Honeymoon Day 1

Greetings one and all. I once again apologise for my long absence- since WoW isn't taking up enough of my free time, I've added Eve Online and studying kanji to fill out the minutes when I'm only half asleep. As a result, the blog fell by the way side. The good news is that I'm back on the intertubes with the urge to type. At the moment I'm blogging from my hotel room in Niseko, Hokkaido. Outside it's around -6 degrees and the snow is soft and abundant. There are also wild foxes with a taste for Aussie blood, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Tsuna and I decided to have our honeymoon early so that we can spend some time with my folks when they come over for the wedding next month. Also, February is the best time to ski in Hokkaido, which influenced our decision slightly. Tsuna and I left Nagoya by plane on Wednesday afternoon and flew to New Chitose in Hokkaido. From there, we hopped on a bus that took us to Niseko, which is about two hour away.

Niseko, Hokkaido is famous for three things- Thick powder snow fresh from Siberia, the towering cone of the Ezo Fuji, Mt Yotei and the fact that there are more Australians here than you can find anywhere else outside of Gallipoli or a raging bush fire. It's where I first learned to ski, also known as the “uncontrolled falling down a mountain” incident. A lot has changed since we I first came here- a lot of the establishments I used to frequent have been replaced by high-rise apartments or pricier dining venues. Most of the people here use English on a daily basis, so I still get the startled look when I bust out my three-year old retarded child's Japanese while buying Vegemite at Lawsons.

On our first day here, we got up pretty early (although not early enough, according to Tsuna) and went half-way up the mountain. After having skied in the relatively drier ski resorts in Gifu and Nagano, I had forgotten what skiing on real powder snow felt like. As I chased Tsuna through the trees of the Shirokaba course, it was as if I were skiing on clouds. Niseko is not just one ski resort, it's four ski resorts that are spread out over the same mountain. There's no lack of variety here and we rarely use the same course twice. It's fun and exciting, although it's easy to wander off the easier courses onto the advanced/certifiably-insane ones.

There were no major accidents, so I consider our first day here to be a success. The sky was pretty clear, so I got a lot of photos of Mt Yotei from the top of the ski resort. My camera doesn't do the subject justice, but I'm not going to be taking up professional photography just yet (it would bite into my EVE time after all :P) Just after lunch we saw a man with a tame boar walking along the road, which was freaky enough, but when we got back to the top and started to ski down, we ran into a not-so-tame fox who had decided to park himself in the middle of the course.

Evasive actions were taken, and no human or foxi were hurt.

After a good six or seven hours of skiing, our legs decided to call it a day. After handing back out gear we headed straight for the onsen, which is no doubt why I feel only a little bit in agonizing pain today.

More as it comes

~Blake
Niseko Hilton, Hokkaido.