Dean and I woke up at our usually time of 5.30, but I was a little sorer than normal. As much as I tried to shrug it off, the collision with the skier had taken away some manoeuvrability. My ankle was still causing me grief, my shoulders were a little sore from jarring them, and I feel like I've generally been beaten with a stick. Yet my body wakes me up at 5.30.
After heading downstairs, I wrote some of my blog, as well as watched a steady procession of people come down to watch the golf. The rest of the family came down at 6.30ish and Paul joined them. Paul's had problems with his knees for the past year or so, getting fluid build up on them. He thought his binding settings may be aggrevating it, so had decided to spend the day taking it easy and keeping off them. We didn't see Zoe at all in the morning, even for breakfast, so she was still hurt from yesterday. Mum and Whitney had decided to take her to the monkey park later on, but I was undecided. Do I take it easy then head out later on, or go now and see how I go? I ended up heading out with Dean, as it's harder to find people later on in the day. We got out earlyish, with less people on the slopes, but with the amount of cars in the parking lot and the fact it's a long weekend here, meant the slopes were going to be packed, at least for the morning.
Dean and I couldn't see Tim and Kerry anywhere, so we decided to do the Red Ichinose run to get started. A skier tracked across Dean's path, despite Dean giving him a wide berth, so we decided to head back up and go across the back to Terakoya. I wasn't feeling it. My legs were too stiff, causing jarring, and my movement wasn't what it should be, but I kept going to give Dean a hand. We did a couple of runs down the various tracks at Terakoya, but it was starting to fill up with people. We headed for Higashidate and had a decent run, despite some powder boarders being a tad reckless on narrow runs. After waiting in the line up for the gondola, we decided to grab a beer at the top of the gondola, as it was now about 10 o'clock, and despite eating a decent sized breakfast, it hadn't given us the energy we needed. After taking about 20 mins to drink it, we headed back out, this time we decided to hike the back hill that Dean, Tim and Kerry had done the previous day. It was tiring work, and we ended up hiking further up than they had yesterday, but to find some nice deep, untracked powder it was worth it.
We weren't feeling any better though, so after getting the short lift up to the ridge, we headed back towards Ichinose, a quick play in the powder between Tanne no mori and Ichinose, but we decided it was enough for now. There were too many people and the conditions weren't absolutely fantastic, so we decided to head in, and see how the afternoon panned out.
After grabbing some gyouza from the ramen place down stairs we met up with Paul, who had come down to get something from the shop, we walked around Ichinose for a while, checking out cars and looking at some of the hotels. This was ok, but we eventually headed back to the hotel. We took Paul for his first onsen, as he was having muscular pain from his back/neck. He felt better afterwards, but we were all feeling sleepy, so headed upstairs for a nap.
That was pretty much our day. We woke up, came downstairs and net bludged, while the kids watched Princess Mononoke.
Mum, Whitney and Zoe eventually returned from their sojourn to the Monkey Park, and we decided to see if we could get in to Victoria restaurant, seeing as how there were far less school kids this time. We got told we could eat there at 6pm, so we got ourselves ready to go. As we were going down the stairs, Tim and Kerry were coming up. So they joined us for dinner, unlike the previous nights. For 2100Y each for the buffet, you can't go wrong. Kerry was craving steak, so he probably at his price of that alone. I tried a bit of everything, as well as steak, but what I thought was a potato croquette, was actually a salmon and cream cheese croquette. The taste was ok, but I can't eat cooked fish without feeling ill, so I started feeling sick later on. Still had a pretty good feed though, and steak would help rebuild my tired and sore muscles.
After getting back to the hotel, Tim wanted to use a computer, as he didn't bring his laptop over. Kerry also wanted to get some photos off his camera, so they used Dean's and my netbooks, while we sat around having drinks of baileys and kahlua that Mum and Kerry had picked up from Donki for about $17. Once they had finished, Kerry decided to head back to their hotel to jump in the onsen, as he had hit a tree during the day's riding and was getting sore. Tim followed, as now it was getting on to 8.30 everyone was getting tired.
I went upstairs to watch some TV, but I lasted about 10mins before I nodded off.
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