Blogs from Minowa, Nagano, Japan, Asia

Powder in Nozawa-Onsen We just got back from skiing in a small town Nozawa-Onsen in Japan, an hour and half by bullet train from Tokyo. It is famous for its Onsens (Natural spring Hot Baths) which were great for weary muscles and a hard days snowboarding. The Piste was huge with plenty of lifts to choose from and there was no one there during the week as the Japanese don’t seem to take holiday’s skiing in the ski feilds. The snow was the best that we’ve ever seen. It has possibly spoiled us for skiing in Australia and New Zealand. It snowed early in the week, but really started to come down on the day before we were leaving. We woke up on the Sunday morning and found it had been snowing all night, even thou ... read more

Johnnie spent almost an hour typing up our first day and then it didn't post. all that work lost! bummer... any way to recap it very shortly we arrived to take an 80 min. train trip to get to our hotel. we dropped off our crap and headed out to explore our immediate surroundings. As we were walking around Asakusa Rory found 6000 yen on the ground which 5000 yen went to pay for our dinner. Score! then we went to a pachinko palor. this is where Rory blows everyones minds by winning 15000 yen with a single 500 yen bet this is 500 of the left over 1000 that he found, so its all profit. way to go Rory!! so our luck has been pretty good for the start of our trip, we can only ... read more