Skiing in Japan - 26/02/'14
Today started early again because it was time to ski! At 8 AM we had to be ready for skiing, this meant we had to be in the hotel lobby with our bags and appropriate clothes for skiing. Our bags were stashed in the lobby because we had to check out, as today is the day we travel back to Tokyo for the final days of the study tour.
At 8:15 AM some people were still missing, so Rowan, Frits and I (Tim van Doesum) went to the bus station to obtain and pay the reserved combination tickets. Those tickets combine a bus round trip ticket with a day pass for the ski lifts at the ski resort. When returning to the hotel with the tickets the group was ready to leave except for Ivo and Roelof who were still inside. Roelof had already been spotted, but he had gone back to Ivo's room to tell him to hurry. However Ivo had already decided that he would stay behind in Takayama for the day as he didn't want to go skiing. The group left for the bus station, next to the train station which is only a few minutes walk from the hotel. On arrival Roelof had caught up, luckily, as he was the group leader for the day.
At 8.40 AM the bus to the Honoki hida norikura north alpine ski resort left, the bus took about 50 minutes to get there through stunningly beautiful snowy mountains. It was a very nice day as the sun was shining brightly and there were almost no clouds in the sky. When we got to the ski resort we discovered there were two shops for ski and snowboard rental, so the group split in two to get ski's/snowboards faster. Karim had some difficulty obtaining ski's as his shoe size wasn't available at the ski shops, fortunately they found some big ski shoes after searching a bit more. Because of this one group finished a lot faster than the other and already went onto the piste to practice skiing. For some people this was the first time they went skiing, this includes me (Tim van Doesum). Robert had to wear the Pikachu suit today as he did not show up for one of the company visits earlier in the tour, Pikachu on ski's got a lot of attention from local skiers.
Of the people who were finished early at the ski shop only three hadn't gone skiing before, Roelof, Pikachu (Robert) and myself, so we practiced a bit at the starting area. When Jens and Frank joined us we went up on the hill with two ski lifts and they taught us a bit more about skiing. I picked it up quite quickly, Pikachu and Roelof had some more difficulties. After practicing with Erik, who was also skiing for the first time, I finally completed a piste without falling. After a few hours skiing we had lunch at a restaurant at the base of the ski pistes. Erik and Jelmer had a very big bowl (probably about 1 liter) of miso ramen (noodle soup), I myself had fried chicken with rice, it all tasted very good. Jelmer told us he had fallen on his arm in a nasty way when he was snowboarding so he was done for the day. Erik and I went back up the mountain, this time I took my photo camera with me to take pictures as it was still a day with blue skies and a bright sun. The view at the upper station of the second ski lift was really very nice.
After skiing a while longer I started to feel that my muscles were getting tired so I decided to stop, at that point it was about 2:15 PM and we were told to gather at 3:15 PM. This gave me some time to enjoy the sun. A lot of people got sunburnt today, especially in their faces, Frank was wearing a Japanese headband and it is clearly visible where he wore it.
At 3:15 PM we all gathered to take the bus back, and we concluded that everyone had survived the day in good health! After another 50 minutes bus trip we had about one and a half hours time to have dinner. At 6:45 PM we took the train from Takayama to Nagoya. This was a trip of about 2 hours, after which we took the Shinkansen from Nagoya to Tokyo (also about 2 hours) and finally we arrived at the Anne hostel in Tokyo at 23:30 PM.
By: Tim van Doesum