This holiday was one of the most exciting and fun parts of my year abroad so far, so I hope I can show how amazing it was at least a little. We went on the 28th of December and came back on the 3rd of January. I’m going to post one day at a time, otherwise this would be even longer than 50 thousand elephants stood trunk to tail! Hope you enjoy!
Arrival Day
Originally, we really wanted to go skiing in Hokkaido; the place most known for snow frolicking in Japan, but alas we left the booking too late and we had to find elsewhere. But it turned out to be totally perfect in every way so I think we actually did ourselves a favour! We ended up going somewhere called Hakuba, somewhere very close to where I went before with Sam in this post: Mt. Tateyama and Mt. Kamikochi. It took us aaaages to get there though, and we spent a lot of the morning doing silly things like shopping for jeans for Mitch and myself and munching! We finally left the station around 12pm and made our way to Tachikawa station, a few stops away. We had to sit there for ages though! So we amused ourselves with ‘sunhat’ photos and monorail spotting!
The rest of the journey was pretty exciting; getting further into the countryside, further into mountains and watching the snow pile up! We got really excited when we started seeing half a foot…. How premature our excitement was!
When we got there I phoned the owner of the place we were staying as it said he could pick us up from the station and he was already there! I had phoned earlier but he’d told me to phone again when we were close but I guess he came anyway! He was so very relieved to know I spoke Japanese, he kept telling me I’d made it a lot easier! It was very fun to be able to just chat to him straight off the bat, he told me that the lodge was sort of out of the way and that as we hadn’t booked dinner it would be a good idea to go to the shop before going to the lodge. I kept calling it hotel but he told me it was more of a lodge after the 4th or so time! So Mitch and I went in while he waited and we got some munchies; milk and chips and ketchup and some other bits. We found some fun things, I’ll explain in the pictures.
The owner heated up the food we bought, we had a quick dinner, chilled in the lounge and had a quick walk down to the hotsprings (which were closed) and back. The first night was so blissful! It turned out we had the whole place to ourselves for that first night, as other guests weren’t arriving till the middle of the night. The lodge itself was glorious. It’s called Earl Grey and is on a long hill road that’s a mile or so from the town centre so it’s silent outside and just beautiful. The inside was just as any lodge should be in my mind; sheepskin rugs by a hearty fire, a huge wooden dining room table, wooden floors, knick knacks and ornaments everywhere and places to sit and relax. Mitch and I were so, so happy with the place and we felt immediately relaxed and happy when we got inside. Seriously; it’s an amazing place to stay!!
It had become quite late when all of a sudden there were some people at the door who Mitch and I assumed were the middle-of-the-night guests come early but when I heard lots of English and Japanese clashing I went to investigate. It turned out that the owner had only just seen the booking and was about to go and try and find the new guests when they’d arrived. They were a lovely Australian couple who we got on really well with as we got to know them, but as they didn’t speak Japanese I got to try my hand at interpreting! Those first few minutes I had to explain that their room was still cold as he hadn’t had chance to heat it before they arrived and then to the owner that they’d had a problem with their last hotel and had to leave pretty sharpish. But when everything was sorted we sat and chatted a bit as you do, before heading off to bed with excitement for the morning’s skiing lessons!!!
Stay tuned for the Mitch Chronicles part 6…. Where the skiing fun begins!
Maisy In Japan 
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