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!
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