Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (part 2)

Yes, I'm back in Australia now. Have been for a week. Why haven't I posted parts 2 and 3 of my Japan report? Well, first of all, I'm lazy. You all know that. Secondly, Net access in Japan was a bit odd. The first hostel we stayed at had some not-so-cheap Internet terminals, which I mainly used for e-mail checking. We tried looking for an Internet cafe, but all we could find in the cities (namely Tokyo and Sapporo) were these places that charged per person, not per computer. They also had showers. It all seemed a bit suspect, so we stepped slowly away from these places and decided to make do without Internet for a few days. Other than that, a couple of the hotels we stayed at had really old laptops in the lobby. It's what I used to post my first Japan update, and I wasn't in the mood to do it a second time.

Here's part 2.

Disclaimer: This place is too good

I'd like to preface this part by saying that I will not directly name this ski resort that we visited for this leg of the journey (I will elaborate on the why later) but if you pay enough attention and do a small bit of research you can figure out where it is quite easily.

We got up too early. We only found this out when we got to the subway station at Asakusa on the morning of the first leg. We got to the entrance to the subway, and the shutters were still closed. We walked around a bit more and eventually found an entrance that was open, although it is equally likely that we simply walked around for long enough and the gates had opened by the time we got to that particular entrance.

Anyway, the important thing was that we caught the train we were meant to catch and we got to Ueno station with time to spare. We used this time to buy some onigiri (the stuff I incorrectly referred to as "rice buns" in the previous post) and other snacks for the Shinkansen ride to Yamagata. One of the items I purchased was a Kit Kat of unknown flavour. I couldn't really figure out what it was meant to taste like, nor could I figure out what the picture was meant to be on the package. All I know is that I was disappointed not to find any of the fabled soy sauce flavoured Kit Kats.

The snow cover got thicker and deeper as we traveled north. The Shinkansen split up when we got to Fukushima as the line forked. The train climbed through the mountains and I began to get genuinely excited for the week ahead. We caught a bus up from Yamagata to the ski resort and walked over to the hotel to check in. What we found out days later (when we were checking out) was that we could have rung ahead and gotten the hotel to pick us up from the bus station. This is what the language barrier does - it separates the normal people from the idiots (us). It was refreshing, though. Sure, there were language issues in Tokyo, but it was mostly manageable. Once we got far enough away it was truly a foreign experience.

Since we got there early, we had to leave our bags in the lobby (and get changed in the lobby) so that we could go snowboarding. I really liked the lift pass system in a lot of the places in Japan. It's similar to the one I saw in Innsbruck - you buy your pass and you get given a magnetic card. You use this card to get past gates, and since it's a proximity card you don't need to take it out every time. When you're done with it, you slip it into a machine and you get your card deposit back. It's a lot more convenient than having to show a lift pass to ticket checkers at the bottom of every lift. What's more is that you can buy cards that have points instead of hours or days. Each lift is worth a certain amount of points (usually 2 or 1) and you get that amount of points deducted from your card every time you pass the gate for that lift. It's a great alternative for those who perhaps plan to do backcountry and don't need to pass many lift gates, or for those who only plan to do a limited amount of runs.

The resort itself was amazing. I can confidently say that it's one of the best I've ever been to. We caught two gondolas up to the peak and watched as the trees got whiter and whiter until they were completely covered with snow and ice. Understandably, the top was full of Japanese tourists who were there not to ski or snowboard but to marvel at the beauty of these ice-covered trees. It certainly explained a lot of the traffic we saw at the first gondola, because the amount of people on the ski hill was pretty reasonable. Certainly more reasonable than an Australian resort.

What I was thrilled to discover was that barely any of the people who were actually on the ski hill had ridden anything in the trees. For some reason that I forget at the moment (I think it's some sort of cultural or religious belief), the Japanese seem to avoid the tree line as much as possible. This, compounded with the fact that barely any westerners visited this particular resort, meant that there was a lot of fresh powder to be ridden in the resort despite the fact that the last snowfall was half a week before we got there. It's almost surreal looking down from a chairlift and seeing only two tracks in the easily accessible trees - and they're both yours! This is the main reason I didn't want to name this resort. It's supposedly set to become a more popular international tourist destination in the coming years, but I do not want to contribute to its popularity. It's selfish, I know, but it's rare to find something this good and I'd like to come back some time in the next few years and experience something similar.

So I did a bit more of that then went back to the hotel to check in. The first thing we noticed was that the hotel room stank of cigarette smoke. I assumed this was from the air conditioning unit circulating air from other areas of the hotel where people were smoking - indeed, it was ok to smoke anywhere in the hotel, as is common in Japan. Other than that, it was a pretty good room. In the drawers were Japanese robes, which a lot of the guests wore all around the hotel. Dave and I tried them on but I don't think we wore them more than once. They looked cool, though.

We watched random programs on the television (some utterly baffling, others bafflingly hilarious) then headed off to find some dinner. On my way down, I ran into a Japanese couple who asked where I was from (in English - their English was better than my Japanese). I told them I was from Australia and their eyes lit up. "What's the weather there like at the moment?" one of them asked. "Around 40 degrees," I said. "40? That's great!" was the reply. I smiled and nodded. I didn't want to shatter their dreams and tell them that 40 is too bloody hot, thank you very much. I like my temperatures nice and cold.

Places seemed to close fairly early at this resort. We later found out that other places opened late. It was bizarre. We wanted to find a place to eat and could only find one that was open at the time. As we were walking home, we saw another place about to open. This was the place we ended up eating at for the next 3 nights. They served food and alcohol and the guy serving us overpoured the sake we ordered on purpose, telling us that it's ok to drink the overflow that went on the little glass holder (it was tasty sake, too).

The next few days on the hill were similar to the first. I went off and looked for some good tree runs while Dave slowly but surely improved on the easier runs (and sometimes, by accident, on the really hard runs). I fell a lot while practising my switch (and got really sore doing so) and on the third day almost fell into a tree. Yes, you heard right. It was bad visibility at the top of the mountain but it was good enough at where I wanted to go. Dave handed me his camera to film some footage, which I did for a while. The camera handling distracted me and I ended up going too slow. I went close to a tree and stopped, and some of the snow less than half a metre in front of me fell down towards the bottom of the tree (that's how deep the snow was). It was powder where I was sitting, and it took me a couple of minutes to get out of there. After this, I decided it was a good time to put away the camera and focus on the riding. It was a shame, too, because the rest of the run would have made for really good footage.

Après-ski?

The other thing we discovered about the more "traditional" Japanese ski resorts is that après-ski activities were a bit different. For one, we couldn't find any places resembling a pub or club anywhere on the resort (this could be partly because we couldn't read any of the signs). We ended up getting beer and sake from the convenience store and drinking at the hotel while watching wacky TV on most nights. One particular night we cracked open a local sake that was wrapped in newspaper. It tasted really good, and Dave got a bit too drunk from it. So drunk, in fact, that he couldn't pour himself any water afterwards.

One thing I found out much later from a random English-language publication advertising things to do in Japan was that après-ski in Japan was different to other places around the world. For example, going to an onsen is more common in traditional resorts than going out to a bar. This would probably explain why I was the only person at the hotel's nearby onsen when I decided to check it out. The natural hot spring baths are split up into male and female sections, and you go into them clothesless (in uncommon cases, onsens are mixed-sex and allow the use of towels in the bath). Onsens often have different naturally occurring minerals or chemicals that they claim to have medical benefits. This particular one was a sulphur onsen. I can't speak for the medical benefits, but I can say that this onsen certainly smelled like sulphur, and it was very very hot. Still, it was nice and relaxing. I smelled like a used matchstick afterwards.

The T

In our hotel room when we checked in was, amongst other things, a puzzle. It was a wooden shape puzzle called The T, and we had no idea what we were actually meant to do with it since the instructions were in Japanese. We theorised that we needed to make the shapes shown on the packaging out of the four shapes they gave us. However, it seemed impossible to do so thanks to the irregular shapes. I suggested that perhaps we only needed to make one of the shapes and the other ones were distractions. On the second day, I managed to get one of those shapes and declared victory over David for having solved the puzzle. Still, it bothered me why all these other shapes were there on the box. On the last night, we were packing and since I felt lazy and didn't want to pack yet, I decided to give the puzzle one last chance. After a few minutes a got one shape and gloated some more to Dave. So he had a look and told me to move a few pieces, which led to another shape. And another. And another. And another. A few more minutes later, we had made all the shapes that were displayed on the puzzle's packaging. It was one of the most fulfilling moments of our time away from the ski hill on that leg of the trip.

The next morning we got up and went to the lobby to check out. The lights were out and reception was empty. After ringing the bell for a while a guy eventually came out and checked us out. He asked if we were going to the bus station, and he took us there. This is when we found out they did free pick-ups and drop-offs (d'oh!). When we got there he talked to the station agent for a moment and then he told us that since it was a Sunday, the first bus of the day that headed down to Yamagata wasn't running, which meant we had to wait an hour at the station for our bus. We got up too early.

Japan (part 2) overview

Days spent: 4
Consecutive nights at the same restaurant: 3
Best vending machine location: Mid-mountain on the side of a run
Westerners spotted: 7