Skiing in Hakuba with the Tokyo Gaijins

I finally did it : skiing in Japan. Getting those newsletters from Tokyo Gaijins (organiser) all the time made me consider it a few times already. By convincing my friend Fumi to join me, I had a good reason to go through the entire registration process and to actually turn up at 7am on saturday morning for the bus departure to Hakuba, Nagano.

The bus pulled up at our hotel perfectly on schedule, and after checking in, we all got on the shuttle bus less than half hour later. The town was fully snowed under, the only way of going forward was using snow chains.

At around 1pm, we found ourselves queueing up on the lift, due to the fact that most lifts were closed due to the ongoing snowstorm. The slope therefore was pretty busy, while the view was very limited. The majority of the people were snowboarders, while most of them were beginners. A descend was more like a slalom course constantly dodging crashed snowboarders.

I was only wearing sunglasses, which caused my face to be frozen after a while. This being unbearable after a while, we went to have something to eat and to be a scarf, which helped a lot.



The session ended at 5pm. After arriving in the hotel, we had dinner followed by a hot shower and bath using th in-house onsen. The afterparty started at 8 pm with the bus taking us to 'The Pub'. The place slowly packed with mainly foreigners. I left at the time the DJ got started - having to walk back to the hotel through the deep snow.

The next day started with breakfast at 7.30am. When we boarded the shuttle bus at 8.30 am, the bus driver announced that all but 2 lifts were closed due to the weather conditions which had not improved. We had no choice but to face even longer at the lift, which spoiled the (first half of the) day recorded below :

When the conditions improved, around midday, some of the other lifts were finally opened. Before we were going to use the longest&highest gondola, we had lunch - a huge portion of japanese rice curry for 500 yen (!!!). The ride in the gondola took a while, but it was well worth it as the descend was a lot more challenging. The slope offered deep fresh snow and was much steeper, causing even more snowboarders to block the way due to crashes.

Fumi - with her straight down the hill strategy - had her problems too, giving up after the second time. I did one more run, in which i had a couple of crashes due to lack of concentration and strength. Good timing, because I had to head for the shuttle bus anyways. Back at the hotel, we were given one hour to have a bath and shower, before the our bus took of to Tokyo at 5pm.

It was a great weekend away from the capital, but it was very condensed. Especially the long bus ride doesnt make up for the short skiing pleasure. I hear, that there are good ski-resorts one can reach within one hour and a half from tokyo, making it worth an one-day trip. I will consider that option for next time.