I woke up at roughly 5.45, but after lying in bed for a few minutes, I knew it was time to get up. Only mum was awake as well, so I chucked on my shirt and jacket and went for a walk. After getting a coffee can out of the machine outside, I started down the street. It was about 2 degrees in Tokyo, so I walked briskly to get up some warmth. With everything closed at 6am on a Sunday morning, there was one place I knew would be. So after boarding the subway, I headed for Donki. During our previous excursion the day before, I had briefly looked in the basement at the alcohol section. With our not making it back to Liquors Hasegawa, I wanted to grab something for drinking in the snow.
I made a quick trip down there, and eventually decided on a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, some Suntory brandy, some tonic water, and I also picked up a neck warmer. It was the princely some 4200Y (1680 for BS, 990Y for the neck warmer, 1080Y for the brandy and the remainder in tonic water). I then hot footed it back to the subway, as our plan was to make the 8.36 shinkansen to Nagano. It was about 7am by the time I got back to the hotel, with Dean messaging me just as I was coming up in the lift.
After a quick pack-up and a cheerio to the staff, we were on our way. The subway got us to Tokyo central in quick time (thank heavens we came across the quick line change), so we headed for the ticket office. After a very helpful girl got us the tickets, we still had about 45mins to kill. We walked around the north end of the station, but it was still early so none of the restaurants had really opened. A trip to the loo was in order, then find some food. I had suggested getting bento boxes to eat on the train, but everyone wanted something more substantial. As we walked towards the east gate, we found a little cafe that was open, and with a breakfast set for 700Y we went for that. The breakfast included bacon, egg, a thick piece of toast, some salad and some onion soup as well as a drink. Definitely not bad for 700Y. They did take a little time to get them ready though, so I'm staring at the clock. Damn... we had 20mins to eat and get to the right platform. I had to give the order to Conrad to eat fast (He's a notoriously slow eater), so while everyone was finishing theirs, I fixed the bill up and we were ready to go. Put the ticket into the gate, take it out... Go up the stairs to the shinkansen under level, then find our correct platform. Up some more stairs (well, escalators, but we still walked up them) we were ready to hop on... Except that they were still cleaning them. It's pretty nice when you can hop onto a train and you know its been cleaned 2 mins before hand. The train left right on time (I've actually had a late subway train this time! The driver will have to commit sepukku out of shame!) and we were on our way. So glad we takkyubin'd the board bags.
Shinkansen are something that the whole world should enjoy. It's quite relaxing sitting on a train, watching the scenery pass by at 250km/h, while having a beer. It was only 9.30 in the morning, but there were guys having a breakfast beer in the cafe, so we figured a beer on the train can't be taboo, especially if they're selling it.
We arrived at Nagano, and rather than rushing to make the next bus up to Shiga Kogen, we had decided to have an hour stopover. This worked better for mum and Whitney, as we could go to the toilet, get another bite to eat, go across to the 7-11 and get some money out without having to rush around like headless chickens. It was getting close to the next bus leaving so we left Becks Cafe (no, not the beer) and headed downstairs to the bus stop. Soon we were watching as the semi-familiar scenery of Central Nagano gave way to outer areas, farms, then onto the expressway, before we start the journey up the mountain. I was a little worried coming in on the shinkansen as we hadn't seen that much snow, but my fears were allayed once we got near Nagano. The bus allayed them even more, as while we were heading through Nakano and Yamanouchi the powder puffs got bigger and bigger. We had seen it during a bad year, then a standard year, but the snow this year seemed to be better than when we had last been. As we weaved our way up through Sun Valley, Maruike and Hasuike, the snow got more plentiful. We seem to have got the express bus, because it didn't stop at Hasuike, and went straight passed the turn off for Hoppo Onsen. We headed into the tunnel, and coming out a kilometer later closer to Takamagahara, the snow had started falling!! We were getting amped, but for some reason, the bus driver head around Ichinose, then dropped us off down the hill near the lifts. We had to walk up the hill in the snow (which had some uncompacted bits under foot), towards Khuls, our accomodation for the night. My jacket was catching teh snow, so it was refreshing, considering I probably burnt 3 meals worth of energy..
We checked in without much ado, took our bags up to our room, then headed downstairs to collect our bags that we had sent up before us. They were waiting for us in a little storage room, so I quickly unpacked our luggage bag and grabbed my snow pants and jacket. I suited up, and we all headed downstairs to grab some pizza. Having already had a BLT and a Mont Blanc cake, I didn't really feel like a pizza (there'd be plenty of time for that during the week) so after a quick snack I was ready to go. I was already suited up, so I headed downstairs to get my board prepped. The other 2 eventually made it down, so we were out and snowboarding at 2. That only gave us about 2.5hrs to board, but we made the most of it, covering a few different areas to re-familiarise Conrad. After boarding in Australia, the soft powder was so nice to board on. The snow was falling heavier than when we stepped off the bus, and was making it really enjoyable. I forgot to bring my neck warmer from the room though, so it felt I was getting frost bite on my lips and chin. I floated a few snow banks and got stuck and fell over (I was quickly burning up my remaining energy), but was having a ball doing it... if it snowed like this the whole week, I'd be ecstatic.
We started off at Ichinose, doing Conrad's training run a few times, just to get our feet back. There was snow banks to glide, and down towards the bottom, where there's a couple of tracks around trees and stuff, we did our best to stay moving, as the powder was deep in some areas. We then headed across via the other quad lift (closest to Khuls) to Takamagahara. The top section in between Ichinose and Takamagahara is a bit flat to start off with, but once you get the first little slope, you can keep your speed. We did that and upon getting to the to of Mammoth (the name for Takamagahara's main slope) we found a lot of fresh, fluffy snow to the right of the run. It was awesome as because of the clouds and the snow falling, visibility and depth perception was not as good, but it taught me to be a bit less rigid in my legs. The rest of the run was a little more "sketchy" as it had been criss-crossed by skiiers all day, so with the low light, again, you had to roll with it. We made it to the top and it was getting around 3.45, so we decided to do a quick run through one of our favourite runs at Higashidate. This run isn't super steep, but you can pick up a bit of speed, it goes through a tree section with a lot of twists and turns in it, which makes it quite a bit of fun at speed. We kept going, crossing over the olympic course, through towards the Higashidate gondola. It was closer to 4 now, so we decided to start heading back as we didn't want to miss the last lift. Over the top of Higashi towards Ichinose, but I didn't keep my speed and didn't really feel like skating, so I just strapped in and went down the black run at the top. This is one place I'm thankful for going to Hotham, because Hotham taught me how to ride mogulled up, steep black sections. And there wasn't the whole hitting a death cookie or rock danger with this one. We made it down the bottom, just as the little pair lift next to the main quad was shutting down, we went through the gates and jumped on the quad before heading up for our last run of the day.
There is quite visibly more snow here this time. On the last run, I went to shortcut an area I had done a few times when we last here, but this time, I got stuck about a 2m from the run. As I was dragging myself out, ski patrol came up the hill on their snow mobile, and just kept going... (I obviously didn't need help, just covered head to tail in snow).
We kept on going, but it was clear that I had run out of energy, I was making more mistakes, not taking the lines that I should have, and falling over more (though it was when I was doing stupid stuff) but we shot out the end of the red run that connects with the green run and straight across to our hotel for the night.
Originally, we had planned on staying at the Ichinoseso Hotel, one of the two hotels closest to the Ichinose family area. This is sort of by the wayside thing, as there are hotels across the road and to the lower side of the lift that are virtually as close to the lift, but they aren't Ski-in-ski-out technically speaking. However, after repeated emails to the Ichinoseso with no reply, then checking availability, we found they were all booked out. Because of this, we then had to scout around for other hotels within our price range. What eventually came together, due to availibility and pricing was 2 hotels. We'd stay in one for one night, then the other for 6 nights. The first night hotel is Hotel Khuls, which is the other ski in/out hotel, directly opposite the Ichinoseso. Other than coming here for a pizza, we really didn't know what to expect. We had checked in before boarding, so our bags and stuff were already at the room. It was to be a tatame and futon affair. Before dinner, the room just had the table in the middle with tea available as well as some crazy Japanese TV to watch. So we just had to wait before dinner was served at 5.30pm. This is probably where the extra money to stay there went. There was a buffet with a mixture of Japanese and Western food, and plenty of meat, just what your muscles need after being broken down from exercise. We were one of the first groups in, so we got our first plate, then our second before most were even there. They had strawberries, mango and pineapple as well, with some little tiramisu for afters.
After we had ate our fill, we thought we'd get the jump on people, by going to the onsen (public hot spring bath), while they were eating. As I mentioned last time, I'm not so good with the whole nuding up thing, so I kept a bath towel around me, before I sat down to wash. The procedure with these things is, you wash and shampoo first before getting in, then wash and shower the minerals off after you get out. Fortunately, there was only one guy in there and he left while I was washing, so I could turn away and not see anything. Dean had come in as well, so he sat and washed where we couldn't see each other, before I got in. The extra hot water was soothing. My back was killing after carrying my backpack, and bum was sore after landing on it down the bottom of a slope. Conrad eventually came in (everything with Conrad is eventually), so the three of us were in there looking at the face only. Then the dinner rush must have been over, because people started coming in. This made Dean and I uncomfortable, so we washed up and got changed. Only problem now was that the girls had the room key, so even if the door was unlocked, we didn't have the tag thing to put the power on. So we sat around watching the slope, where a few people were out doing night skiing. I don't know how they do it, as after I stop at the end of a day, I'm wrecked. But it looked like the snow was still falling, although not as heavy as it had been while we were out. The wind had also picked up a tad, and you could see it pushing the snow across the corduroy the groomers had made, as well as little whirly winds.
When the girls eventually got out, we headed back to the room. Time to crack open the Bombay Sapphire, so Mum mixed up a couple of G+T's, then sent me downstairs to get grapefruit juice which she couldn't find. We had a couple of drinks, but we were so tired after travelling and snowboarding, that it was only 8.30 when we turned the lights off.
I must add that my video camera ran out of batteries on the bus up, so no videos in the snow as yet.
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