Bunny Legs

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James and I went with a group of friends to Mount Diasin to check out what kind of skiing Japan had to offer. As it turns out, the hill we went to was fairly small by Canadian standards. As James said, it was pretty much like a glorified Rabbit Hill. I didn’t mind skiing on a glorified bunny hill because I hadn’t gone skiing since I was, well… a bunny. It had been about 10 years since I clicked into the downhill skis so my abilities proved to be more than a little rusty.

The whole process of renting skis turned out to be a little nuts. It is hard to describe what being a tourist is like in Japan. Basically, you can’t leave ANYTHING to last minute because you are competing with 127 million people who tend to travel within their own borders. To add to the chaos, it was a beautiful day and a national holiday on top of it. This meant spending close to two hours getting our rentals sorted out. We were actually turned away by two rental places because they were completely out of skis. By the time we got everything sorted out it was 12pm, and we had been up since 6:30am!

The day was great. (Notice the distinct lack of exclamation points in the previous sentence). No actually, it was a really good day but I quickly discovered that I do not have the body of a 15 year old anymore. Please send Deepak Chopra’s latest. My legs were in a fair bit of pain as I made my way down the hill in snow plough position for the majority of the day. James kept on trying to teach me how to parallel throughout the day and I finally just started to get the hang of it as we were about to leave.

There are a few things I learned from this experience though:
1. I really miss x-country skiing.
2. Snow made me feel nostalgic.
3. Japanese snowboarders have the same “cool” factor as Canadian snowboarders. (It was truly a fashion show on snow).

We ended up spending the next day exploring the city of Yonago. Here are a couple of highlights:
 A fantastic restaurant/café with excellent waffles. It could holds hundreds if it wanted to (an anomaly in Japan).
 A Body Shoppe. Just can’t find them just anywhere.
 A cool bar where we partied after skiing. It played a ton of mod & Brit pop, almost Halo-esque… sweet sounds to my ear.

Great trip... can’t wait to get back to my cross-country roots.

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Photos

Real Snow.
The first snow I had seen all year.

Wonderful Waffles.
Look at the size. Sheer joy and excitement.