Snow and a private Onsen: Hakuba

Day two of our skiing time and we are both stuffed! I'm not a very good boarder yet, and so there have been plenty of frustrated moments on the mountain. We have been skiing at Happo, which is the closest mountain to where we are staying. Because it is the end of the season there is only one other guest at our hotel. What that means is we basically get free run of things. I'm pretty sure during high season they run shuttles to town at particular times. We can just chose a time and a restaurant and get dropped off as we wish. So nice!

Spectacular views on the way down

Yesterday we caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagano and then got the bus up to Hakuba. The Shinkansen is the fastest way to get to Nagano, and it's certainly nice! You can get a bus from tokyo for about half the price, but an extra hour of travel.
Yesterday, we headed up the mountain almost as soon as we could. Unfortunately, I had a pretty tough afternoon because my boots were too lose. As a beginner, I had no idea they were too lose until I tried to turn. I now have some very sore legs from where I had them as tight as possible to try and compensate!
When we got back to the hotel we asked about the onsen (a hot tub/communal bath). They are usually single sex, but because I'm the only woman staying here we are allowed to use the women's one! Probably the only time I would be getting in, since it's no clothing allowed.

Tub with a view!

Last night we felt like a feed of veggies (and we're a bit sick of noodles...), so we went to a sumo hot pot place for dinner. Basically you get a giant bowl of veggies and meat and you put it in a boiling pot of broth (on a burner), and after a couple minutes you eat it all. Or as much as you can! It was a bit awkward because we were the only people in the restaurant, but we got special treatment from the waitress. She even chopped the mince into meat balls with chop sticks for us.

Today we headed up Happo again just after opening time, almost to the top to check out the view. It's pretty spectacular that's for sure! I didn't have much fun on the way down. The long beginner runs are tracks across the mountain and I'm rubbish at going around the corners on them. So I came off on the second corner and thought I had broken something. Turns out it was only my goggles giving a little crunch. After chucking a tantrum (not really, but sort of...), we got on one of the chair lifts halfway down and went down to the bottom. I had a sit down and read a book which Brandon did a harder run. Then I just spent most of the afternoon practicing on the nice wide beginner slope, and making myself feel better being around people that were worse than me.
This afternoon I was just starting to think about how stupid it is for me, a beginner, to travel and snow board. What a waste of good slopes. I then sat next to a couple of girls who were Australian which I strapped into my board at the top of the lift. They then proceeded to "falling leaf" (just heading left and then heading right, without turning) the whole way down. That made me feel better about travel skiing as a beginner (being able to turn is pretty much the entirety of snow boarding). Not that I'm making fun of them, but if that can travel ski than I can too!

We're certainly going to be bruised and sore after we're done here, but it's totally worth it. Look at that view!