Snow day like a ski day

On Thursday it rained. Oh it rained. ALL day it rained. It was very depressing. Although I did finish a book I had started the day before. We decided we would take the free shuttle to Goryu, a nearby mountain, on Friday to test out it's slopes.

On Thursday night we decided to go out for some good sushi. It turns out most of the sushi eaten in Japan is raw. We got an 7 piece tasting plate, which wasn't fully explained in the menu. When it came we decided that the red meat looking one was definitely horse meat. I love trying weird things, but I just couldn't with this one. I tried to psych myself up, but it just wasn't happening. I was too worried I'd get it half in and freak out. It was a really big bit of raw horse meat. So that left it up to Brandon to take one for the team. It was not too bad in the end. He said it was quite soft and similar to eating the raw fish, only a little bloody tasting. Good to know.

The other guest at our hotel left on Friday and gave the rest of his 6 day pass to the owners, who then passed it on to us. So that means we got a whole day free! Awesome perk, thank you random stranger!

I liked Goryu better than Happo. It has a lot more options for beginners, and more in-between levels of runs. There are three ski centres at the bottom; Escal, Imori and Euclid. From Escal there is a Gondola that goes almost to the top. Brandon headed straight up there and then came down and made me go up to have a look. There was low cloud cover at about half way up, and so at the top you were looking out over a huge sea of clouds. It was very cool. Later on in the day the cloud cleared for a couple hours and I took some more photos where you can see the valley.

Going up in the Gondola

A view over the clouds

After the cloud cleared

Today we went to Goryu again because there are so many beginner options there. There's even a bigger slope at the top. We started the day by going up the top and heading down a long windy beginner track. Unfortunately it was pretty icy and I struggled. I had a few nice, hard sit downs on the ice on the way down. Then I decided I would just stick to the softer, wider sloped and leave the tracks to Brandon. Brandon was a bit disappointed with the ski jumps at both mountains, some were always closed and others were ruined by idiots doing stupid things like stopping halfway up.

I would definitely recommend Goryu for beginners and the view from the top of the Gondola of course. Just don't eat at the restaurant up there, they have pretty average (below average really) food.

At the top!

I hope no one uses these in the Gondola!

Luckily, the rain didn't make too much difference to the snow. We expected it to be icy and yuck, but it was about the same as before the rain.

For our last dinner in Hakuba I asked Jo, our host, where he would recommend for dinner for something local. We went to a barbecue type place, that did meat on sticks. We got a 10 piece tasting plate and two serves of buckwheat dumplings. The meat was great. The dumplings were surprising. We both assumed they would have filling of some kind. Nope. They were just deep fried blobs of buckwheat dough, which is weird and not all that appetising. Mainly because the buckwheat dough doesn't cook like wheat dough. So it's not like eating a doughnut, it has a sticky and uncooked texture on the inside while the outside is crispy. Very odd.  

That's the end of our ski holiday. I am partly sad because it's been so much fun, but my body is relieved. Today was great, because I can see myself getting better and better. On the other hand, everything has started to ache and I know I couldn't do another day of snow boarding. Tomorrow we are going back to Nagano for a night in a traditional Ryokan!