We wanted to get out of Niseko for a day and Stephen and I both managed to have the same day off, so we got a group of people together, hired a big van, and made our way to another mountain for the day – Sapporo Kokusai.

Although no new snow fell the night before it was still such a great day! The mountain isn’t overly large, but it has big open runs that all intertwine together, so the options for runs were endless. There were still some soft powder pockets around the place, so everyone had fun searching for them.

We managed to ride the whole day until 4pm and then started to make our way home. By the time we got back to Kutchan we were all exhausted and ready for bed.

Great day had by all.

On our last day off Stephen and I decided to make our way to Sapporo for the 2017 Sapporo Snow Festival. Our day started with a 2-hour train ride from Kutchan to Saporro, via Otaru. We layered up for the cold weather, however for the first hour or so of the train ride it was standing room only and we were both extremely hot! It was such a relief when we had to switch trains and we managed to get a seat in a less crowded carriage.

We arrived at Sapporo station around 11am, our first time to Sapporo. It is a cool big city. Lots of high rise buildings, shopping malls, big intersections. It was nice to get out of Hirafu and Kutchan and the snow town vibe for a day.

We wandered around the shops for a while, had some lunch, and then went to an arcade. One entire floor in this mall was dedicated to arcade games, it was awesome, I even bet Stephen in a car simulation game of Mario Cart!! After that we needed some fresh air so we made our way to Odori Park. This is where the week-long snow festival was being held. It’s a free event that involves the whole community and people from all over Hokkaido flock to take a look. The park is filled with huge ice and snow sculptures. These things are truly amazing. They look fantastic, with some of them being 2-3 stories high! I’ll let the photos do the talking. It was truly breath taking (and freezing! Haha).

M & S.

This year was Stephen and my first ever white Christmas, and Niseko turned on the snow and everything looked beautiful. Blue skies during the day and then snow falling from about 5pm.

I worked during the day while Stephen lay in bed recovering from a big Christmas eve night out. Then come 6pm we were all home in our apartment (Stephen, Marie, and her boyfriend Yoshimi, and me), and I started cooking Christmas dinner. It was a little bit of a challenge. 1: Ingredients are different over here and some things we take for granted in Australia are a little hard to come by here. And 2: we don’t have an oven or a bbq, so I had to rethink the menu a little. So our Christmas dinner went a little something like this…
A small platter to begin with, with cheese and crackers and nuts and fruit.
Followed by delicious tender steak, honey glazed carrots, baby peas, corn on the cob, and some ‘roast’ potato wedges (which I cooked in the microwave and then fried in butter in the pan). Everything actually turned out really well, and although this would be an extremely simple meal back home, it was nice to have just that: a simple meal with meat and veg.
Finally, we had some chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. I did some experimenting and made the cake in the rice cooker (!!) and it turned out so well!

All in all it was a great Christmas evening and it was lovely to share this day with some new friends here in Japan.

Merry Christmas everyone!

M & S.

PS. A big thank you to my parents, and to Sharon (Stephen’s mum), who sent us Christmas packages in the mail!! They were full of goodies and it’s been so lovely having a few little comfort things from home. Thanks family xx

Today Stephen is on afternoon shift so he doesn’t start till 3:30pm, so we decided to get our boards out and go for our first ride. The mountain is not fully open yet, but there are a couple of lifts running, so we caught the bus up to Hirafu to hit the snow. I was nervous, but it was actually really fun! Visibility was next to none once we got to the top, so foggy! But it cleared after we did our first run.We both bought new jackets and helmets yesterday, and I also got some really good anon goggles, so it felt good to be wearing proper gear.

At the end of last season in Australia, during our last day trip up to Falls Creek, I had just started to get the hang of linking turns, going from my toe edge to heel edge. I’m pleased to say that I picked up where I left off!! I’m getting a little bit faster, but still not so good at navigating uneven terrain or riding gracefully down steeper slopes. We only did a couple of runs today, just a little taste tester, and then headed back down the mountain into town, but it was definitely a fun first ride.

M.

We had Induction training from 9-5pm today and all I could think about for the last 3 hours of the training was sushi! I really wanted to try proper sushi in Japan to compare it to what I’ve tasted in Australia. So after training we made our way to Yoteimaru, a ‘conveyor belt’ sushi restaurant. We were the only foreigners in there and it was full of Japanese people; good sign. We hung up our coats and sat down. There was so much to choose from, and quite a few things I hadn’t seen or tried before. I got adventurous and tried a few different raw fish sashimi’s, some seaweed wrapped ones, and also ordered some fried shrimp and gyoza. It was all delicious and the ginger was amazing!! I even ate wasabi.

The chefs stand in the middle and prepare the bite size pieces in front of you, which I found really cool

All in all, a great first sushi train experience in Japan.

M.

We’re here! Its been a while since our last post because things have been pretty full on and our body clocks are still totally messed up!

We left Houston on Sunday at midnight, and then transited through Beijing and arrived into Sapporo, Japan around 1pm on Tuesday! We totally lost Monday somewhere over the top of the world haha. Arriving into Sapporo was exciting, but we were so tired and over custom officers and passport control and taking shoes off and laptops out of bags and blah blah blah. We just wanted to eat something and sleep!! But instead we had to work out what train we needed to catch to get to Kutchan, our soon to be home for the next few months.

We finally worked out the train situation, bought tickets and went down to the platform to wait. We had our long snowboard bag, a suitcase each, and hand luggage, so it was quite challenging getting on the public train. Safe to say we got a few strange looks, and we think an old man took photos of us on his flip phone (!!). We think because our board bag was half in front of a seat, but there was nothing we could do about it so we turned our heads and took in the breathtaking snowy scenery zooming past our windows.

By 4:30pm the sun was completely down and it was pitch black. After an hour and a bit on the train we got to Otaru station where we had to grab all our gear and change trains. We just made it, but standing room only! So the next hour was long and arduous to say the least. But we did it!!

Ben, from SkiJapan (our employers), met us at the train station and took us to our accommodation – a little apartment in downtown Kutchan. It’s super cute (aka tiny), and Stephen and I are sharing a single bed because we don’t want to sleep separately and we can’t push our beds together because there are poles in the middle of our room!! haha.

There is a supermarket across the road, so we got some food, ate it, had a shower and went to bed – we were both absolutely spent!! Despite being extremely exhausted I had the shittest sleep, waking every hour or so and then not being able to go back to sleep from 4am onwards. Jet lag is a bitch.

The very next morning, Wednesday, we both had to catch the bus into Hirafu to meet our bosses and start training. That day is a bit of a blur now, and we got home Wednesday night not wanting to eat anything and went straight to bed. Thursday was much the same – crappy sleep, awake from 3am, and then training all day, and Stephen actually started work on Wednesday, so he was straight into it!

But, I’m pleased to write, that we both had a much better sleep last night and woke up today feeling much more ourselves (yay!!). It’s time for the adventure to begin!

(We’ve been so busy and zombie like that we haven’t really taken many photos yet, but here are a few. It’s about 0 degrees celsius during the day, we’ve had snow and rain since we got here, and it’s all pretty amazing).

M & S.

Kutchan train station

We went for a walk at 7am on Wednesday morning before we headed to work for the first time. The sky was blue and the sun was shining – beautiful!

Vending machine just chilling in the snow 😉