Japan day 1

SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING

Skiing is kinda the best thing ever. We woke up at 7:30am to get ready to rent our stuff. This was a tough challenge for the family, but not for me. I was far too excited to let a little sleep get in my way. After a sluggish start we went to the hotels free (FREE) buffet on level two of our hotel. Tom and I both knew that my parents were paying a lot to let us stay in the hotel, so my brother and I decided it would only be polite if we made as much out of the buffet as possible to make it cost efficient. 21 plates and 6 bowels later, we were in the line to get our ski equipment rented. This is when a few things didn't quite go to plan:

Totally unbadass thing number 1: They didn't have twin tip skis for rent. Instead I had to get the normal skis for normal people. I insisted that I wasn't normal and that I was an Engineer, but the service chick couldn't understand any of the words coming out of my mouth (including Engineer, strangely).

Totally unbadass thing number 2: The gondola that was located right by the hotel was closed temporarily due to high winds

Totally unbadass thing number 3: Bad weather! Visibility wasn't awesome sauce. And as a result, I ended up stacking it once because I couldn't see the terrain in front of me.

BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERED BECAUSE SKIING IS STILL AWESOME! A few of the small lifts were still operational so we went down them to begin with - this also gave me the time I needed to practice my backward skiing (badass, right?) Nisaka is known for having the most amount of snow in the world and you can easily tell this is true. You could literally swim in the stuff if you wanted to. At one point I encouraged my brother to follow me down a black (which I convinced him was an easy red). He wasn't too happy after that and has been following mum and dad ever since. There's also a nice restaurant called the "lookout cafe" which serves an interesting mix of Japanese and Western meals. You can tell that the manager of the place tries to make the restaurant more comfortable to isolated Australians since the music played at the Cafe is also unpleasantly western - they played 50 cent for waaaay too long.

After a long days skiing I went to the Onsen in our hotel. I try to maintain some type of cultural understanding and respect in these blogs, but what I saw in the Onsen can't be forgiven. I think it can be best described as a pedophile paradise. There were naked men everywhere. I avoided sausages in the buffet the following day because I am still scared. The general procedure is to get unchanged in a very small and overcrowded changing room and place your belongings in one of several baskets. Then you take a tiny towel (about 10cm x 10cm) out with you to wash yourself off and step into the giant bathtub. I couldn't help but be reminded of a scene from "Enemy At The Gates" when the main character is armed with nothing more than a few bullets and proceeds to charge at the enemy. The funniest thing I noticed though was that all the Japanese men used their tiny towels by wetting them and then placing them on their head as they walked around naked in pure confidence. When I exited the Onsen, I noticed that there was a female employee standing near the entrance/exit fixing something! WTF Japan?

To recover from the psychological trauma, our parents took Tom and I out to dinner where we enjoyed an all you can eat buffet... So. Much. Food.