Hiking Nyukasayama, Nagano

My friend, Mike, and I headed to Nagano a couple weekends ago to go hiking! We were headed to Fujimi Panorama. "Mi" being to see/watch in Japanese and Fuji being, well, Fuji, but it being rainy season, didn't have much like. We did see a lot of clouds though!

The Lilies of the Valley were suppose to be the primary draw to this area, but they weren't quite in full bloom yet. The staff in the area told us there were over 1 million plants. I question whether he counted those or not.

We reached the summit around lunchtime and enjoyed a nice picnic. I'm not quite sure what everyone was looking at here. "Nice cloud" "Hmm...I'm more partial to the cumulus myself".

We thoroughly enjoyed the lower humidity and cooler temperatures of the mountain region and the rain even held off for most of our hike so we could enjoy the fresh air and scenery.

I forget how much I miss nature when we are surrounded by it all the time every day, but it was so refreshing to walk about and SMELL nature and BREATHE fresh air.

I like to play "Where is Mike?" with several of my pictures. Being a photographer, he was often behind the group, crawling around getting a picture of something most of us walked right past.

Such a wonderful day. Only time for a few more days like this in Japan!

Annual Squadron Ski Trip

Over MLK weekend in January, the Liberty Bells headed to Nagano for our annual ski trip. We stayed in Hakuba this year at the Apricot Pension. Glenn was in charge of planning the trip this year which was fun, but not as much fun as just being on the trip. It's stressful planning a trip where everyone is happy which is 35 adults and children!

He did an excellent job though and all these people were happy:

Our hotel did not include dinner with the rate so on Saturday night after a day of skiing, we had several vans from a local restaurant come and pick us up and serve us yummy "Japanese" food. It is run by Australians so it's as Japanese as they can get! It was excellent though. I definitely recommend Double Black to anyone in the Hakuba area.

We enjoyed two full days of skiing in amazing powder snow. When I fell, it barely even hurt because there was at least a foot of powder. Almost too much powder for an intermediate skiier like myself. It never stopped snowing from when we arrived on Friday til we left on Monday!

For those people that didn't drive their cars all weekend, that meant this much snow! Fantastic skiing, but all that snow made for a cold weekend. We enjoyed the fire and drinks by the fireside at night. Most nights though, Glenn and I only made it til 9:30 or 10 pm. Apparently leaving for the ski trip the day after we got home from the States wasn't the best idea! The jet lag takes about 4 or 5 days to get over, not 24 hours I guess!

It was a great weekend with our Liberty Bell family. I was a little sad that this will be our last trip to ski in Nagano. Next winter, we'll be stateside!

We're back....again

After only 1 night at home and less than 18 hours, we hit the road again. This time we weren't headed too far though. We headed north to Nagano for our annual squadron ski trip. It snowed the entire time we were there...it never stopped so by the time we left, some of the cars were covered with more than 3 feet of snow. It was a great trip and excellent snow conditions. I wish I hadn't been so tired from our jet lag, but it was nice to get back on the slopes especially since we are headed to Hokkaido in just a couple weeks.

I've been slacking on my blogging this month so far, but hopefully after this week, I can get my schedule back to normal. I'm pretty exhausted!

More posts coming soon! Lots of pictures from America and Nagano!

Nagano

Nagano was fantastic! I've posted a few pics/videos from other events of the weekend, but not of skiing. We stayed at a cute place we simply call "The Captains" because that is what the guys who runs it calls himself. It is a family run joint, I would compare it more to a hostel than a hotel though. In Japan, it is called a Ryokan. We had two twin beds in our room and a tatami mat area with a short table and cushions on the floor. The most distinguishing thing about a Ryokan are the public baths. Our room had a sink and toilet, but no shower. The shower is downstairs in the basement, but it's not a shower at all I should say. It is more of a public bath. Think health club with showers along one wall and a hot tub on the other side. No swim suits or towels allowed. So I saw all the gals on the trip naked which is interesting, but I just think of it as a cultural experience, right? Other nicer hotels often have private onsens (hot tub/spring) for each room or sometimes you reserve a time slot to use the onsen in private. This place was just a communal onsen. The captain was nice enough to provide english instructions so we didn't em-bare-ass (haha!) ourselves more than necessary :).
The skiing conditions weren't the greatest all weekend, but we still had lots of fun. Here are a few of us skiing the first day in the clouds. Going down black diamonds is interesting when you can only see 15 feet in front of you!When the clouds lifted though, it was beautiful:At Ryokan, your meals are often included. The captain provided breakfast and dinner each day. The dinners were fabulous and pretty elaborate. Here is Gizelle and Nikki enjoying shabu shabu (beef hot pot) where you cook it at the table. Yum!The Captains also had a bar where we hung out and played Uno and Cranium at night. We also had a wine tasting one night. Glenn and I thought we were doing so well.. and we only got 1/8 right!

Snow Monkey Park

On our way back from Nagano on Monday we stopped at the snow monkey park. It was very cool. It was like being at the zoo without any fences. The monkeys hang out around here cause they can sit in their own private hot tub all day long. Actually its a natural hotspring, but it looks like a monkey hot tub to me. My camera doesn't have a very big zoom so you can see how close we actually were to them. At times they would just run right by your feet or crawl around. They don't seem humans as a friend or an enemy so they pretty much just ignored us.

Here are a few more pictures of the monkeys. We probably could have stayed there for much longer taking pictures, but it was very cold and windy as you can see in the video and it was a 25 minute hike back to the car. Very cool though. I'm glad we made a stop.

This is what happens...

This is what happens when you mix a bunch of 20-somethings, booze, navy determination, innertubes and a giant ski hill. It took 20 minutes to climb up the icy slope (which by the way was about a 30-40 degree incline) but it was so worth it! Bailing out of your innertube was necessary if you didn't want to run in to the hotel or lift ticket hut.

Since it was night time and you can't really see where we are coming from- this is the hill we climbed up. We climbed up the right hand slope til just above the center clump of trees. Just below where the ski lift lets out.