Today was all about the snow. It was snowing went we went to bed last night and still snowing when we woke up this morning. As keen as we were to get amongst it, there were a couple of minor details to sort out before we did so. Like overcoming the lack of large-footed boots in the rather small rental shop associated with our hotel. Apparently its unusual for three teenage boys to show up with feet the size of ours (and we’re only talking size 11’s here, nothing particularly ginormous). We managed to hire one pair from a second shop and went in search of a third, but ended up having to hire ‘performance’ equipment for Michael in order to kit them all out. Clearly the bigger hotels are set up to cater to the swarms of Japanese in ski schools rather than the tourists.
The other thing that doesn’t seem to be set up to accommodate tourists is the access for money. We managed to find someone that spoke enough English to ask at one point today to be told that there is in fact an ATM along the string of the mountains. It’s a the post office. Yep, there’s probably a hundred different hotels and plenty of places to eat (well, possibly. More on that later) but there’s only one ATM. That would be fine if more businesses accepted a credit card, but it seems skiing in Japan is still very much a cash based business. That wouldn’t be the end of the world if it was remotely accessible. Unfortunately the volume of snow that we’ve been seeing was enough that it stymied our attempts to get more cash. The run that we needed to take from the top of the mountain was closed and even the bus that could have run us there wasn’t running. We’ll scrape by, but its certainly frustrating.
As to the skiing, challenging probably best describes the day. Foggy, snow coming in horizontally at times and deep powder drifts (yeah how horrible) all made for interesting times. By the time that we’d sorted equipment and passes we hit the slopes quite late in the morning, but given that there were only two short lifts operating at the time, we probably hadn’t missed much.
Michael as I most often see him when skiing ... leaving me behind
I had my first stack for the trip. The kids had discovered their first ‘jump’ spot and I was lining it up. I was possibly too concerned about that and not paying enough attention to where I was actually skiing and caught an edge and came unstuck. The best thing about stacking in powder of course is that its like landing in a pile of feathers. Thomas claims to have had a stack during the day, but if your dad didn’t see it, did you really stack? Emily had the least challenging stacks of the day, somehow managing to fall over three times and not once while actually skiing! Apparently standing up is enough of a challenge at times. Michael won the prize for best attempt to lose one’s skis when he came undone in some deep powder. It was bad enough that three of us stopped to search around, digging between knee and waist deep in the snow that had buried both skis somewhere. Caroline too had one stack, so I think perhaps Sam is the only one to have escaped unscathed after the first day.
Best caused crash of the day came when the kids, whilst waiting for us to catch up to them at one point, managed to block most of a small path that we were traversing. Apparently someone came in quite fast and in their efforts to get around them, buried themselves deep in a snow drift. It took three of us to help dig him out and get him back on his feet! I’m sure he went of cursing the bloody foreigners invading his slopes.
In the food stakes, we had a win today. Lunch was taken on time and everyone enjoyed their meal and my allowance for non-japanese dining certainly worked in our favour when we walked to the next block of hotels for dinner and ended up eating Indian. It turns out that we were lucky that we’d done so as we ran into some other Australians who had explored the other options and found that the one we were at was the only one open! Chalk that up as a win!
In terms of off-slope action today there were a few memorable moments. We’ve enjoyed the signs around the hotel warning us not to leave windows unlocked or doors open for fear of the monkeys that apparently like to come in and play havoc with your room. Tempting though it is to try it out, we’ve resisted. Of course the way we set up in a hotel room, I’m not quite sure if we’d be able to tell the difference between before and after their visit.
Caroline provided us with some giggles whilst alone in the en-suite. She’d engaged the ‘water jet up the bum’ button and burst out into a fit of giggles. Emily was mortified when this resulted in a conversation whether one should clench or not while engaging the water jet.
During our lunch break from skiing the kids picked up one of their favourite past-times – who can find the biggest lump of snow;which is almost as good as ‘can I land it on a sibling? On the way to dinner Michael came up with a new game that he likes to call “Snow drift or car?” We were discussing the ATM situation when someone suggested that snow drift or ATM might be a winner other than for the fact that there wasn’t enough ATMs to really make the game fun. That progressed to suggestions that tomorrow a game of snow drift or Emily might get some giggles. Well, for some of us at least. Something tells me that that game isn’t going to happen. The chance of snow drift or Thomas is slightly higher given his propensity for throwing himself at drifts on the side of the road and hoping that he sticks.
There's actually a van in this photo!
The final way the young-uns managed to pass the time was by seeing who could get the biggest icicle from the eve of a roof, something we had to put a stop to before they started chasing something that was likely to impale them.
The ice queen!
All in all it’s been a good day. The mountain was a hive of grooming activity as we returned from dinner and we’re looking forward to clearer skies and improved visibility tomorrow!
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