Japan 2023 - Day 17

One of the best memories I have from our first trip to Nozawa Onsen was finding the Akari Swiss Bakery. It was open early, in time for a quick swing by for some beautiful fresh bread or the like for breakfast ahead of a day on the slopes. During the planning for this trip, I’d selected accommodation near where we’d been last time for both its proximity to the bakery and relatively easy access to the snow.

So today, Monday morning, day 18, I was excited to go find out what the bakery had to offer first thing. We’d checked the night before and it said they opened at 8am, but I got a message from Jason at 7:40 telling me that they weren’t open Mondays. Noooooooooooo!

The start to the day was incredibly frustrating for me. It was slow. I hate the chopped up snow at the end of the day and so really prefer to be out there early after the groomers have tidied it all up for me and today was one of those days where things weren’t going to my plan. I quite possibly got a little angry about it. When I was finally on my way up to the mountain I took these photos because it reminded me that as frustrated as I was and as bad as I thought the start to my day was, it can always be worse. 

At least it wasn’t raining. It was snowing which was a good thing for the planned day of skiing. It just didn’t happen to stop. At all. All day. Fortunately conditions weren’t terrible and we were happy to ski, though it limited where I was prepared to go because I was still concerned that my aging and fragile body wouldn’t hold up if I pushed myself too hard. I’ve become a lot more cautious than the rest of the family, but at least I’m still skiing.

We explored our way around the easier parts of the mountain while the nuts (mostly Thomas) went and found their own fun amongst trees and on steep slopes that this little black duck wasn’t about to engage in.

Nozawa Onsen is an interesting mountain and I hadn’t explored a lot of it last trip due to being a little lame from our time at Madarao. One of the differences at Madarao, is that you can go to the top and find a really long, green, easy run along the ridge line, but to get down from there, your only easy option is a long winding road (which is at least in most parts wide and easy to navigate). Your other option to get down either involves going to the top and taking an alternate long road that is significantly narrower and rated intermediate rather than beginner.

With the mixed ability we had skiing together at the time, we decided the green road down was the best way to go. And we nearly made it all the way down without incident. There was just one corner where everyone pulled up ahead of a somewhat steep bit and waited while Bel decided to maybe forget how to turn or stop or something? Not quite sure exactly what happened other than a sudden exclamation and an almost slow-motion plough into the group, seizing hold of Caroline briefly before her momentum took her past her, leaving her to seize hold of Rhianna and take her out as well. It was entirely comical and fortunately didn’t result in any injuries.

The road down was long. Like seven kilometres or so long but about two thirds of the way down there was an option to take a short intermediate run to cut the corner. We stopped at the top and everyone assessed it as not too steep and so down we went. Happy days.

I ended up at the back of the pack after that, deliberately waiting to make sure everyone was good ahead of me. Those at the front came upon another option to take an intermediate run to cut out some more of the green run. The only problem was, by the time you could assess how steep it was, you’d well and truly passed the point of continuing down the green run that I’d been wondering why everyone had opted out.

Unfortunately, it was significantly steeper than the other little red run. That’s okay, we were sure we’d all manage. Most of us skied our way down within our limits and left Thomas to help Aimee who certainly wasn’t feeling confident enough to tackle it on her own. So we waited at the bottom, watching and sending positive vibes.

It wasn’t to be though. The confidence wasn’t there, so Thomas kindly took Aimee’s skis for her and she opted for the direct, butt-slide down the mountain way out of trouble!

We skied at the bottom of the mountain for a bit, biding our time until lunch. On one of my runs I found Aimee taking off her skis at the bottom. I checked she was okay and she advised she was but was taking a break.

I didn’t realise that she’d had a fall ahead of taking her skis off. I headed back up for another run ahead of lunch only to come back down and find that Aimee appeared to be faring a fair bit worse than the okay she’d thought she’d been at when I’d checked. She was clearly in pain and struggling to get around. She’d been checked by ski patrol who’d advised that if needed the hospital was a possibility.  It was time for lunch though and no-one (except a Rowland *cough* Cameron *cough*) really likes going to a hospital in a foreign country, so the idea was to take some time for her to rest up and assess where things were at. She was struggling enough that even getting inside was looking tricky, so Sam and Thomas grabbed a chair from inside, sat her in it, and then carried her into the restaurant.

By the time lunch had been consumed, it was clear Aimee wasn’t going anywhere without assistance and so she and Bel called it a day and departed the scene in style.

Emily, Thomas and Sam were kind enough to ski back to deliver Bel and Aimee’s skis and poles back to our accommodation.

It was still snowing, and the rest of us skied on with half our minds wondering how Laimee was getting on.

Caroline, Emily and I were skiing up near the top of the mountain during the afternoon and I decided I needed a break and suggested we stop for a hot chocolate. While Caroline was taking advantage of the facilities on offer, Emily opted for a vending machine delivered hot chocolate, while I noticed a number of young people walking around with delicious looking ice-creams and decided that I was definitely up for getting intimate with one in the immediate future. I lined up with the kids and eagerly awaited delivery. I watched the young girl before me walk away with a luscious looking treat, ordered mine and watched eagerly as the kindly old gent serving me pulled the lever to deliver the icy creamy goodness. He swirled it around once, twice and pfft. There was no more. 

"So sorry, sold out," he declared, looking genuinely disappointed that he had to deliver that news to me. Devastated, I moped away, consoling myself with an icy cold can of coke while I waited for Caroline. She had just appeared when the old dude excitedly found me to announce that he'd refilled the machine and that I could get my ice cream. I gleefully followed him back to his little stall and watched as he pulled the lever.

And nothing happened. 

It was like being told you get a second chance at Christmas only to have it yanked from under your feet! He was extraordinarily sorry but I was still icecreamless. 

Caroline was finally sorted with her hot chocolate and so I sat with her, sipping my coke, lamenting the ice-cream that never was when for a second time I was hunted down and beckoned back to the ice-cream stand. I almost didn't go. Could I survive further disappointment? Was my day to be as bad as the person that had parked their car in someone's front-yard ditch? Warily I followed him. 

He pulled the lever.

Ice cream appeared.

He swirled ... and swirled ... and swirled ... and with great joy, I accepted the treasure and enjoyed every last bit of it! It may just have been the best ice cream I've ever had.

There’s a physio in Nozawa Onsen and Jason and Bel had found that there was an Australian-trained (and as it turned out, Australian) physio working there and so rather than commit to hospital, arranged for Aimee to go there for assessment before considering other options.

The rest of us headed out for a delicious ramen dinner at Deesuke with steamed apple buns for dessert.

Aimee reappeared eventually with a brace that was at least enabling her to stand and possibly even walk a bit but with an unknown amount of damage to her knee. We all hoped it would be minimal.

Oh and it was still snowing.

Japan 2023 - Days 14 and 15

There isn't heaps to report from these two days as it was travel and then skiing with no-one being kind enough to provide me with blog-fodder. what a disgrace. In fact it was so exciting that one night Bel decided the best thing she could do was Japanese Where's Wally!

Travelling to Shiga Kogen meant travelling by train from Kyoto to Iiyama (with a stop at Nagano) and then by bus to Shiga Kogen itself. So that’s exactly what we did. We’d sent our ski equipment through ahead of us, so the luggage issue wasn’t too bad and the trip was uneventful though we did say goodbye to Sam for a couple of days as he’d opted to go elsewhere and meet up with us again to ski in Nozawa Onsen.

For dinner a local ‘pub’ selling Mexican food was selected. It turned out to be expensive and disappointing, but that’s one of the chances you take when travelling around. They can’t all be winners.

With only a single full day to ski, the Rowlands opted to rest weary legs and avoid the task of hiring and returning equipment, which left Caroline, Thomas Emily and I to ski. As usual we didn’t quite get the early start I’d have liked and Caroline had boot issues early which made her wonder if she was going to be able to ski at all, but we eventually sorted them out (utterly stress and hassle free of course – and I was calm, patient and … well none of those things really) and managed to make it onto the slopes.

We’d skied at Shiga Kogen twice previously and everyone other than Emily had at some point skied a run which we remembered as the Men’s Downhill which had been used during the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Emily hadn’t been willing to ski it on those occasions, but with vastly improved skills was dead keen to give it a go this time. So first up we headed up tot the top of the mountain and negotiated our way back down. It was everything I remembered, groomed, but on the bloody steep side of things. We all safely negotiated it and Emily was happy to have finally ticked that off her list of desired achievements. The weather was quite spectacular for the day and we worked our way up down, across and around the mountain, travelling as far as the place we’d stayed on our first trip there and ending in our happy place in Ichinose.

The Rowlands spent the day on a tour to see the snow monkeys and we all met up for dinner upon their return. The day ended with rain, which was a first for us in the mountains and certainly made our decision not to ski the following morning before travelling out again a better decision than we could have imagined at the time.

Japan 2023 - Day 8

Today was our last day of skiing the slopes of Madarao and the weather threw a little bit of everything at us short of blizzards and sleet. The day dawned overcast and snowing and before too long decided add a pretty decent amount of fog to the mix. It certainly made the skiing difficult.

Conditions were challenging enough that Caroline, coming to the end of one of our early runs of the day, she went to ski down to the lift for the next run only to find out she’d turned left a little bit early. Off the side of the run, into the deep powder and fwoof she was all but buried in it. There wasn’t a lot I could do to help as that would have involved either skiing into it myself or wading in it to try and assist with her retrieval and so she was left to extricate herself, skis off and wading back up the two metres onto the run. Hey, at least it provided me with some amusement and at least there was no injuries!

Today was also Saturday which meant lots of weekend skiers up for the day/weekend. There were actual lines to get onto a lift. Like, sometimes we had to wait like five minutes. We were definitely aware that we’d been spoiled over the prior two days with simply skiing up and pretty much getting straight onto a lift. It also meant the runs were cut up a lot earlier in the day.

The day’s skiing was challenging enough that Caroline, Emily and I decided and early break was in order and settled in for a drink and a crepe. Progressively pretty much the entire crew joined us and we decided we’d get in a little bit more skiing before heading to an on-mountain burger joint for lunch to see what it was like.

We managed to pretty much all meet up at the appointed time and found the place to have limited seating, so we staked the joint out, watching and hovering over people in the hope that it would encourage them to eat quicker and vacate their seats. After a while we decided to start ordering so that maybe we could coincide getting lunch with getting a seat. We were told the wait would be an hour. I think it’s a sign of how tired we all were that we agreed to stay and wait.

We did eventually get burgers and they were pretty good, but they were waaaay over-priced (compared to what else we could get on the mountain) and the wedges spiced within an inch of death so all in all, not what we were hoping for.

After lunch we decided to coordinate a trip across the other side of the mountain so some could again ski the natural half pipe. That turned out to be a long and painful exercise in herding cats that meant we didn’t end up doing a whole lot of skiing in the afternoon. The sun did come out though, which was as much curse as blessing as we started to get slushy snow and icy patches that detracted from the enjoyment a little.

We returned to our accommodation ahead of dinner and the younger members of the party decided that Michael and Oliva’s little slide would be a whole let better with a toboggan. And even better than sliding down with a toboggan, it would be better again if there was a jump. Caroline and I return from the mountain about the time the jump had been introduced, hearing gales of laughter coming from the rear of the building. We had to investigate of course. Apparently it was due to this:

Prose has always been my main means of conveying things in this blog, but sometimes words really can’t do justice to what you're seeing. I stayed outside long enough to witness these two amusing runs down the slide:

But, well it was cold, I was tired and I really wanted to get the ski boots off so I returned inside along with Caroline. The kids however weren’t done. By the time they were the jump was apparently about a metre high and resulted in the following. I'm sure you'll take as much joy from watching these as I did given I wasn't there to witness it first hand!

After that there was little to do but eat, compare aches and pains, pack and get ready for our transfer to Osaka the following day.

I have to say though, dinner included a visit to what has been my favourite Japanese toilet of the trip so far. I know I've detailed various aspects of the toilets here previously, but this is honestly the first time I came across one that was wifi enabled!

Now I'm not entirely sure what that does for anyone, but would guess that perhaps you can activate the toilet functions from your phone. That would mean you could scroll your socials and jet-clean your bum at the same time! Happy days!

Also, I have to say I loved the fact that there was no need to touch any component of the seat/lid if you didn't want to!

Japan 2023 - Day 7

Day 2 on the mountain dawned with snow still falling from the sky and by the time we were on the mountain it had in no way lessened. Of course, sometimes you don’t even make it to the mountain before your first little crash for the day.

Caroline has ever been an advocate for finding the path that is both the quickest and requires the least effort to get onto the mountain. In this case, she decided that was to walk to the point where things were down hill, then put her skis on and ski along the side of the road where the accumulated snow was. Unfortunately she didn’t take into account the fact that she would have to cross the road to get onto the run. Now, had there been as much snow on the road as there had been the night before, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Unfortunately the plough had been down the road and exposed some of the bitumen. She was only going slow, but that bit of bitumen was enough to stop her in her tracks and send her tumbling right in the middle of the road! Fortunately she wasn’t injured and no cars decided to add to her dilemma!

Bel was a little more fortunate. She opted for the same approach, but attempted to cross the road a earlier than Caroline had. She also came in with a bit more speed. It meant she navigated the crossing of the road, but wasn’t quite at the right level of skill to get up off the road and onto the run. Instead she zipped up and tumbled, missing the point of entry. Again, fortunately there wasn’t any injury!

I’ve been following a number of the Japanese ski locations around Nagano on Instagram since we first started skiing here and had seen a run at Madarao that I really wanted to try … something of a natural half-pipe in amongst the trees. I’d suggested it would be something worth trying early in the day. Most people opted to join in the venture given there was a beginner run around the outside of it should it prove to be too difficult.

It was something of a task to get there, but that as done successfully. On seeing the entry through the trees I was having second thoughts. I have a couple of issues with skiing through trees. My tight turns aren’t typically coordinated enough to give me a lot of confidence and more importantly, trees don’t get out of your way and they’re a bit more on the solid side than a nice mound of powdered snow! Add to that my fear of injury and promise to myself to exercise caution and entering didn’t seem like entirely the smartest thing to do. But I’d seen videos of kids getting through there and was determined to do so even if it meant picking my way very carefully into the pipe, sans skis if it came to it!

I managed to get in there without resorting to removing my skis though certainly with zero elegance. If I’d been a better skier I would have loved that little run, but it was at that point for me, where fun was outweighed by lack of confidence, so although I managed to get through it, I wasn’t about to return! I wasn’t alone in that assessment.

As the day wore on the snow didn’t really abate and certainly presented some challenge after years without having hit the slopes. By the end of the day there was a lot of discussion about everyone’s aches and pains both from incidental crashes that people had endured and from using muscles that hadn’t been used in those ways in a long time if at all.

For dinner, we had a booking for seven at one restaurant and five at another. With the day being Jason and Bel’s wedding anniversary we opted for Caroline and I to join the five in the Rowland party. We had a lovely dinner that was mostly uneventful apart from Jason suffering either a back cramp or spasm that left him wondering what the hell was happening as he stiffened and flattened himself like a board in his seat while the rest of us wondered if he was actually having a cramp/spasm or was about to eject a particularly difficult poo! Fortunately it passed and he was okay. There was no poo involved. 

The restaurant did win my favourite translation error(s) though which was both charming and amusing:

I'm pretty sure its fried rice, you Plick! (kudos if you get the movie reference).

With dinner done, we headed back for more a little more quiet Qwixx and whiskey to finish off the day.

Tokyo 2023 - Day 6

We awoke to find the weather much like it had been the day before … overcast and snowing, which isn’t really anything to complain about when you’re planning to spend the day skiing! It took us a little bit to get on the mountain by the time we worked out the logistics of collecting remaining hire equipment and finding each other. Emily had offered to show those who hadn’t skied for 10+ year the ropes and at least get them started to a point where they’d survive a lift run. The location of our lodge meant that after a short walk down the road you actually skied down to get to the base of the lift, rather than starting there.

It took a bit but everyone did eventually get down, even if there were a few spills along the way. I think Cameron may have lead the count at about five, but hey, we’ve all done that when we’re learning! Having once had to save Cameron’s life in Bali when he came out of the raft and got stuck under a couple while white-water rafting, I wondered whether there might yet be another intervention needed, but he improved rapidly and I opted to ski somewhere else!

We’ve got a couple of different group chats going on while we’re over here to try and help with the coordination of who is where and doing what, because let’s face it, when there’s this many of us and everyone is actually an adult, splitting the party is now more common than ever before.

It didn’t take long for us to inundate each other with endless lift-selfies and scenic shots as we worked our way up and down and around the mountain skiing. As confidence grew, so did the extent of the mountain that was covered and I think I’m glad I wasn’t able to see where Thomas was skiing as he has definitely been covering more than the rest of us, especially in amongst the trees!

The conditions whilst not completely perfect were actually brilliant for a first day with lots of fresh snow to help cushion the impact for anyone that didn’t stay on their feet.

For lunch we hunted down one of our favourite places from our last trip here so that we could enjoy their sensational okonomiyaki. We were very fortunate that we were all able to be accommodated even if we at somewhat in shifts.

I think my favourite moment of the afternoon (or possibly the next one as the days already begin to blur) was Belinda almost kamikazeing under a rope and onto a very steep (though powder covered and short) slope that she would never have skied down. Fortunately for her she only ended up with her skis under the rope and was able to abort that probably chaotic descent!

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring and skiing and a little bit of it trying to find somewhere to have dinner, though that was mostly done by Sam as he at least had limited phone time on his sim card and the ability to actually converse with the locals. He wasn’t very successful for that night, but at least got some bookings made for the following two nights.

Most of us opted to eat at the lodge again, while Michael, Sam and Olivia managed to get in somewhere else. Post dinner saw us reclaim the common room, play some Qwixx and demolish some of the wonderfully low-priced whiskey we’d purchased in Tokyo!

My personal goal for Madarao was to end each day with everything intact. After all, it was only about 14 months ago that I last ended up with a little hamstring problem;

Not to mention the fact that our last trip here was where I attempted to hit 100km/hr on skis only to convert the attempt to ‘near-death-by-snowboard’ at about 95km/hr. Both had been on my mind a lot during the day and led to a lot of caution. I think my max speed for the day was about 50km/hr and I almost exclusively avoided testing my limits too much. Ski-day 1 – success.

Japan 2023 - Day 5

Today was a travel day, with our itinerary set for us to travel from Tokyo to our first ski destination for the trip; Madarao.

It was the first time our full collective had travelled together with all our luggage in tow. We had two things in our favour. Sam, the super-organised one to help with navigation and tickets and the fact we’d made the trip before and knew to send our ski gear ahead of us. It mean that our skis, boots and ski-clothing had been shipped from the airport and would be waiting for our arrival in Madarao.

We lugged our collective possessions to the train station and up and down a few stairs (or in some cases, used the elevator) and after a bit of a false start all ended up in the same place, with tickets, ready to board the train. Almost miraculously, nothing went wrong and that’s exactly what we did. A transfer in Tokyo saw the Tembys on their first Shinkansen for the trip (having caught a local train from Haneda while the Rowlands had arrived into Narita and caught the Shinkansen to Tokyo).

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of travelling on the Shinkansen and can imagine one day simply purchasing the JR Pass and spending days just riding all over Japan. Our destination was Iiyama, where we transferred to a shuttle bus to take us up the mountain to Madarao itself.

We disembarked from the bus to be greeted by our first touchable snow of the trip, which for the Rowlands was the first time they’d seen it since they visited us in Canada. We collected our luggage and walked down the hill to our accommodation at Madarao Mountain Lodge to get checked in ahead of organising ski gear for all those who had to hire something.

I don’t think we’d been there for much more than an hour before Michael and Olivia had ventured out the back of the lodge and created a little slide and return stairway for themselves in the snow. Though short, the pitch was impressive! (don’t worry, you’ll see more on that in the days ahead since I’m playing catch up with this).

We were lucky that the lodge has a small restaurant and that dinner for the first night was sorted as Madarao, being small but busy, can prove difficult to book dinner reservations, and given there were twelve of us in total, we didn’t even expect to eat together every night.

Skis were hired and organised and we returned to the lodge. Thomas was itching to get out on his brand new skis and so went to the trouble of putting boots and skis on just to slide down the little run that Michael and Olivia had created earlier in the afternoon for their butts. He was pretty stoked to be the first of the party to get to ski.

The lodge has a small common room in the basement that we pretty much claimed for our own from that first night and thanks to a mix-up with dinner bookings, we ended up eating down there as well! It was definitely better than missing out altogether. After a couple of quiet drinks we decided to call it a day, ready to be up early to kit up and hit the slopes! There was even a small chance we’d see Sam in long pants for the first time on the trip!

Japan 2019 - Day 5

When the kids don’t oblige by giving you something to write about sometimes you just have to go out and do it yourself. That’s why this update is a little delayed, but I’ll get to that later.

We woke up yesterday to another bluebird day as they say, with the sun shining and blue skies over the ski fields. It was our last day in Madarao and we were only going to be able to ski for half of it before we had to negotiate our way to our next destination, Matsumoto. We packed, made sure everything was right for our departure, then made our way out to the slopes where the weather was truly gorgeous.

I decided that if I was going to do a speed run, I’d be best of doing it early in the day so I went for it on the first run. Now I think I wrote two years ago about the dangers of knowing how fast you’re going and the desire to push the boundaries. I’d told myself before this trip that I wasn’t going to worry about topping that last trip. But speed is a drug. On that first run of the day I got to the bottom and my watch told me my max speed was 98km/hr and I didn’t feel like I’d taken the fastest route down. It was teasing me, 2km/hr short of three figures. I had to give it another go. Just one more. How good would 100km/hr look? I decided to find out.

I went straight down the mountain, a drop of 1km in a minute on the run I was skiing on. I’d waited until it was virtually clear of everyone, but it only takes one person in the wrong place at the wrong time for things to go wrong. I was flying down, well clear of the few people that were in front of me when I noticed a snowboarder moving across the mountain in front of me, not really going down, just traversing. I started angling to get around in front of him, thinking that as we were getting close to the edge of the run that he was likely to turn or simply head back the other way. But he kept coming. I angled further away. Still he came on. At the speed I was going, there really was only a second or so in which to make a decision and I decided to keep going around the front of him rather than try and turn to go behind him which I would have done had I not been going so fast.

I clipped the front of his snowboard.

Now there’s no video of what transpired next and clearly I wasn’t in a position to process what was going on at the time. At about 95km/hr I’ve clipped the snowboard and come unstuck. Things went very wrong. If I try and put the scene in my head in words, picture an ageing, not very flexible rag doll spinning and pinwheeling about three axes, smashing into the snow, skis immediately unclipping and coming to a halt in slow motion as the rag doll tumbles another twenty metres or so down the mountain.

I came to a stop, conscious and in pain. The immediate and most noticeable pain was my right arm. I looked at it and my elbow was at ninety degrees in the direction it normally is, but my fingers felt like they were reaching out in a straight line from the elbow! It took me half a second to process that. My arm hurt like all hells and my fingers felt like there were in a position that when I looked, there were none. My immediate thought was that I’d broken my arm and it was hanging at ninety degrees to where it should be.

As a manly Aussie bloke I did what anyone else would do. I took a breath, calmly continued to inspect my arm and waited to see if it was truly done.  I yelled like all the demons of hell were chasing me!

At this point I should say that I actually feel sorry for the snow-boarder whom I clipped. It must have scared the proverbial out of him to have me come through at that speed. And he and his companion were kind enough to make their way down to me with my skis and wait with me. They didn’t speak English but they waited calmly.

I lay in the snow and pictured the rest of my holiday … a ride down the mountain with the ski-patrol, a trip to hospital, dealing with insurance … it wasn’t looking great. I had no idea what to do other than lay in the snow and wait for the ski-patrol so didn’t do much more, but did manage to rein in the howling as the pain ebbed somewhat.

Fortunately as I lay there something started to happen. Where my fingers felt they were started to align with where they actually were. Then I wiggled them! Funny how such a simple thing could be so relieving. I made a fist gently and after a couple of minutes could even move my elbow. I managed to get my, helmet off (glad that I always ski with one too!) and even managed to stand up as the ski patrol and an English speaking local arrived.

Apparently the local guy had heard me screaming from the nearby chair lift and had guided the ski-patrol to me. I’m very thankful for that if embarrassed at the fact that he said you were very loud. Such a subtle understatement. Happy that I wasn’t broken too badly and would live, I waved them away and managed to ski down to where the family waited (though noted just as I skied off that Michael had just run up the last 100m of the run to where I had crashed!).

I was shaken, in pain, but okay. My elbow was weak, but I soldiered on, got on the lift and went to the top of the mountain again. I managed to ski down cautiously and it was good enough that I kept skiing most of the morning. 

I wasn’t a lot of use with the packing, but we sorted ourselves out and managed to get on the bus where I was reminded of how lucky I actually was by the English bloke that had been working as a snowboarding instructor but was on his way home with a broken collar bone.

 We made our way to Matsumoto via a bus and a couple of trains and checked into the hotel. The joy of booking hotels on line is that you never really know what you’re getting if you haven’t stayed there before. We’re in a Premier Cabin Hotel and I have to say, the rooms remind me of cruise ship cabins only perhaps smaller. Finding out that the room for four people consists of two double beds is always a joy for housing four children. We’ll survive, we will survive.

We headed out after settling in (and down after the room discovery) to have a bit of a look around town and find some dinner. We walked down an alley where we found out where all the birds in Mastumoto go at dusk, then along a couple of beautifully lit streets and found a truly quaint little bookshop apparently propped up between its modern cousins.

We kept going until we found ourselves at the castle and had an exterior preview ahead of touring the interior in the next couple of days.

We then had the task of finding dinner which was starting to turn into a Tokyo 2015 affair. With time ticking away and no great success things were getting a bit tense and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling all that great which I put down to concussion. We were on our way back to the hotel so that I could lie down when we stumbled across a reasonable looking place with a big dumpling sign out the front. I agreed to sit through the joy of watching everyone eat and within moments we were inside and perusing the menu. Let’s just say that when there was an offering of 30 dumplings, Michael was sold on what he was eating!

Though by the end of things, after giving all of four away, he wasn’t looking quite as keen as he had been at the start of the affair.

With everyone fed we retired to the hotel early to try and get some sleep.

Michael's dumpling count: 85

Japan 2019 - Day 3

Today was all about the skiing. The last time I’d checked the forecast it had said to expect snow, so I was expecting overcast and tricky conditions. So I was pretty damned happy when I looked out the window and saw the sun shining on a gorgeous winter tableau.

Everyone seemed to have had a decent night’s sleep and so rousing them and getting them moving wasn’t too much of an issue and we were organised and ready to hit the slopes nice and early.

When the kids were young and learning to ski, one of the less enviable tasks was helping everyone with their ski boots. I’d have thought that by now that it wouldn’t be an issue anymore, but I still find myself on my knees smashing the occasional boot clips closed and age and inflexibility certainly isn’t helping with reaching my own!

There’s six of us and the space in the ski locker is pretty small so there’s simply no way for all of us to get through the process at the same time. That meant that the boys were out the door and left to their own devices in the snow. Not sure if you’d recall or not, but this was the result last time I did that two years ago: 

We emerged to the sounds of adult children regressing to their childhood and bounding in the snow. They extracted themselves and we were about to head down to the lift when Michael wondered aloud if he’d left his phone in his room or lost it in the snow. Some frantic digging ensued but no phone was found, so he went back in to check the room, which of course required de-booting and the like. He emerged from the lodge to declare that his phone wasn’t there which meant it had to be in the snow. Commence more frantic digging and searching. Of course, this wasn’t just, by the side of the road snow, this was ‘I jumped off the path into the virgin, untouched, several feet deep by the tree snow’. Miraculously the phone was both found and still works. Rather than get angry I just thanked him for giving me something to write about.

Like I did on our last trip, I’ve been telling myself in the lead up that I need to get a couple of easy runs in before we get too adventurous so that I can find my ski legs, check the skills etc and make sure that I’m still capable before staring down the face of anything too stupid. That was the plan, but with the weather being as spectacular as it was, Caroline announced a desire (that I shared) to get to the top of the mountain early so that we could get photos before any weather closed in. That required us to navigate a couple of chair lifts as we explored our way to the top.

That’s where we met the chair that I like to call Bum’s in the sky. I’ve not ever really seen a single person chair lift before and certainly haven’t thought about how such a thing would look, but when we lined up for this one, it wasn’t what I expected.

That's all it was ... a single seat dangling off a pole, no back support, nothing!

Now considering that Emily isn’t all that keen on heights, the fact that she sat on this to the top of the mountain was quite astounding. The announcement that she was NEVER EVER going on it again wasn’t so unexpected. At least the views were worth it.

The next trick of course was getting back down the mountain. I’d seen a run that didn’t look too bad on our way up (other than being quite steep) and didn’t see many alternatives that didn’t involve black diamonds (as this one was). So I briefly checked with everyone before head over the side. Well, maybe I should have looked a bit harder for another way down. It wasn’t the worst run I’ve ever been on, but it was steep, there was powder and we really hadn’t skied for two years. Not to mention that we were supposed to be trying to preserve Caroline’s knee. We all navigated it and survived, it just wasn’t quite the enjoyment level that I (or Caroline) were looking for.

Given we haven’t skied for two years, the legs were getting weary pretty early in the day so we decided to seek out some lunch. Michael had a restaurant in mind that he wanted to go to so we worked out the best way of getting there without hiking for miles in our ski-boots. We found what we thought was the restaurant (it was only labelled in Japanese) and went inside. By the time that we had the menus and were considering ordering, we’d realised that we weren’t in the right place, but decided to just go with it. It turns out the restaurant speciality is okonomiyaki (In the Hiroshima style), but better than just getting to eat it, we were able to sit and watch it be prepared. It was the highlight of the day!

Fed and somewhat rested, we hit the slopes again. I avoided any crazy jumps (that is anything over about 5cm) and remembered that steep descent from first thing in the morning and so kept pretty conservative (I only maxed my speed at 82kph) for the most part. Michael, Sam and Thomas had all explored through the trees a bit (which is something Madarao is known for) and Emily decided that she too would like to give it a go. After she’d done it once the pressure came on. You can do it Dad, it’s not that bad, you’d be fine in there. Now I’ve never really liked mixing trees and skiing unless its off to the side of a gentle green run and I can see what I’m getting myself in for. This run did not fit that category. But I got sucked in. I entered the trees, fumbled around a bit and then found that where the kids were going dropped away steeply in a fashion that meant I couldn’t see where it was going.

I bailed. I skied along the top and back out to the safety of the groomed run. Sanity prevailed and I finished the day in once piece.

I have to send a nod the way of one guy I saw on the slopes today. He was snowboarding and had a shield-sized stuffed tortoise shell strapped to his bum and two smaller versions, one for each knee. He looked more than competent, but maybe he was trying new tricks or something. It was awesome regardless. Unfortunately I didn’t nab a photo.

Michael’s Dumpling count: 43

Jasper Juniors

This year, rather than spend our winters freezing our butts off at, and shuttling back and forth between ice rinks, we managed to keep the kids out of any ice sports and pursue other options. 

The boys all played indoor soccer and Emily and Thomas joined the Nancy Greene Ski Program. Emily would have loved to have played indoor soccer but unfortunately her games would have been on Saturday which simply wasn't conducive to the lifestyle that we wanted this year. At least when the kids are skiing we get to indulge as well.

One of the things that the Nancy Greene program enables the kids to do is participate in ski races, something which Caroline and I were certainly excited about, regardless of  whether Emily and Thomas thought it would be particularly special or not. 

With our other commitments and fun (like holidaying in the Caribbean) we didn’t actually get to as many of these events as we’d have liked, but we did make the one that we considered most important - the Jasper Junior Olympics.

It was held the week after we arrived back from our cruise, so we went from the sand to the snow in a very short space of time. Caroline and the kids went on the bus on the Thursday, whilst I worked through Friday. Then I caught the plane to Edmonton and drove out in a little Hyundai to meet them in Jasper.

It almost uneventful except for the bit where I was driving along at the permitted 110kms/hour and looked up to see the back end of what I think was an Elk wandering off the road to my right. I hit the skids, veered into the left lane and set the heart racing to about a billion beats a minute. I slowed down and considered just how bloody lucky i was that there hadn’t been anyone in the lane along side me, not to mention that it hadn’t been the front end of the animal that I’d seen! Otherwise it would have been a very very messy experience.

Eventually I controlled the heart and made it the rest of the way and by the time that I’d managed to make it to the Rockies proper, I was in a suitable frame of mind to admire the absolutely stunning view as the bright, silvery light of a very full moon cast its ethereal glow across the snow-capped mountains. It was truly wonderful and I would have given a lot to have had a camera handy (not to mention some decent photography skills) so that I could have captured it to share.

The following day we were up bright and early to pack ourselves onto the team bus so that we could head up to the mountain to do some skiing (oh and um, watch the kids too). The kids were split into age groups and genders for racing and the older kids skied on a tougher course. That meant that Emily would be skiing down a green run near the base of the mountain whilst Thomas would ski at the top on a black run! Caroline was kind enough to do our volunteer duty so that I could fit in some extra skiing (something about having missed most of the Christmas ski adventure).

It was going to be a delicate task once the kids were ready to ski as all we had to go by was the number of their bib as to when they would be coming down the mountain. Michael and Sam and I did some exploration to make sure that we’d be able to get from one to the other in time the waited near Emily’s run for her first race.

It was very cute to see the little kids skiing their hearts out as they weaved in and out of the gates to get the fastest time that they could. On the first day they would each have two timed races to see who could produce the quickest time.

Emily fared very well in her event, coming in 11th in her age group, which was just one place short of getting a ribbon! After her first run we raced to the bottom, caught the lift back to the top and skied across to Thomas’ course. We had to repeat it for the second run in the afternoon.

Thomas skied well on his first run, but unfortunately on his second, lost his edges about 5 gates from the finish. He got up quickly and kept skiing, but hadn’t realized that he’d missed a gate in the process and sadly ended with a DNF (did not finish). That meant that he didn’t get an official time for his runs, but from his first run he was around the middle of the pack. When you see the speed some of the kids that have been skiing (and racing) for many years achieve, middle of the pack is bloody good.

On the second day, the racing was a team event, with the various ski teams competing against each other. This meant that each skier would participate in two tandem slalom races, weaving through the gates side by side against their competitor (based on their time from the previous day). Apparently there’s then some mathematical wizardry around which teams win how many of their races to determine the overall winner.

Again Emily was the first down the mountain and she managed to get over the line first, smiling as she came over the line. I had a little more concern for as although he had put a brave face on the disappointment of the Saturday, I knew that he really wanted to be able to say that he had won something.

In his first race he managed to well and truly beat his opponent over the line. Then we raced off to see Emily again. In the first race they came down one side of the course and then in the second race came down the other, I assume to even out any slight imbalances in the positioning of the various gates. Emily went close, but was just beaten over the line before we scuttled off to the top of the mountain for the last time.

Thomas skied his best and again managed to get himself over the line, coming out with a double victory and happily, a good story to tell about his efforts at the Jasper Junior Olympics.



From there it was just a casual bus ride back to the Mac. All 10 hours or so of it!