This has seriously been a busy past two weeks. Probably the busiest year end/beginning I’ve ever had.
So after Vietnam, and after a new year’s midnight shrine visit, at 6:30am the next morning, it was off to snowboarding in Hakuba, near Nagano (winter olympics, anyone?). I posted about running to catch the train (to catch the plane to Vietnam) before – from that experience, I planned to arrive plenty early for this bullet train. And thankfully, we got to loiter around so much that we could have caught the prior outbound train to Nagano.
Hakuba 白馬 has a few resorts, and we went to Happo-one, and I’d booked a small hotel that claimed to be “3 minutes” from the slopes. As it turns out, there was a whole street of hotels about the same distance from the Sakka lifts of Happo, but ours was almost at the end of that long road. Oh well.
I didn’t bring my camera snowboarding, so no pictures, but it did actually snow (lightly, thankfully) while we were there. The first day was so windy they closed the top two lifts, and certain runs were somewhat whited out, which made the people on the runs look like they were frozen suspended in midair (which was a little cool). The wind was so cold that as I sat there I became convinced that really, snowboarding was overrated and maybe I would be best off selling my board in Japan and retiring from the slopes. The second day was much better, and we found a run off the Sakka slopes that went through some trees and bushes and was quite fun (and non-icy).  I revised my previous statement about selling my board to include purchasing a replacement once back stateside.
The B&B had a hot spring built in, as well as an outdoor rotemburo – meaning that with a word to the owner, you could reserve the spring all to yourself for half an hour and watch snow falling on trees from the privacy of a bamboo hot tub. Of course, getting to, from, and into said tub isn’t much fun, but that just makes the time (and heat) all the more enjoyable…right?
Which is to say, I’m sick now (sore throat, stuffy nose), and I’m pretty sure why, but I’m also pretty sure it was worth it. Sure beats driving in Tahoe traffic to share a sputtery bathroom with 10 people.
