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!

It wasn’t so clear today!

See the foot outline? Snow makes a useful notepad for the teachers to explain with!

On the very right is the first teacher we had. The mountains are amazing

This is the final turn of the beginner slope down to the main bit. Our teacher for the day is the guy in the red jacket on the right at the bottom, waiting for us!

Those hash browns…. I just can’t explain their goodness….

Edamame!

Mitch munching.

Winter wonderland indeed!

Up again

Mitch’s first jump

Beer and Bar’s mascot really amazed Mitch!

A last look before hometime

Oddly cylindrical cloud with red fiery looking tones

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 😛

The bedecked gate

The second gate and stairs up to the courtyard

The bridge that was to become so meaningful 🙂

The view from the top of the big flight of stairs up to the main building. You can see the bridge by the third light

Decorations on the main building

The giant tree with Mitch for scale

Trying to take ‘just engaged’ photos!

This worked a little better but not by much!!

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!!

My ring!

The capsule he put it in to stop me guessing before I got it!

Frozen margarita! It was so much bigger than we expected and we ended up sharing

❤

“please don’t eat meeeee”

Happy bunny

So this was just next to where we started the previous day… Maybe I’ll look for signs more closely next time!

Wheeee!!

The Mitch Chronicles continues soon… for now, I’ll leave you with this Santa that was in the lodge porch 🙂

The Mitch Chronicles Part 5 – Ski Holiday Day 1

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!

Sunhats!

Skytrain monorail thingy

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!

On the way!

Mitch surprised me with a scrummy panda bun

Some nice scenery

So many of these mountains…. why do the trees make them look like they have an outline??

Surprised door handles!

Purple train seats, the first sign that this trip is well planned

So much snow!! Or so we thought!

Just pulling in to Hakuba station

Official proof of our arrival!

We got there at around 6pm

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!!!

In the shops… you can find your height and more in snow outside but they still sell entire block of ice? For the lazy igloo builders perhaps?!!

The beautiful fireplace

Relaxy time!

The back of the lodge; simply beautiful.

Going for a walk/slide down the road!

Some of the first monster icicles we found

I could sit on the snow and not touch the floor!

Mitch’s lovely picture of the lamp on the path up to the lodge

My snow angel 🙂 I also jumped flat out into many a snow drift 🙂

Stay tuned for the Mitch Chronicles part 6…. Where the skiing fun begins!