Boarding at Kokusai

The past weekend was a long weekend in Japan. We had a nice long weekend, but both of us worked for part of it - I still don't get told of Japanese holidays until the day before the holiday. On Friday night we had some friends over for dinner. Shawn cooked us a nice meal and the Japanese woman who attended watched Shawn cooking away and me not helping him at all in utter amazement.

On Sunday we hit the slopes at a local ski hill called Kokusai. We bought a package ticket and for about $50 we bought a full day lift ticket, full gear rental (it wasn't until we got there that we realized that included ski pants and jacket if we wanted), and a bus ride to and from the hill. The bus ride up was about 1.5 hours and the weather was pretty chilly and windy but the snow conditions were great and we had a fun day.

Because it was a long weekend the hill was insanely busy and a lot of our day was spent in line - line for the bathroom; line for rental gear; line to get lunch; line to return rental gear; line for the skilift.... In Hokkaido the schoolkids get an extended holiday through almost the entire month of January. The thinking is that it will allow the munchkins to really enjoy the beautiful Hokkaido winter - so the hill was swarming with miniature speed demons ripping past us. The cafeteria was a ratrace as you could imagine, but as proof of my earlier statement that Japanese people can sleep anywhere - here is a photo of a guy dead asleep amid a loud and crowded cafeteria.

I spent the better part of the day with my face in the snow, but Shawn seems to have picked up snowboarding fully now and didn't fall much at all. I now have whiplash and very sore forearms from using my hands to break my falls. By the end of the day I was having more success though and I am looking forward to going out again in the hope that I will remain vertical more often than not. Overall the hill was really nice and had nice long groomed runs and the snow was great. We are looking forward to more days in the Hokkaido snow.