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Published: March 17th 2009
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We headed to Nagano this past weekend to try and get one last ski weekend in. For those of you with a bad memory, Nagano hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998. We were technically in Hakuba which is a hour north of Nagano which is where all of the skiing events took place during the Olympics. We took the Shinkansen Friday evening and had happy hour on the train for the 75 minute ride. We then took a bus 60 minute bus ride in the rain and ended up at our hotel. It was very sweet looking hotel with a fire burning in the lobby. Our love for the hotel wore off when we walked into our room that had 2 twin beds and a bathroom where the sink and the shower were controlled by the same nozzles. There was also a tin roof outside our window so it sounded like it was pouring rain all night, but it was really just the icicles melting hitting the tin roof which was only below our window. It is typical that they pick on the gaijin (foreigners) by giving them the busted room. We did get breakfast with the room. I'd love to
Nagano - Happo One
Day 1 - see the snow coming down tell you it was free, but you pay for it within the room rate (which is per person). The funniest part of the breakfast is when you check in they give you a "ticket" for each morning and they hand write in 2 people. Before you walk into the dining room for breakfast there is a box where you are asked to drop your "ticket" into. There is no one there watching, nobody there to make sure you have a "ticket" that you have paid for. It is so Japanese for them to be so trusting and for the people to be so honest and not cheat. We, of course, didn't cheat either.
Saturday as we ate breakfast we watched the rain turn into snow thankfully. We were surprised when we bought our lift tickets that parts of the mountains were closed because of wind. It didn't feel windy, but we quickly understood when we got to mid-mountain. Thank goodness it had started to snow, because it was pretty sparse in some places. It turns out that on main-land Japan, the mountains normally get 11 meters of snow per season. This season, we've gotten about 4 meters. You do
the math. The wind was indeed awful. This was our 5th day out this season, and the wind had closed either the entire mountain or the top half of the mountain in all cases. And it had snowed every single day we had been on the mountain. So we were shocked by the lack of snow on the hill. Wind has something to do with this. It may snow up top, but that snow doesn't stay up top. It simply gets blown down to the bottom, leaving a sheet of ice up top.
Due to the weather, we were in a bit of a funk on Saturday. It's hard to get real motivated when it's zero degrees, snowing, and pushing 25 mph winds. We got to the bottom of the mountain, and facing a 20 minute walk with our skis, asked a random bus driver if he could drive us to the Mominoki Hotel. His response, a reluctant "Okay". We discovered only after the fact that that bus was going no where near our hotel. But rather than tell the silly Americans to move on, this guy drove who knows how far out of his way. Sometimes being a
moron has its advantages.
So, we retired early for the onsen. We have come a long way since we published our golf outing blog. We are now embracing bathing with our respective genders. As many of you know, there is little better in life than a hot tub after a hard day of skiing. We can attest, that the same goes for the onsen. These public pools are about 115 degrees of underground water which bubbles up to the surface and is collected and shared amongst random strangers in the nude. What's not to love? That is, what's not to love until the French come in and destroy the ambiance with their silly language and their silly smell. We were unfortunate enough to time our 2nd onsen with the French, who, as reported, still suck. Them, and the 10 kids that run around with them.
We ended our evening at Unlce Steven's Mexican Grill. 2 margaritas and 10 Coronas later, they tried to double charge us. Thankfully, one of us was sober and caught it. Being overcharged is a pretty common theme along our journey.
Sunday, we awoke to the glorious sunshine. It changed our moods completely. The
icicles from the day before were all gone, so there had not been "rain" falling on our tin roof all night. This brought sleep which in general does improve the mood.
The slopes were alive, and it was hard to find room on the mountain to maneuver. We timed our lunch for 2:00 to get the maximum out of the hill. The Japanese are pretty regimented. They all eat at noon (and nap at the tables afterwards), which left the mountain open for the taking. We skied pretty aggressively from 11:00 to 2:00 and with no lines, plenty of moguls, and for the the first time, the entire hill available to us (no wind), we were worn out by the 4:00.
We stayed one more night in our room. We found it helpful to sleep in the sloping beds with rice pillows if we went to the Pub first. The pub was rearranging the room for the end of year skate party in which they were building a skate ramp. The pub did have one area with high ceilings and it might have been big enough to fit a ramp, but it looked like an absolute disaster waiting to
Tombstone on top of mountain
(we think, it was written in Japanese) happen. Keep your eyes out this week for this headline: Skate Party Ends in Fire. Employees sought for answers.
Nagano is pretty sweet. I can't believe they hosted an Olympics. The infrastructure seems completely inadequate, and it is very remote for being only 4 hours away by bus/train/car. Regardless, we had a very fun time, and finally got to ski in the sunshine.
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