Day Eighteen: Hakuba (Snow Problems)

Late post because of the terrible internet here.. though we are in Japan, it is nice to know the Aussies can bring a bit of the shitty internet access from home here with them

Getting up at 7:30am was a struggle for us after a pretty exhausting day, even so, we struggled out of bed and got us some free continental breakfast. We then had to wait a while for the ski rental place to pick us up, fit us out, and send us back, by which time it was 10am, and we felt like our early start was somewhat wasted.

Regardless, we hit the slopes at about 10:30am, and tentatively eased back into skiing. It had been a year since both of us were in Megeve skiing, so we managed to get back into the swing of things fairly quickly. I ended up on my arse on three occasions - though in my defence, once was because I threw myself into the snow to prevent myself from falling off a cliff, thus I'm not sure if it counts... Ali however, managed to stay upright all day. The mountain we were on is called Happo One, and it was absolutely amazing - great runs from top to bottom, though they are not as well marked for difficulty, so we ended up on some tough runs before we had really found our feet.

Unfortunately, as the small Canon we had wasn't charged, and I wasn't willing to haul my camera around, we didn't get any shots of us or the amazing views.

We returned to the lodge for about 4:30 pm, after a long day of skiing. We relaxed for a bit, before heading off to the Echoland area again for dinner - failing to find anything that really ticked our fancy, we ended up (shamefully) at the same Mexican restaurant. It was just as delicious a second time.

Later on, we went to the local Onsen, just down the road from the lodge. This place was nowhere near as nice as the one at Shirakawa-go (so don't feel you missed out, Nik), it was however very relaxing after a reasonably hard day. After getting back to the lodge to find the internet was down yet again, we decided to wander around in the snow, back to the distant convience store, for some much needed snackage. After eating a bunch of Oreos, we turned in for another early morning start

-Dan