Ni Crassic Kudisai

Figuring heavily in the trip. Sapporo Crassic. Say it with me now: "Pando, wanna get a coupla Crassics?"

Listening to BJM

The Difficult Third Day

Started to Snow:
Little did we know we were departing on this journey with members of the PSIA National Tele Team. These are the guys that teach the teachers. The trip organizer, Ross Mattlock, is on the team, but he and buddies Pando and Scotty were also over here to clinic with the TAJ, Telemark Association of Japan and work with their professionals. These pics are them working with Azu and Nioko. Two female rippers (I mean rippers) from the TAJ. Nioko is currently racing for Japan on the World Cup Circuit. We were extremely lucky to listen in and get the attention from the real pros. Anyway, kind of rough conditions at this point, but the snow had started . . .

Nioko and Scotty ^

Azu and Pando ^

Snowing harder ^. Grabbed some lunch (the lunches here are actually killer Japanese food even for them. Imagine: Wok fried pork on Noodle Soup). The team:Check the pod of chick tele rippers at the end. As usual MJ didn't have a thing to say. Powered up, we found more snow than with thought. See below. I have been a lot places where it snows. When this rolled in, it dropped a couple of feet in about two hours. I have seldom, if ever seen anything like. Ross demonstrated powder technique:

Azu is pretty tall ; ), but we almost lost her anyway:


As for me, after trying it myriad ways, Pando finally said the one thing the hit it: "Vertical Femur". I now know why these are called drop knee turns. Hero snow helped, but snappy tele turns with stupid face shots. It was a break through and a big big day. We lapped a killer section over and over and our tracks were basically the only ones there, though they were generally filled with new snow when we got back. The kind of stuff that would get ravaged in seconds in our neck of the woods. It was instead our private playground. Like you read about. Sugoi Hokkaido!

Niseko, Hokkaido

So, our first day on snow was Thursday, Feb. 21. We started out at Niseko Annupuri, the eastern most entrance to the group of areas in Niseko. Like many places in Europe, you can go up a lift in one resort and ski down into another. Here we bought a multi-area pass and skied all the areas that day. Taken together, the group of areas is about the size of the resorts we are used in to in the Rocky Mountain U.S.

The Gondola. How do you say "Who's holdin'?" in Japanese?

It had apparently been very sunny and had not snowed in a while. That said, there is a ton of snow here, and it clearly snows a lot. But, notice the available freshies even after days of no new snow.
We met up with Brad, the other "client" on our trip and skied that day. Here is what the areas typically look like. Decent pitch for me, through sparse trees and nice snow. MJ had the best descriptor for the snow this day. It was "cake flour". This is not the norm. The snow is reputed to be light and dry and more like Utah than the N.W.


Note the overcast. This is reported to be the norm. It is funny because you do not get your visual bearings. But, the visibility was not bad, and once you were in the trees, it was great.

MJ getting the good work done in the trees. Sorry about the "not great" camera work, but you get the idea.

A little in the back seat, but we love her anyway . . . .


DR in the house of Nihon

Old Tokyo

Hey there again. Still stranded in the lodge here, so here are some more pics from Tokyo. MJ picked up a cool book called "Little Adventures in Tokyo" that was really helpful. One cool adventure was a walking tour of what it called "Old Tokyo", but I think is the Ya-Na-Sen. Either way, it was a really stark contrast to what we had seen so far. The streets were narrow and filled with little shops.

The side streets were crammed with little houses and there were tiny pocket parks and temples around every corner. Here is a really cool example of a park with a shrine.


These were delicious . . .
; )

The area is home to not only temples, but one of the major old cemeteries in Tokyo.


I wish you could smell the smoke. They were probably just burning brush, but it added to how cool this scene was.


No, the irony was not lost on us . . .

Cool garden in the interior of the home of one of Tokyo's most famous architects. The home is now a museum.

Beautiful wood working everywhere.

















and stone work.
















Let's see what's down the next street . . . . . .

Shibuya Crosswalk

Hey again everyone, or really anyone who might be looking at this. We are on lock down in the lodge up here in Hokkaido. I have lived and traveled in some places with bad weather, but I have seldom if ever seen it snow like this. Currently, the road from our lodge/onsen is closed and we are hanging out, drinking coffee and waiting for it to break. If yesterday afternoon is any indication, when it does break it will be epic. More on that later.

Anyway, trying to stay chronological here. So, here are some shots of the famous crosswalk in Tokyo's Shibuya neighborhood. You may have seen it in the movies Jackass and Lost in Translation, but it is hilarious live. Just synchronized chaos. When the lights change thousands of people cross the street in every direction. We managed to find a creative direction to cross in ourselves, and it was basically human pichicho.

After this, sort of stunned by the whole thing we stumbled into what is called a "Food Court" over here. But, it is not the American mall food court. It is more like a modern market arranged in stalls with hawkers out front of each pitching the products and really high quality prepared foods. I know it is a stupid cliche, but I don't know how they don't all weigh 400 lbs. More to come.

Fujisan

Hi again from Nihon. There is so little time to actually sit down and post that I am behind in getting you pictures. Here it is though. THE symbol of Tokyo and Japan. We, of course, have not been in Tokyo for three days now, but here it is anyway. I took this from observation level at the top to the Tokyo Municipal Building. This a free elevator ride to a really cool view of Tokyo and beyond. Anyone traveling here should hit this cheap treat and great way to get a small handle on a huge city. More later. Off right now to soak in the healing Onsen.

Tsukiji

Hey All: Sorry for the delayed posting of the Japan trip, but ironically we have had poor internet service. Here are some pics of our first stop. This is all at about 5 am local time on our first day. This is Tsukoji fish market. The largest fish market in a Country that consumes 1/6th of the World's fish.















This was the area with stalls for a myriad of fish and fish related products.




























And this was the famous fish auction. This is most renown as the tuna auction, but be learned they sell a whole variety of fish. Apparently, a good percentage of the world's fish pass through this floor.













This was some very exacting tuna cutting. The older guy was coaching the apprentice on the technique.


More to come I promise. I need to get upload issues worked out, and then we will be in business. BTW: It is my 40th here already, and will be tomorrow there. Arigato for watching.

Wennie Wednesday

Came across this pic as the IT guy resolved a massive virus problem on my machine. Thanks Wardo. I took this one morning from the car during X-Games this year (note the traffic). I am pretty sure this is called a sun dog. The difference is this appeared half across the valley from the sun like a second star. I took the shot with my phone and the photo cannot come close to justice. Live, that little ball if light to the left was a searing rainbow, opposing the sun. Pretty cool what ice crystals can do.

Ticking down to departure and scrambling to get out of here. See new link to the right for the final destination on Hokkaido - Ryounkoku. Thanks for watching.

Sunny Sunday

Hey Kids: Here's some pics from last sunny Sunday here. After posting about the snow not stopping, the sun came out over the weekend and we had two bluebird days in a row. Raced the Owl Creek Chase on Saturday, but had to work on Sunday. The OCC was "fun", but I had forgotten that it is a really hard course. Lotsa lotsa up. Anyway, got to see some of the boys from both Breck and Steamboatia. Thought I was going to croak a few times, but did it and it was good. I can't really try to ski fast anymore. I basically gotta just do these things for the exercise of doing it itself. The funny part is that while I felt like crap during it, I actually posted a little faster time than two years ago. Maybe warm fast snow?

Anyway, Sunday I worked in the afternoon and decided to get up from the desk at four and hike up the hill behind our place with the snow shoes. From the top you get a 360 view of the Hasbeen area, and you can see all four ski areas. See below. There is just a pant load of snow up there. Even with the snow shoes, I went hip deep a couple of times and the doggies were doing quite a bit of wallowing. Enjoy.