Hello My Dear Great Ones,
Celia and I had a week off for Chinese New Year's so we headed to Japan for some skiing action at Nozawa Onsen Snow Park. This year, after spending a nice tea time with Celia's friend in Tokyo we rode the famous bullet train from that city (population of metropolitan Tokyo is 37 million, two million more than all of Canada) to Iiyama, the closest train station to Nozawa Onsen. Usually by car it would take five hours, with the bullet train an hour and a half. Traveling at @320km will do that. Wow.
We were fortunate to have for the most part good weather at Nozawa. However, it snowed for 24 hours from Tuesday night to Wednesday night giving us half a meter of powder to enjoy. Thursday was a blue sky day with fresh powder. Perfect.
We stayed at a very traditional Japanese lodge. Slept on the floor ate on the floor. Its ok if you are flexible, but for a stiff old man like me it was tough to appreciate this Japanese tradition. Yet, I certainly appreciated Nozawa Onsen, the polite Japanese people, the interesting food, and of course the aptly named bullet train.
(Finally every picture below was taken by Celia's iphone and most were taken by her.) Wow.
Scene from the town of Nozawa Onsen.
A public hot spring building.
Have a great week everyone.
Love adios and ping on,
Dirk
