Managed to wake up early, despite not being able to sleep till quite late last night. After breakfast, Rainer and Judd went ahead while David, Fujie and I went to rent boots, board and skiis. They didnt have the right size boots for me and that would cause me a lot of pain for the remainder of the trip. Next time, I will at the least bring my own boots.
The three of us couldn’t meet up with Rainer and Judd till after lunch, but had a lot of fun. I hardly fell and seemed to be doing pretty well. For lunch, we went to a Yakiniku place (meat and other things that you cook yourself on a hot plate in the middle of the table). I just had some rice and fried shrimp.
These photos were taken with my cell phone so the quality isnt great:
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| Rainer waking up | Icycles in front of the window | Onsen hidden between trees and ski runs |
After meeting with the others, we went to the top of the mountain which was very cold and windy (about -15 C I think). I was told that my hair looked completely white since I wasnt wearing a hat (those things get pretty hot), but didn’t get a photo. The rest of the day went very well, until the last run. That was when I got a call from Yoshiba-san that a VIS (very important server) had gone down. I had to walk him through bypassing login restrictions and fixing the actual problem, part of it while standing on my board on the slopes. Felt pretty strange. I will now get a wireless modem so I can do this myself with my PDA. That would be even more bizarre.
Lawrence made it at long last, just as we were heading back. He went all the way to the slope for a night run, but realised they closed at night. Poor guy.