February 16 - Iwatake, Hakuba

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Today we wake up freezing cold. The heaters stopped working last night. The walls are paper thin, and I could hear the heater beeping in the room beside us too. These heaters are powered by karosene. This town doesn't have central heating. We need to start the heater up when we enter a room and shut it off when we leave. This place, West Coast Inn, seems like a run down hostel. The people that run this place are nice, but the accommodation itself is not. It is dirty too. The same pee stains have been on the toilet seats since we got here. Darren was nice and cleaned one of the toilet seats for me. When something goes wrong here, it is tough to find someone. This place is run like a free for all. All of the bathrooms ran out of toilet paper at one point and I couldn't find anyone, so I just started snooping in closet doors until I found some to restock the bathrooms. This place is one of the cheapest places in Hakuba, but it is still about $90/night. It should be more upkept than this.



We are off to Iwatake today. We make our breakfast at the hotel and then jump on the shuttle to take us to the hill. Brad told us that Iwatake has some good tree runs. We are looking forward to that and hopefully it won't be too choppy and tracked out. It hasn't snowed in a few days.



We take the Gondola up the hill and are greeted with a snow sculpture. All of the resorts have had some sort of animation figures carved out in the snow. Darren typically knows the characters, but I am clueless. This one looks like a cat with a bus as a body. We hit a few runs off the side of the mountain and can still find some powder in the trees. We continue to run into a large group of Aussies. Darren calls Hakuba 'Little Australia'. There are so many Aussies here!! Apparently Australian is going through a crazy heat wave on one side of the country and flooding on the other side. The Aussies like to escape the heat and hit the slopes - it sounds so hot there that they don't even want to do anything outside.



The backside of Iwatake is amazing! The tree runs are glorious. We keep doing laps off of the one chairlift. We spot some serows in the distance and Darren tries to get up and close with them to get a photo. However, he said they are very skiddish, so he can't get close. We love the tree runs here. Riding through decidous trees is great and we don't have to worry about tree wells.



We have lunch at the top cafeteria. I am super hungry today and feel like I need to eat some protein. Thinking about it, I haven't eaten much protein because I keep giving everything to Darren because it's pork. I get a curry beef rice dish. The meat served in Japan always comes with all of the fat. Alot of the time, it tastes like we are just eating pure fat. At first I didn't like it, but I'm starting to get used to it. Darren gets some chicken nuggets and shares them with me. Protein! That's all I want right now.



We spend the afternoon doing laps off the backside. The temperature is cranked and it is like spring skiing today. Darren and I hit the terrain park. Again, we do some laps and I take off my jacket for a bit, just so that I'm not cooking. There are so many people in the terrain park. It's pretty fun with some good variety for beginners and advanced folk. I hit a few jumps and really want to clear the flat of one jump, so I hit it with more speed than normal and end up wiping out. This is going to hurt my butt for a few days. I feel like my pride is hurt the most and I know that I have to do it again. The next time I hit it, it was with less speed and I have no problem landing it. We spend the last few runs flying down the groomers. There is a lot of good speed on the groomers and some good little tricks off of the side. Super fun and fast. We get to the bottom and think we are going to be done for the day. We run into Dom and Veronica. We grab a quick beer and then decide to do a run with Dom. My legs are getting really tired and I can't seem to land anything anymore, but I keep trying. We get to the bottom with still 15 minutes before the shuttle bus picks us up. I convince Dom to go up the chairlift with me for one last run. Darren and Veronica said that they will see us at the hotel if we miss the bus. We race down the run and nearly snowboard right onto the shuttle bus. We made it with about 1 minute to spare. Success.



All of the Aussies are on the bus and they had some misfortunate encounters including a sprained wrist and a dislocated collar bone. This group goes back home tomorrow, so at least it was the end of their trip. We get back to the hotel and immediately head over to the onsen. In the onsen is Amanda (the Aussie from the other day), another Aussie and Veronica. Veronica loves to grab heaps of snow and eat it while soaking in the warm, mineral water. It is a nice contrast. I am happy to get a good shower in at the onsen and I feel refreshed.



Darren and I really need to get some groceries, so we don't have to eat out all of the time. We head over to the grocery store and finally get there while it is open. We get some sausages and a bunch of other food for breakfast and lunch. It is kind of fun just walking about the grocery store and seeing what they have. In the bread section, they have croissants, buns and white bread. I see a couple of whole wheat bread, but it is way more expensive. Whole grains is not a thing here. However, we can buy an assortment of slices of white bread. We can buy white bread in 4, 5, 6, 8 slices. The bread is all of the same size, but the thickness of the slices vary. It is wild how thick some of these bread slices get! In the meat section, we find lots of pork, beef and chicken. We don't find any sandwich meat that it not pork, so we find a can of tuna instead. Well, we hope it is tuna anyways, it says 'Chicken of the Sea' on it. The seafood and fish section is by far the most impressive with squid, loads of fish, shell fish and a few things we aren't sure of. The fruit and vegetable section is pretty similar to ours, but some things are individually packaged and some fruit is very expensive. We get some strawberries, oranges and grape tomatoes. We didn't spend much time in the other aisles, but we noticed alot of noodles. We run into Dom and Veronica again at the grocery store and they are searching for dinner tonight. We can also buy alcohol in the grocery store here. When we get to the checkout, they do things a little different. We originally had a green basket and then they ring in the items and transfer the food a grey basket. Then someone else takes our money. We carry the grey basket to a table and packet our goodies into bags here. This definitely makes the lineups move a lot faster. I like it.



I am starving now! We still want to experience Japanese food, so we want to find a good restaurant. We don't even make it back to the hotel, about 5 blocks again and decide to find something. At the train station, there are a bunch of buildings and my eyes become opened up. There are lots of hidden restaurants, we just can't read the writing and they are blended into the area. We find a menu that looks really good. We have to walk up some dark stairs and I look at Darren and say, "Let's turn around if there isn't anyone in the restaurant." It looks a bit dodgey. When we get inside, it is nearly full in this small establishment and mostly Japanese people. Ok, it is probably good. We are first seated at a table, but then move us up to the bar. Here we can watch them cook our food. They are very efficient in the kitchen. There are only three of them, but they work in unison. It is incredible to watch them cook and they mostly use chopsticks, even when flipping things in the pan. This is definitely a ma and pa run restaurant. I get a sweet chili chicken dish and Darren gets teriyaki pork. Both dishes are incredible and this is some of the best food I have had in Japan so far. How do we even explain to people how to get to this spot? We feel like we just found a hidden gem.



Back at the hotel, a bunch of people are hanging around in the common area. We meet a few more Aussies, including Jesse and his girlfriend Amy. They seem like they get upset very easily when they didn't have a good day, but someone else did. They definitely don't like to miss out on having fun. We chat with everyone for a while. We were originally planning on going to Echoland, but we are just so tired. Maybe tonight I can get a better sleep since the heaters are working again.

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