Japan

clearly I can see your nuts

Michael "Young Player" Marsh

The Young Player went too hard, too early.

Tarlo at the top of Niseko Moiwa

Nice View!

Hanazono #1 Lift Queue

Eeeek. Japan is getting busy!

No More Lack!

Lack of Snow Rusutsu - Mt Isola Good Day. Good Beer. Buried Car Rusutsu - Mt Isola Rusutsu Hokkaido BBQ mmmmmm tasty. Especially when you cook it right, and don't spend the first half eating half cooked meat, and the other eating burnt meat. Much much better this way!

Up early for breakfast, then over to the hotel for the 8:30am bus to the airport, as the other 3 were keen to see if they could get an earlier flight back to Tokyo, so they could stuff around there until the flight back to Sydney in the evening.

There are only a handfull of international flights out of Chitose each day, so I was stuck there for a whole heap of hours until my flight left at 4:20pm.

My first challenge was to find the post office to post back the key to the Pensione that Purdy forgot to return and carried to the airport in his pocket. That turned out to be too easy, so i amused myself watching the locals getting fired up with Japan kicking South Korean arse in the Baseball.

I eventually found some free internet terminals, but they didn't have keyboards, so I slowley checked my emails using the on screen keyboard. What fun!

The flight was pretty uneventful, and I ended up taking the train and a taxi close to the dodgy hostel I booked, as the bus didn't seem to be running. I was probably just at the wrong stop though. I was seriously concerned about the dodginess of the hostel walking in, but the room turned out to be clean, and with a bathroom.

Two words: Snow Mobiles. How fun is that. Tad costly, but the snow wasn't doing much for riding, so after some lunch we wacked down 4500yen for a 20-25mins go on some snow mobiles.

A quick, "This lever for go. This lever for stop. Lean like this for left, and this for right. This is the safty leash. GO!"

We headed out thinking with expectations of piss weak world, but it turned out to be most fun. My sled was pretty quick compared to the ones the other guys were on, and the "battle" was won easily.

I want one. Great way to finish the trip off.

Matt left early for the 8:30am bus to the airport, while we had breakfast, waxed the boards and looked out the window.

A super sunny, hot day (t-shirts only), and no snow. First runs were on the West Mountain closest to the hotel.

Rusutsu

We ended up dropping too far to the right through the trees, and although we saw a fox, it was a walkout through the amusement park. A few potential jumps were spotted for coming back with the camera.

Then it was over to Isola again, but it was pretty tracked, so after a little while, it was back for a couple of afternoon park runs, and beers in the cafeteria.

Eventually back to the Cricket Bar in the hotel, where we found out all about teenage bisexual Thai girls, hovercrafts, and three metre deep above ground chemical free pools. A bit unexpected for a Japanese ski resort.

Matt had come all the way down to Rusutsu for a single day of boarding, so he was hoping it would be good.

Matt was looking pretty good on the bus

No overnight snow, but it was off to Mt Isola first thing to see how the conditions in the trees were. Suprisingly untracked, and we spent pretty much the whole day doing runs of the Isola quad chairs. Probably the 2nd best day of the trip so far after the Furano day.

Matt Getting Some Action