Going to the Geto

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The weekend we arrived in Iwate was the first month of spring so there was still plenty of snow around. A Japanese teacher Megan met in Kitakami - Yuki, offered to take us along with her friend Harumi and son Cougar to Geto Ski Resort. How could we refuse! I for one had never seen the snow before so I was thrilled. We were picked up at Megan’s apartment and headed for the resort, only a short ½ hour car ride away. I was like a kid it was so unreal, I couldn’t believe I was in Japan looking at and touching real snow! It was SO white and it looked like clouds there was so much of it everywhere all I wanted to do was make a snow angel and build a snowman. I kept taking my gloves off so I could feel it on my hands it was amazing! Been brave as we are Megan and I thought we’d try our hand at snowboarding; even though we were encouraged to try skiing first as we were new beginners, we still opted for the snowboard um way cooler then skiing! I have to say snowboarding is not as easy as it looks! I only managed to get one foot on the board and ended up spending most of the day on my arse! I gave up after about an hour. Yuki and Harumi tried teaching me and I felt sorry for them cause I seriously was not getting the hang of it! We decided to get a lift pass up to the top of the resort cause there was a ski jumping competition going on. The lift was fun it was so high up. I was surprised because when I was learning to snowboard I got really hot under all my gear but when we were sitting still watching the competition I got absolutely freezing! It took us about 20 minutes to get out of all our gear and get dressed again. We stopped off for some Kim chi (spiced cabbage) Ramen it was so yum and only 400yen ($4aud) I will definitely be trying my hand at skiing this Christmas when the snow comes back and I really want to learn and well apparently there is nothing else to do in Morioka in the winter but ski. It’ll probably blow your budget if you wanted to go skiing all the time here and didn’t have any equipment, so we’re gonna check out some recycle shops for some second hand stuff which we’re told we can pick up for around 10000yen ($100aud) good stuff!

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