spring skiing...in the high country

Today I slept in till about 12:30...I had decided the night before that I would go skiing today, but slept through the alarm. When I woke up I looked outside and saw it was a perfect day, which is pretty hard to come by around here. So I left the house around 1 and headed for a ski area called Okutadami Maruyama, which is near Yunotani Village, about 1.5 hours from here. I've never been but it has a reputation for getting insane amounts of snow...in fact it gets so much snow that it is closed from January to April because it is inaccessible. It opened up a few weeks ago with a 5 meter base, which is something like 16 feet, and might be open into June.

The drive there was insane. Apparently the ski area was built near a high-country electrical station where there is a big mountain lake that is dammed up. The only access is this weird maintenance road that consists entirely of 2 long Indiana Jones-like mountain tunnels with a short break between them. I entered the first tunnel and it started to climb pretty steep...I began to get worried as it never seemed to end and just went higher and higher. The next tunnel was just as long and it was 30 minutes before I emerged out the other side of the mountain. As far as I could tell I entered at the bottom of a big mountain and came out at the top on the other side, where the ski area was sitting among electrical wires and dams.

I didn't get going until 2:45 which only left me a couple hours to ski, but it wasn't crowded and it was good spring skiing. The views of the alps were awesome and it was nice to be out again, might be my last day for the year unless I come back to the same place after my vacation next week. There was some soft spring powder-crud in the trees and I was able to get at least 10 or so runs in.

On the way back down I checked my odometer...the tunnels were about 21 km long, or around 15 miles or so.

I came home and went to the new sushi place nextdoor. I ordered the next expensive plate from what I had last time just to compare, and it didn't exactly get bigger or better, just weirder and more exotic. I ate stuff that I normally hate (like sea urchin) but because it was top-quality sea urchin, I tried it and while I still didn't like it, I could appreciate why some people do (because they like to eat things that taste like gym socks). But everything else was just awesome and I even got a free plate of the best sashimi I've ever had because there was a mistake...I had only asked if they had sashimi but didn't order it, but it ended up in front of me anyway...I offered to pay for it cuz I ate it but they refused. So that was a bonus. I've decided to hit that up once a week now...

So now I'm just prepping for a busy four days, and then I have an 11 day vacation, the first big vacation since christmas. I'm planning on heading down to Nagoya to see my college friend Marco, and maybe make some side trips to Kyoto and other must-sees. I'm excited to see the rest of Japan. This will be my first real big trip outside of the area around here...yay! I'll probably leave Friday and maybe come back a week later. Not sure yet. The Kimono Festival is in my town that week too but it looks like I'll miss it.