhill run that looked bad enough through the window that there was no chance that I was about to give it a go. Michael was of course keen, but I executed the old man’s right to veto. We went down the intermediate run instead. I mean black and groomed I’m okay with but you can stick your moguls up your jumper.

One of the things about skiing with teenage boys is that they push you and prod you and want you doing things that sometimes you just have to say no to. When you add that to a wearable device that measures how fast you go, you seem to find yourself pointing your skis straight down the mountain in a tuck just to see if you can pip the previous fastest speed. There was a bit of that over the course of the afternoon, but I never topped the 88km/hr that I achieved late in our stay at Shiga Kogen. And I have to say when I hit that speed it was getting pretty close to some poo-packing with how bouncy things were down the run and the thought of what might happen to my old brittle bones if I became unstuck! 

With flat out speed taken back out of the equation, we headed to where Sam could do some jumps. It wasn’t as much fun as we had at Ichinose and once again they boys were egging me on. It was flat enough that Michael and Thomas created their own challenge, planting one ski each at the bottom of the run and then skiing back down on just the other. I mean they even went over the small jump like it. 

I even gave the jump a go. And I have to say that there is nothing more demoralising than feeling like you’re getting some decent air, and actually partaking in the fun with your teenage boys and then seeing the video played back; the video that reveals a flight so short that the Wright brothers probably would have stricken it from their records. A flight so high that an emu wouldn’t claim it. A jump so sad and pitiful that the only thing that one can do is immortalise it here to secure one’s embarrassment for all eternity. But I had a go.

After the day’s skiing everyone actually seemed to be in a pretty good mood. So good that I insisted on mandatory happy hour if for no other reason than to have some company while I worked my way toward the back end of the bottle of Appleton that I had been drinking.

We added some games to it and spent a good hour or so having some wholesome family fun before heading out to dinner. We found a nice local restaurant and Michael was the instigating of a couple of rounds of sake. Emily somehow managed to talk her mother into letting her have the steak dinner and was happy as a pig in the proverbial.

Of course it wouldn’t have been a stroll through town without continuing the search for an ever-more impressive icicle and its fair to say that Thomas managed to crown himself king of that particular game!

It was a great end to our skiing before we had to head to Tokyo again for a last couple of days in Japan. I think its fair to say that there were mixed feelings about it given the state of Caroline’s knee, but I for one am ecstatic about having been able to get some skiing in again.

The Temby's Take Japan - Day 9

Only Sam, Thomas and I opted to ski on the first day with fatigue, knees and sickness taking Emily, Caroline and Michael out of the action. The conditions were, like the first day in Shiga Kogen, challenging. It wasn’t the powder this time so much as visibility and wind. We persisted for a couple of hours before calling an early halt to go and seek lunch. We met up with Caroline and Emily (Michael still wasn’t feeling well and we know it wasn’t the vodka because he’s made a pitiful effort at emptying the bottle that we bought to drink). We strolled around Hakuba looking for somewhere to eat and came to the conclusion that most of the eateries must have been concentrated where most of the people were at lunch time: on the mountain. We did find a nice little local place though and had a relaxed lunch. Sam opted not to ski for the second half of the day so Thomas and I set off to explore the rest of the mountain so that we would have a better idea of what we’d like to ski the following day.

It was fun skiing the afternoon away with Thomas, though we were mostly focussed on finding the right place rather than spending a lot of time actually skiing just for the fun of it. Of course the best spot that we found was right across the other side of the ski area and required a number of lifts up and runs back down to navigate between there and where we had started from. Knowing this we left in what we considered good time to make it back again as lift closures were staggered and so we couldn’t be sure exactly when each one would stop operating. 

We caught a long chair up that we thought would only require one more beyond it before a long ski down only to find that the second lift was closed. It was a little disheartening, but we knew that the worst result would be that we’d end up back at the bottom and have to go for a long walk back to our hotel or if it came to it, catch a cab (which was at least an option we’d have in Hakuba compared with Shiga Kogen). Fortunately we managed to weave our way back across the mountain and make it home before the closest lift to our hotel closed and could even have managed an extra run. We decided against it though. Our legs were pretty tired and conditions weren’t exactly begging us to keep going, so we called it quits. I mean, the conditions were such that this is the only photo that I bothered to take throughout the entire day:

We decided to try dinner at our hotel and were taken through to a very Japanese area for seating. Fortunately although seated close to the floor, there was a depression under the table so that we could sit rather than have to attempt to do it on the floor (which tends to be somewhat impossible for this inflexible old bastard). The menu was a mix of Japanese and Western food and a number of us opted for the hamburger for a break in cuisine. We’d found a convenience store open when we were wandering about looking for lunch and agreed that it would be a good place to pick up something for dessert. So after dinner we trudged off through the snow to pick up ice creams and a couple of drinks, which was when I discovered these beautiful things:

Needless to say we became instant friends and one of them opted to follow me back to the hotel room! The forecast was for better weather the next day so we went to bed hoping for a great day of skiing.

The Temby’s Take Japan, Day 8

I think the saddest part of sitting to write this is that we’re already up to days 8 and 9. It means that the end is closer than the beginning of the holiday and I’m having too much fun for it to end. 

Yesterday was once again a travel day as we headed back to the mountains to try skiing in a different resort. The thought was that we’d give the legs a rest for a few days and then have another go rather than ski ourselves into oblivion by over-doing it. The significant amounts of walking that we did around Tokyo may have somewhat defeated this purpose, especially in relation to Caroline’s knee. 

We gathered all our belongings and cleared out our pokey hotel rooms (when I told Michael the rooms where pokey he asked what I meant, claiming that he’d never heard the expression before – kids these days!) and then Thomas, Sam and I set off to do a bit of last minute shopping intended to avoid a return to Akihabara when we spend another couple of days in Tokyo.

Thomas has been on the lookout for ‘something cool’ to take back to Australia and was most disappointed when prices on GoPros and their equivalents weren’t cheaper than what we can get them for in Oz. I suggested that perhaps he’d like to invest in a model train as I had the last time that we were over here and that little seed began to germinate. I was going to buy some track to extend on what I had and with a bit of investigation of what was available, Thomas decided that if we teamed up, things would be even better. So that is exactly what we did.

We had our eyes on a couple of games as well that we hoped to get tax free, but on our return to the store where we’d seen them a couple of days earlier, they’d been sold out! Talk about frustrating.

We rejoined Caroline, Michael and Emily and then set off for the train station. It was nearing lunchtime and knowing that we several hours on the train and bus ahead of us, we stopped at a bakery to ensure that everyone was well fed. We stocked up and fed and then headed down to board the train to Nagano. At Nagano we remembered to take out some cash to take with us and hopped onto the bus with minutes to spare. 

The trip to Hakuba took a different route than that to Shiga-Kogen and so we had a different view as we travelled. It was picturesque with the road following a river for a reasonable amount of the journey. The fact that snow had been falling and everything was blanketed in a fresh dusting of pristine white snow. 

The forecasts that I had seen for the area were predicting between two and three metres of snow over the 6 days to come, so it was no surprise when it was snowing when we disembarked at the Hakuba train station. Caroline contacted the hotel and a shuttle came to bring us to the hotel.

The kids were pretty happy to see that they each had a bed in their room along with enough space to move and Caroline and I weren’t complaining about not having to share with any of them either!

The idea that we leave the hotel and walk in the snow (it hadn’t stopped falling from the sky) to find somewhere to have dinner was less popular, though everyone enjoyed their meals at a nearby hotel with a teppanyaki grill (even though Caroline and I were the only ones to order from it). Thomas was rather put out when the seafood pizza that he ordered came topped with corn. I perrsonally don't believe corn belongs on a pizza, but I wouldn't have bothered pulling each kernel off one at a time with chopsticks like Thomas did either!

Nor did I indulge in what everyone tells me was a delight, even though I thought it was an abomination: Apple pizza for dessert.

There were two things immediately noticeable in Hakuba. The place is over-run with Aussies and it’s a much more commercial set up than Shiga-Kogen. By that I mean that there’s a lot more retail shops and bars. It’s more of a town than Shiga Kogen which tends to be a collection of hotels and accommodation largely catering to significant numbers of Japanese kids in ski schools. 

We weren’t about to judge it on the first day though. We retired to bed ready to get up and see what the weather would be like for our first day of skiing on the new mountain.

The Temby’s take Japan, days 5-7.

Okay, so I am a couple of days behind. With the transfer to Tokyo, where everything is open until about 10pm at night (or later) we were getting back to the hotel way to late and tired for me to sit up and capture the day’s events. Now we’re on a train back up to Nagano on our way to Hakuba and I have plenty of time to fill you in.

So, Day 5:

We packed up our skis and sent them off to wait for us in Hakuba so that we’d have a little bit less to lug around Tokyo and fit into our hotel room, then packed everything else, took a coupe of photos and jumped on the bus to get back to Nagano.

We were sitting happily on the bus when Sam casually pointed out some snow monkeys sitting on the side of the road. To say that Caroline was excited was an understatement. I felt a huge weight of guilt lift now that it would no longer mean that I had seen them and she hadn’t. The best part was that about half a kilometre on the bus stopped at the next stop, then turned around and went back past the monkeys a second time before heading down the mountain. It couldn’t have been scripted better!

We made it to Nagano with little time to spare before the train was departing for Tokyo. That meant that there was no time for lunch and that things weren’t starting out to well in the ‘eat on time’ department. It was strangely reminiscent of our last visit. We opted to stop short of Tokyo in Ueno as that enabled us to make a connection to the train to Akihabara where we’d booked the hotel. Then there was just the small matter of finding our way to the hotel. I had screen shotted a couple of photos before we’d left to give some clue and fortunately we’d only walked about half a kilometre in the wrong direction before Caroline prompted me to double check that we were following the right train line. I was only ninety degrees out. D’oh. Course corrected, we found the Super Hotel which turned out to be a quite tall, narrow building that was clearly optimising its small space. Tight confines meant for flexible sleeping sleeping arrangements and after only a minor meltdown from the princess, Thomas ended up sleeping in the single bunk that was above our bed, while Emily did the same in the room that Michael and Sam were in. As per usual, Sam elected for sleeping on the floor rather than share with his brother. 

We pretty much dumped the luggage and ran, with food the first order of business. The very first place that we came across appealed to Michael because he saw a picture of Gyoza. We stopped and had a small gyoza feast which sated everyone enough that we thought we’d get through to dinner.

We went for a stroll around Akihabara (Electric Town) and visited a couple of shops, checking out the electronics, models advertisements for maid cafes and the other eclectic offerings of the area before deciding it was time for dinner.

Oh and if you're thinking of collecting some storm troopers, here's a collection that would make a good start: 

The one at the front would have been almost up to my, chest.

The 8th floor of the Yodabashi building is a collection of restaurants and for convenience we decided to eat there. We managed a full circuit before trying a couple of places. Unfortunately a group of six seemed to present a seating challenge at the first couple of options and we ended up at a pizza place. 

There were some interesting offerings. Nothing too over the top, but just different enough to get you to read the menu twice. Sam opted for the one with the ‘salted rape blossom’ (still don’t know what it was other than salty) 

and Thomas opted for the pizza topped with french fries. Emily, not a fan of pizza at the best of times went for the plate of french fries. Given this first picture is of the pizza topped with french fries;

you can imagine Emily’s disappointment, when this showed up as the plate of french fries:

I went for some pizza that had won some competition or other and while it wasn’t offensive, it wasn’t really anything to write home about either. Caroline had a seafood pasta which she enjoyed. 

We retired back to the hotel where they had a selection of pillows on offer, though not quite enough of the particular types to satisfy all of us. We made do though as the only pillow in the room itself was as long ‘body pillow’ that felt like it was filled with small slightly crushable plastic beads. It was like a slightly mouldable concrete log.

Another quirk of the hotel was that it had an onsen, though only one. That meant separate times for Women and Men to bathe. Women had from 0630-930 and then another session that ended at 2050. Men had from 2100 until -0620. When you leave the hotel earlyish and get back late, that wasn’t quite suiting Caroline’s desired bathing times!

We did have an ensuite … it was a fixed until much like the one in the hotel that we first stayed in. A tiny bath, sink and toilet. Functional and space-saving!

Day 6

We awoke having experienced differing levels of sleep, most bordering or failing to meet the acceptable level and after breakfast headed for the first stop of the day. A cat café. We’d seen it the night before and agreed to go back. On the fifth (or there about) floor of the building there was a café full of cats. Caroline, Michael and Emily opted to go in and play wit the cats and have a drink, while Sam, Thomas and I chose to wander around Akihabara a little more. 

The cat café looked impressive from the outside, with a network of suspended platforms for the cats to climb all over and lots of toys to play with. Caroline tells me that there were somewhere in the order of a dozen cats in there and all three participants had a good time. 

The rest of us explored a tower devoted to anime, from posters and figurines to videos and costumes. 

We linked up again after that experience and headed off to the tourist hotspot that is the Sky Tree. 634m high, its 300m taller than the Eiffel tower. There’s two observation decks, one at 35o metres and another at 450 metres (which costs an extra $10 to get to). We opted to be tight arses and only went to the first platform. Sam opted to stay with his feet on the ground. Emily, who keeps telling us she is afraid of heights decided to come up, but wasn’t so keen on more than a cursory glance out the window and was adamantly disinterested in the glass floor section. Possibly the most impressive part of the experience was the elevator ride. 350 metres in about 50 seconds and you could barely tell that you were moving! Probably worth the 40 minute wait to get a ticket and get up there!

Endless Tokyo from the Sky Tree

One of the things that we were going to be forced to do again was go to a Pokemon Centre. I happened to google and find out that there was within minutes of the skytower and so we were forced into a deviation. Fortunately it didn’t take tooooo long. Long enough to be bored, not so long that I felt the need to drag anyone out by the ears.

We had also browsed our way through a TV themed shop where you could buy all sorts of things linked to your favourite Japanese TV show. You could even buy toilet paper so that you could wipe your butt on your (least?) favourite character!

Having seen one tourist spot, Caroline had us headed for Shibuya, a shopping and night-life district. It was also about half way across Tokyo from the Sky Tree but added to our subterranean exploration of the city by subway. 

Shibuya is home to what I think of as ‘that intersection’. I remember being a little disappointed when I was here last time that we didn’t come across it. From all the lights I had thought that it was perhaps located in Akihabara, but not so. The instant I emerged from the subway I knew where I was and crossing the intersection lived up to everything that I could imagine. Its like 3 armies of foot soldiers all facing off and deciding to charge at the same moment. We were looking for dinner though so didn’t hang around to appreciate it too much. 

What happens when the crossing lights go green!

We opted for local fare, heading into a dark little basement restaurant where something like a Korean BBQ you could choose to cook your food at the table (though in a wok-like bowl, rather than on a BBQ like Korean or teppanyaki. Caroline, Thomas and I opted for that while Emily went for the safety of beef fillet as did Michael. Though he mixed it up with meatballs that were more like a skewered sausage than a ball and were apparently made from beef tongue. In fact at first glance through the menu you could be forgiven for thinking that all the meat on it was tongue as it certainly dominated. Sam was brave enough to order the beef tongue stew which he enjoyed when it arrived. All in all, it was another successful dinner; such a contrast to our last trip here!

After dinner, we decided to take advantage of the Starbucks that over-looked ‘that intersection.’ After lining up for hot chocolate and coffee, we managed to work our way into some seats, because surprisingly we weren’t the first ones to have the idea of checking out the intersection from that vantage point! Hard to believe, but true! By the time that we managed to get there most of the shops had closed and so the foot-traffic was much reduced. A little disappointing, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. 

Day 7

The day dawned with a list of things that we wanted to accomplish; a mixture of culture and capitalism. I took the time over breakfast to work out which subway stops were nearest each attraction and planned as much of a circuitous route as I could to minimise travel time.First stop was to be the Imperial Palace (the East Gardens to be precise). We mobilised everyone and headed out the door. We even found the right stop without too many hassles. The moat and wall of the palace provide an instant first impression, but it was when we got to the gate that everyone’s jaws dropped. Most of the photos that I took are yet to make it to an internet friendly medium, but I snapped a couple with the phone just to include them here.

The gardens were lovely and would be even more impressive through spring. There were a few blossoms on the tree and they gave just a taste of how it must look in full bloom. I was pleasantly surprised that there were any there for us to see at all. We took a nice leisurely walk through before we headed off to the next part of our day’s adventure. 

Next on the agenda was to find a shop where Emily had bought clothes two years previously that she fell in love with. That had been in Kyoto, but google told me that one of the stores was nearby to where we were the previous night in Shibuya. Back to the subway we went. When we arrived I google mapped our way and found that it was going to be a twenty minute walk. Needless to say not everyone was impressed with the thought of walking for twenty minutes to find a girls’ clothes store. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d manage to leave my carefully marked up subway map back in the hotel during a brief stop after the palace. Things got so much better when we walked around for another twenty minutes trying find the shop. In the end we had to concede defeat and assume that they had moved somewhere else.

We had been going to take in the Meiji shrine which wasn’t far from there, but with the time lost in trying to find the clothes store, we gave that up as lost as well. Instead we headed off for a second round of bloody Pokemon because the boys (well, Michael and Sam insisted) convinced us that there were things that they could get at the Mega Centre that would surely send me screaming to the depths of hell they couldn’t get anywhere else. 

That took us to dinner time. We were once again in a shopping metropolis. I was discussing with Emily the fact that I was surprised that we’d walked past so many shops selling cute clothes when I’d been prepared to buy her some just because we hadn’t been able to find the store that she remembered so fondly from two years previous. A light bulb went on and her eyes lit up as she said, “I didn’t know you were prepared to buy me some!” Suddenly the head was on a swivel left and right and we ended up in a shop within about 30 seconds. A couple of skirts and tops later and it really was time for dinner. We found a Chinese place (just to keep rounding out our ‘other cultures in japan’ dining experiences) and it was a winner. We were lucky to squeeze six of us in and everyone left having enjoyed the food immensely (much of it being about 5 variations of fried chicken). 

A stroll through some shoe shops (where they mostly didn’t have our sizes) took us back to the train and eventually the hotel via one small detour for crepes. 

And that my friends sums up the last 3 days of our adventures. Whew! The train is just about to pull into Nagano for us to head to Hakuba and because I’m Shinkasening the right way, this Asahi is just about done as well. More soon

The Temby’s Take Japan (again) – Day 4

There was a slight rum and sake induced delay to the production of Day 4, so here it is. And yes, you can expect similar delays or greater now that we're in Tokyo for a couple of days with less likelihood of being back in the hotel so early.

After the perfect weather of the previous day, it dawned looking overcast and snowy again today. We made sure that we ate breakfast early so that we would be able to hit the slopes as quickly as possible, without any missions like seeking out lonely ATMs hanging over our heads. 

Emily decided that she wasn’t skiing as she seems to be the most recent member of the family to have been struck down by the rolling plague that we brought with us. She didn’t seem all that sick, but it was always going to be more fun skiing without someone complaining about it all day. She thought she might ski in the afternoon, so we arranged to go back to the hotel at lunchtime to see how she was faring. 

There was plenty of powder left over from the dumping of the previous days, though where it hadn’t been groomed on the runs it was mostly chopped up. That didn’t stop the exploration between runs to find some, especially at Ichinose Family which worked well for our combination – Sam made himself some small jumps, the runs weren’t too demanding on Caroline’s knees and there were plenty of ski schools all over the place for the odd game of ski school slalom.

With a few jumps and adventures between the trees, the crash stats went up a little today. Thomas decided to have a yard sale and Carolie and I both managed at times to bury ourselves in powder. Getting out is such fun. The kids don’t seem to understand how much harder it is for us to extricate ourselves from it than them. No respect for their elders I have to say.

Michael hit the slopes armed with a series of phrases aimed to impress or please the local girls in the ski school, while I went out armed with one or two to embarrass him. All that was then required was the opportunity to use them. Despite the great pleasure I would have taken in embarrassing him, I chose not to use my phrase. After all, I’m not sure how it would have been taken and no-one wants to go to jail! Michael confessed at the end of the day that he had told one girl she was cute, but that he’d done so as he’d skied off at the end of the lift so that there was no time for him to see a reaction or for her to respond in any way.

Michael’s other effort to be remembered on the slopes came from a penchant for finding groups of kids in ski lessons sitting on the mountain. He took great delight in carving a turn above them such that they’d be covered by the snow that it would throw up. By the time the could would clear he’d be well down the mountain and disappearing into the distance. There was some discussion about how often we’d have to keep changing ski runs so that he didn’t get identified and thrown off the side, but fortunately he didn’t continue for too long and we just enjoyed the skiing.

Off the slopes, Sam has continued to play his Yen game, which basically consists of checking every vending machine you find for unclaimed change. Its not exactly a salary replacing game, but hey, it keeps him happy!

We were split between two different hotel rooms for this portion of our stay. Caroline and I had a western room with beds and an added on en-suite. Well, when I say added on, it was really added in. It was a self-contained little unit that sat within the original hotel room. The bath looked just big enough that if I’d wrapped my knees back behind my ears I could have sat down in it. Fortunately the onsen provided much more space for stretching the legs. You just have to be sure to observe the onsen etiquette, or as advertised around the hotel, the onsen manners. Most of it is straight forward but the one at the bottom of the middle row took a few moments to make sense of as it seemed to be advocating something that I would have thought outside good manners.

For dinner we actually managed to find somewhere new to eat that hadn’t been open the last two nights that we’d walked past. They sold Oden and Bandit Fried Chicken. Well who couldn’t resist a bit of bandit fried chicken after two nights in a row of curry? Caroline was brave enough to try a bit of the Oden which was a bowl of either self-selected or randonly chef-selected different bits and pieces. She went for the recommended favourite – radish and something else that eludes the memory. All I can tell you is that the bandit fried chicken was a winner.

The walk home even saw us treated to a couple of light pillars. It was a cold but lovely night for the trek back to the hotel, even if my icicle collecting did embarass someone a little bit.

Tomorrow sees us head off to Tokyo for the weekend to give the ski-legs a break before we head off to Hakuba for a bit more fun in the white stuff.

The Temby’s Take Japan (again) – Day 3

After a pounding of snow, today was forecast for clear skies and sun. It lived up to everything we could have expected. The day dawned clear and bright with the view from the hotel room window just begging for us to get out amongst it. 

Breakfast was required first and Emily presented me with her first surprise of the day. After years of eating almost exclusively chicken nuggets whenever we’ve dined out, when presented with the chance to have them for breakfast, she chose instead to have a bowl of plain rice!

The first mission of the day though was to hunt down that singular ATM that I mentioned yesterday to ensure that we had enough money to get us through to the next leg of our adventure. After all, when the best source of beer is a vending machine, cash is essential.

Without knowing exactly what we were in for, Caroline opted to stay in the hotel for the morning to preserve the knee and Emily opted to stay with her to keep her company (it couldn’t have anything to dow with a couple of hours of internet access!)

So Michael, Sam, Thomas and I set off to see what we could manage. After all, we’d been promised that it was easy. Just up over that mountain and around a bit and you’ll be there. We headed up the first lift and were presented with the sight of deep powdered runs with almost no tracks through them. It was too good an opportunity to pass up and so we skied straight back down. I for one was trying to work out what the hell I was doing, especially since it was deep enough at one point that my shallow angle of attack brought me to a complete stop! It was conditions that I hadn’t experienced before. 

With that out the way we set about the serious business of finding a cash machine. We were skiing down an access track and Thomas had stopped at a corner. I came in after him and looked up at the fence to find about thirty monkeys sunning themselves on top of the fence. I asked Thomas if he had noticed anything and he looked around in complete surprise. Sam came in next but Michael had skipped the corner to go through some powder and completely missed it. It was a bittersweet discovery. When we came here two years ago, one of the key things on Caroline’s list of things she wanted to do was see the snow monkeys. We were warned at the time that it was over-priced and over-rated and opted not to go see them. We’ve seen the signs all around the hotel warning us about them but hadn’t seen any. I really didn’t expect to. So I was utterly torn between being fortunate enough to see them and disappointment on behalf of Caroline who wasn’t there to witness it, especially as we were within about five metres of them.

Putting that little discovery behind us, we continued the epic adventure that was ‘find the ATM.’ We made it as far as the hotel that we’d stayed in last time we were over here and I asked where it was. He pointed me to a building all of twenty metres away and I happily ran up the slope in my ski boots, amazed that it had actually been as easy as promised. I was wrong. It turned out he had pointed me to a post box, rather than an post office, which was where the ATM was said to be. Fortunately it was right next to the information booth and the kind lady there gave me a photocopied map. Sadly the map was hand written, entirely in Japanese and vague enough to leave me with some concerns. We made it to a point where we were left with a choice of taking a road, a road or a road and nowhere that we could ski (only after I had something of a lame stack into a snow bank as I tried to control my speed down a narrow walking path).

Once again I sought assistance. After finding a completely empty hotel, restaurant and ski school, someone pulled up in a van and we managed to communicate just enough to be told that the post office was a mere ten minute walk down the road ‘in that direction.’ Of course that news the kids were happy to abandon me to the walk and baby-sit my skis. 

Happily, not only did I find the ATM and manage to get cash out of it, but the walk turned out to only be about  four minutes.

That meant the boys had all of about eight minutes to entertain themselves. So why wouldn’t you bury one of them in snow?

We only took one wrong lift on the way back and being the very first one it wasn’t too much of an ordeal. In fact it was just enough to see a gaggle of giggling school girls get all excited about the Australian boys on the slope. I think it may have been the impetus for Michael to start exploring the Japanese language a little. Tomorrow may well turn out to be ‘flirt around the mountain day’.

We finally made it back to our hotel in time for lunch (and won’t mention that brief moment where we lost Sam on the mountain) and picked up Caroline and Emily. Then it was time to hit the slopes again. We spent the afternoon skiing and only split up for a bit to enable Thomas to ski the old olympic men’s downhill course as last time we were here he’d taken Emily on a green-run detour. 

Something happened in the time that we were gone though. We joined Caroline, Sam and Emily in an area where there was a bit of fun for everyone, from skiing in the powder around the trees, to finding small jumps or just blazing down the mountain as fast as you could. I announced to Emily that I was going to follow her down the run on one of the passes and she took off in glee. And when I say she took off, she went like a rabbit before a fox. This was the little girl that didn’t like to go too fast and didn’t like anything too steep. To be honest I actually struggled to keep up with her. Looks like I am relegated another step down the family pecking order! Someone turned my little girl into a speed demon.

She didn’t always go fast though. At one point we were waiting for her at the bottom of the run wondering what was taking her so long. We started to wonder if she’d had a crash when we spotted her making her way along a line of ski-school kids, pulling them to the feet one after another! The number that fell over again almost immediately was rather amusing.

And then there was dinner. We set off to find somewhere to eat. We walked further than we did last night, because surely there had to be more than one restaurant open that we could eat at? Well apparently not. So once again, curry it was. Sadly, given the lack of anything else that we’ve seen, its highly likely that we’ll be back there again tomorrow night!