The Mitch Chronicles Part 7 – Ski Holiday day 3
Second day of skiing lessons and…………. a surprise!!!
We decided to have lessons for two days as we both made really great progress on the first day and didn’t see any reason to stop! So another 6000 yen each and we were off! I should mention here that the ski lift pass was actually quite expensive too, we bought 2 days worth each on our first day as we knew we’d do two days of skiing at least, whether it was lesson style or not so we saved a little bit of money but it still cost 4500 yen per day each (about £26). It seems like quite a lot of money to me, since there are so many hundreds of people on the slopes… But I guess when you take into account that that is all you pay; there’s no entry fee; I suppose it works out.
The second day we had a different teacher, which was ok but he wasn’t as nice as the lady before. She was really fun and nice but this guy sort of seemed to think we were an imposition or something. He was a good teacher, he showed us some more technical things and we did improve still but we were a little sad that he wasn’t as fun-loving as our previous teacher. That being said he did push us past what we thought we could do! I forgot to mention that the previous day it had been only Mitch and I, so we basically got a private lesson! There was a middle aged guy with us on this time though, and he also seemed to think we were dragging him back. But he had only paid for a half day so after lunch he was gone. But he seemed to lighten up a little when I fell over in a rather comedic way! I leant back a bit too far and ended up lying on my back with my skis still skiing along the floor, so I rather looked like I’d given up and just wanted to have a quick nap while finishing my run towards them!! We had quite a few funny falls over the few days, we laughed at each other an awful lot and thankfully didn’t do any damage.
We had learnt our lesson the day before and instead of pizza we found the place that Anna and Clint recommended called ‘Beer and Bar’ which very quickly became our favourite place to eat! It didn’t sell meals as such, but there were all sorts of bits of meals to pick from, our favourite of all being the cheesy hash browns!!! They were so delicious I’m dribbling just typing about them….. But enough of that. We had edamame, cheesy hash browns, sausage, melon soda and coke. It was just what we needed after a morning of learning some technical stuff.
Once we got back on the slopes we were down to just us two again and the teacher was a little friendlier which was great. The only problem we had was the wind picked up so much that the 5 minute gondola took us over an hour as they kept stopping it! It did mean that we got to watch the snowmobile people for a while and have a long look at the mountain tops so it wasn’t all bad. I mentioned in the gondola that I wanted to be able to do the jumps and the half-pipe and after one run down the main slope we had been practising on, he took us to the top of the half-pipe! We didn’t realise he was serious a first, we thought he just wanted to show us! But then he said we could do it if we wanted and I thought, what the heck, and said I would but Mitch took a little more convincing; it was his second day skiing ever so that’s understandable! But we went for it and it was great fun. Mitch and I nearly smashed head first into each other and one snowboarder actually did take Mitch out but other than that, we managed it, it was so exhilarating and we got a great story out of it! We also started going over loads of the jumps and the mini cross-country bits, going up and down the snow banks at the sides of slopes and generally learning to have fun in ways other than skiing down!
The teacher was kind enough to stay 20 minutes on after the lesson finished to make up for the gondola taking so long which was nice seeing as it wasn’t his fault. We headed down the mountain and had another round of hash browns while we waited for Owner and found Clint and Anna there already. Have some pictures to break up this wall of text!
So next is the wonderful surprise! We wanted to check out the Shinto shrine in town; it looked very sweet from the outside so even though our Mexican reservation was at 6pm, we went a little earlier and got dropped at the shrine. It was very close to the restaurant anyway so we had loads of time. It turned out to be even cuter than it looked; you follow a long line past the gates and up some stairs and you end up in a little courtyard with a gift shop, tiny bridge and a huge set of steps to the main building. There was a tree next to the stairs that was so wide it would have taken about 15 people to surround it I’m sure! We walked all the way up and the view was great, everything was decked out for New Year’s (which is a very important holiday to the Japanese) so it had a warm, traditional feel despite the snow.
Here comes the best bit! We walked back down after a little more investigating and Mitch stopped me on the bridge. Let me first explain that I’m stupidly good at guessing presents which is why, but he handed me a little plastic capsule, the kind you get in those machines you stick a few bob in and wind the wheel. I saw a small blue box. I knew it!! I opened it up and found the most beautiful engagement ring (ever, of course) and suddenly Mitch was trying to go all one-knee on me! I knew I would have laughed and cringed if he’d got all the way down ‘cos I find it far to cliché so he asked me like a gentleman and gave me a cuddle. I was so happy I didn’t even notice that the wind had picked up until a load of snow fell off the trees beside us! ‘Twas like it wanted to say congratulations too. We spent a little while trying to take some photos of ourselves on the bridge, but there was nowhere good to put the camera and the flash only lit our feet!! I’ll put them up here anyway 😛
So it was with new excitement that we skipped over to the Mexican! They looked positively disgusted to see such happy people…. And we didn’t care one bit! We took some photos, told some people and had a wonderful meal. I really recommend it if you’re ever in Hakuba; it’s called Uncle Steven’s. We had a great time there and the food was great. When we walked out of the place, we found irony staring us in the face in the form of a giant sign with an arrow pointing to the German restaurant we had spent so long looking for last night! Ah well! After we had eaten, we called plenty of family and told them all, but couldn’t get through to everyone so we went for a shopping trip and bought a couple of memorabilia things, a snowman sake bottle and cup with Hakuba written on it, some souvenirs and so on. We called Mitch’s parents afterwards too and then went to wait for Owner in a small car park where he’s dropped us off. There was a huuuuge pile of snow so we spent a good while climbing and sliding down it!! The whole day and night was filled with fun and snow and exciting adventures, it was so wonderful; I just wish I could describe it better!!
The Mitch Chronicles continues soon… for now, I’ll leave you with this Santa that was in the lodge porch 🙂
Maisy In Japan 