So it was Sunday already. We had been here a week, and it had flown. Dean was back on deck for some snowboarding after resting his stomach on Saturday. I hadn't taken a break, though I wish I had.
After eating what we could of breakfast, we headed out all suited up ready to go. Dean had his DSLR on him, and it was a bluebird day. We wandered down the hill and decided to hop on a bus to Yokote-yama, an area we had neglected to reach last year. Although it's not that far in actual distance, it took us an hour to get there with all the stops and such. When we went to get off, we had problems, I went through fine, but when the bus driver tried to scan Dean's RFID chip (used for lift passes) it wouldn't scan. Dean showed him the receipt and everything, to show it wasn't expired, but it still wouldn't scan through, so Dean had to pay for the bus fare. The bus company is seperate to the lifts, so I suppose that if it doesn't scan through, they don't get paid.
Anyway, after fluffing around with that, we started walking up to the first lift at the foot of Yokote. For some stupid reason Dean's chip was still on the fritz, so the lifty went and exchanged it for a new one. After that it didn't have a problem.
To get to the top, we had to take three lifts and we are sort of glad we did. At 2309m (80m higher than Kosciusko!) it is the highest ski-able peak in the Shiga Kogen area. There are a couple that look bigger, but they don't have lifts (heli-skiing would be sweet). As you can imagine with such a high elevation and 100% visibility, it was an awesome view. Dean and Conrad spent ages just taking photos, and by the time they finished, it was getting on to 11.30. Darn we had missed a couple hours of boarding. Oh well, we were feeling hungry, so we went to the bakery up top of Yokote (highest bakery in Japan). Mum and Whitney had warned us that there was no cake, but we decided to see what they had anyway. Dean and Conrad got a pizza bread thing, while I got some garlic bread. I also ordered a jumbo dog, thinking it would be a usual hot dog size. I was mistaken. This thing was 30cm long, and it wasn't a typical hotdog roll either. It was like someone had hacked a slice in a vienna loaf and stuffed a sausage, tomato sauce, mustard and onion in it. I finished it anyway, but it kept me full/bloaty for the next couple of hours.
We looked around the top some more, but it seems like most of the mountain is ski only. So we got the lift back down. It is kind of scary when you leave the lift building and you just watch the ground fall away at a great angle. We took some more pictures before having a quick run down. It was a little bit crusty, but otherwise we had seen what we came to see.
After waiting for a while we caught the bus back to Hasuike and took a ride on the Shiga Kogen Ropeway. It's a sky carriage that goes between Hasuike and Nishidate-yama. It has some pretty good views, but Dean caught quite a lot of it on his video camera.
We boarded back from the ropeway, and kept traversing the various mountains before we got over to Yakebitai-yama. We had a couple of good runs, but after spending so much time getting to and from Yokote, it was getting late with a few lifts shutting down. The pistes weren't in the best shape either, as Yakebitai gets all the morning sun, and with 2 days worth of weekend skiers on, it was getting a little crusty in parts. Not that you couldn't find powder at the sides of the runs, but it was a little slippery in parts. By the time we got back to Ichinose, it was getting on to 5pm. We were all wrecked.
I should have probably rested for one day, but being fool-hardy, I kept pushing on. Problem was when I started running out of energy, I fell over more and hurt my stomach muscles again, and again. Oh well, I'm here for a limited time, I'm making the most of it.
We had dinner at Victoria restaurant again. I needed some meat to repair the muscles anyway, but afterwards, I crashed out on bed.
I'll put pictures up when I get the chance.
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