Last day of skiing

Another blue sky day for our last day of skiing. We hiked up higher from the top lift at Akakan, took in the views and dropped into a valley we've been skiing regularly - 2 hours up, 20 mins. down. All packed up this evening ready to get away tomorrow morning. Train to Nagano, bullet train to Tokyo then on to Narita airport for our flight out at 8pm this evening. It's been an intense time, lots of good snow and powder turns. We're both looking forward to wearing nothing on our feet and sleeping in our own comfy bed.

second last day

We woke up to a blue bird day this morning. Hit the slopes for a couple of runs with Maseo san (he only bothers to ski when it's sunny) which was fun. He's a machine, 61 y.o. and he blasted off down a black mogul run, no problem, put us and our fatigued little muscles to shame!

Guess what, after nearly two full weeks we finally got a full view of Mt Myoko... hooray! In the photo, look at the left hand side and you can see a small cloud in a high valley. It's actually steam puffing up from an onsen.

Maseo san pointed out the various landmarks as we ascended on the gondola. Nozawa Onsen to the east, Shiga Kogen to the south east, sea of Japan to the north etc. Mark, Tracy and Fin may be able to make out Nozawa on one of the photos here.

The sunny day also brought with it the opportunity to grab some photos from around the place.

Happy campers - Vego Feasto

Mrs Maseo san cooked us up a vego feast yesterday evening. She did an amazing job and served us up 10 or so delicious dishes along with a soup pot in the centre of the table... yum!

Madarao / Tangram Ski Circus

Don't ask, I have no idea! Anyway we skied at this mountain with two linked resorts today. It's across the valley from where we're staying, we look across to it from the ski fields all the time. Maseo san ran us up in the morning, it's just a 30 min. drive and then picked us up at the end of the day. Weather was on and off, but not too bad at all early. We had a reasonable ski here, noticeably less snow than Myoko, but still a good 2 meter base and no problem at all. We had a funny time finding our way around with the clouds and light snow drifting in and out, and we were constantly fooled by the trail map which seemed to assume that one already knew the layout. It'll be interesting to compare notes with the Davis's who skied here a week ago. The Jpop blaring over the speakers drove us spare, by the end of the day we wanted to scream!

We were amazed once more with the Japanese folks, both old and young, and their ability (and habit) of taking naps in public places. Be that a train, bus, waiting room or cafeteria table at a ski resort. This cafeteria was quite large with a very high ceiling, and not one but two hang gliders suspended above our heads. Dotted throughout were people with their heads on the table having a snooze. I couldn't resist getting a shot of these girls napping at the table next to us. I think this is a great and remarkable thing to do. I'm impressed that individuals in this society feel safe enough to do so in public, there certainly seems to be no stigma attached to the practice at all. The funniest thing I saw though is as follows; we were standing in a que at the bottom of the gondola station over at Goryu during our first ski week, waiting for the gondola to open. There were 50 or so people lined up with us and we were mid que with a group of three young snowboarders in front of us. They were just standing and carrying their snow boards. The gondola opened and the que started to move up the stairway to the loading dock. Two of the young guys had moved ahead, but their mate was just standing there... and still standing there... and swaying a little. We waited for him to move, he didn't. His mates were a few meters ahead and they looked back and started to josh him a bit, and gave him a call. He woke up, yes he was actually snoozing standing up, and then he shuffled along to join his mates, fantastic!