I didn't get a chance to blog last night. After dinner at Shi Shi, the chinese restaurant, we kicked back for a much needed massage, which put us both into sleep mode!
Our last day of snow at Shiga was the best. The night before, whilst eating the equivalent of Japanese fondue, called Shabu Shabu (which was DE-LICIOUS!!!!), the snow started coming down. I figured at the time we might get a cm or two, based on the weather forecast. We awoke that morning to closer to 10cm of soft powder across the resort!!!
I've never seen powder snow. Not real powder. This stuff is like a fine dust, a mist when you walk through it. I tried picking some up to make a snow ball and it literally falls through your fingers like sand. Unfortunately we'd slept in and I was anxious to get out there before it got to cut up. Breakfast felt like an eternity, as did Alana's getting ready!!!! We finally made it out there, strapped in and had an awesome day!
We started out at the Ichinose Diamond. The connecting lift from Prince Hotel's runs to Ichinose is the most dodgy thing you've ever seen. It can barely fit two people per seat, has not cross bar to secure you in and looks like it could fall over at any second. This was Alana's second lift experience ever hahahaha!!! I thought it was funny… anyway we made it up there and spent the morning frolicking in the powder. After a bit of tutorial, Alana started to get the hang of leafing it down and I think even made it down without tripping over once or twice. I managed to get some good footage of it actually.
After a few hours playing around here we made a trip up to the summit. Being a Saturday and there being heaps of snow, there was also heaps of people. I'd enjoyed 4 days of practically empty ski fields and now they were packed to the brim. This had some unfortunate consequences - the powder got eaten up pretty quickly and if you stacked it, you were in danger of being run over!! So we started slowly making our way down, getting Alana moving whilst directing us down the right runs. Alana took a bit of a tumble and whacked her head a good one, but thankfully I'd given her my helmet early on so the damage was minimal! As we sat on the snow so Alana could catch her breath, a young Japanese girl had a massive stack on the ski's and rag dolled it about 20 m before coming to a very uncomfortable stop - one ski kept going down the mountain, the other jammed into the snow and her leg folder underneath. After having a brief chuckle Alana pointed out that she wasn't moving, so I ducked and weaved out into the packed run to take a look. She was pretty shaken up and had jarred her leg pretty bad. I gave her a shoulder and carried her gear over to our safe spot on the side for her to recuperate, where her friends had also managed to trek back up the slope when they realised there mate was no longer behind them. Once she got some colour back in her face we said our good byes and continued down the slope to the gondola that leads up to the summit.
By the time we made it up there Alana was getting pretty tired and legs would have been burning! We made it most of the way down before she unclipped and went for a walk, while I had a bit of fun. We'd spent almost the entire day out there and were both ravenous so we retired for some food, a bit of a chill out and booked in for tea and massages.
This morning was spent packing up in prep to catch the early express bullet train back to Tokyo. We figured if we were going, we wanted to be in Tokyo asap to enjoy it. We rocked up around lunch time, checked in and went for an explore. So far this place is WILD. Banners, neon sign's and 1000's of people everywhere. I'll post the run down tomorrow!
