Hakodate - Hokkaido.

Hokkaido is the Northernmost and second biggest of the Home Islands. Similar in size to Ireland but much much colder which is why its the best place to go if you're a skiier in Japan. I missed out on Hokkaido for a variety of different reasons last year which made me determined to go this year, so when Glyn said that he knew someone from work who was organising a trip and that there was room for a few more I promptly put my name down.
In the end 6 of us went. The only person I knew was Glyn and he only knew the girl who was organising the trip. She had told him that the others going were friends of hers, so we optimistically assumed that they were supermodels - unfortunately it didn't turn out quite like that !!
We were flying up from Tokyo at 6.00am in the morning which meant that I stayed in Glyns gaff the night before as he lived fairly close to the airport. Even still we very nearly missed the flight. We were on our way to his gaff the night before after a few scoops when some idiot salaryman decided to jump in front of the train (its suicide season at the moment in Tokyo and their preferred method is to get mangled by an oncoming train for some reason.). This delayed the train for ages while they scraped the remains off the track and we missed the last connection to Glyns gaff leaving us stranded in Osaki. We ended up paying something like 60 quid to get a taxi home which wasn't exactly the best way to start off the weekend. All this meant that we were late hitting the sack and that next morning at 5.00am we were in no mad rush to get out of bed. We just barely made the airport in time, and the Japanese crowd who'd been there for the regulation hour before the flight were having heart attacks wondering where we were 5 minutes before takeoff. They were all very friendly though - no supermodels unfortunately. Two married girls, two oji-san's (older men) and two Irish lads - strange combination really. One of the girls spoke English and the other three didn't speak a word so just about all communication was through Japanese.

The flight up was reasonably uneventful. It only takes an hour so before we knew it were were buckling our seatbelts in preparation for landing. After that we headed to the hotel to dump our gear and prepare for the slopes. This was when the Japanese attitude to holidays became evident. Plans plans plans - they wanted to plan the weekend down to the last minute, wherea's myself and Glyn were more on the "go with the flow" buzz. Fridays plan was to get to the slopes at around 10.00am, spend the day on the slopes, get back to the hotel for an onsen and dinner and then drink beer until we fell asleep. They had exact time slots as well for each activity - it was mad.

Hakodate is a nice ski resort. There aren't many runs but the ones that are there are up to 4 Km long and very high quality. We had a good first day on the slopes - the snow wasn't the powder we'd been told to expect in Hokkaido though. It was the same sort of stuff that you'd get in Honshu - Not bad but not great either. Apart from some grumbling about that we had a great day. The weather was really nice and there were no crowds on the slopes so there was nothing stopping me from trying to break the sound barrier on the skis. Glyn is mad for off piste action as well so I spent a lot of time following him through forests. Off piste action is much harder on skiis then it is on a snowboard though so as often as not I ended up losing control and desperately knocking myself over to avoid big hard, painful trees. All in all it was a highly enjoyable day though. After the skiing we headed back to the hotel for an onsen. Onsens are the best thing in the world after a days skiing - especially if it's a Rotenbrau (outside bath). Strangely enough women weren't allowed drink beer in their onsen. I'm not sure if we were or not but we didn't see any signs so to be on the safe side we drank a few. The rest of the first night was a dinner in the hotel restaurant followed by several beers in our rooms until they all collapsed - after that we all hit the sack.

The Saturday dawned very bright and early for the other four. They had already made their Saturday plan the night before. It involved getting up at around 7.00am, going skiing for the day. Heading back to the hotel at around 4.00pm for an onsen and then heading to a restaraunt for some yakisoba. Myself and Glyn didn't like this plan - especially the 7.00am start so we told them that they should go ahead and we'd make our own way to the slopes at a more amenable time. The plan was to meet them at around 1.00pm in the restaurant on the slopes. Unfortunately neither of us got up until 12.30pm and the next bus wasn't going to the ski slopes until 1.00pm so we were going to be late for the rendevous. We were debating wether we should tell them that we'd just got out of bed or wether we should lie and tell them we'd been skiing all morning - in the end they figured out for themselves that we'd just arrived - they were a bit bewildered that anyone could get up so late for skiing. Anyway the fact that we were so late arriving on the slopes meant that the 2 of us didn't want to leave until we were kicked off the slopes which didn't really suit the others plans. They wanted to leave at 4.00pm on the dot - otherwise ............. something terrible would happen. They then tried to persuade us to go straight to the restaurant in out ski clothes and meet them there without taking an onsen - that idea was thrown firmly out the window. In the end the slopes closed at 4.30 anyway so we caught up with them before they left for the restaurant. The snow was very poor that day. The sun had been shining all day the day before and all day again on the Saturday which left the snow in a terribly slushy state. It was a pain to ski on and very tiring, so we weren't too bothered that we didn't ski all day on the Saturday.

Sundays plan had been made on Friday. It involved not going skiing at all. Instead the plan was to sightsee around Hakodate. The two of us had initially agreed to this plan but after getting barely any time on the slopes on Saturday we now changed our minds and decided to go skiing - much to the despair of the others. We were headed back to Tokyo at 6.00pm so the plan we eventually finalised on was that the four of them would go sightseeing and we'd go skiing for the day. We'd meet up at the airport an hour before takeoff.
God we were awfully unlucky with the snow for the whole weekend. Saturday night must have been awfully cold because all the slush had been turned into pure ice - as hard as concrete. The piste was covered in these chips of ice as well which were like gravel. This of course was the day that I decided to fall after 2 days of not falling at all. I had one reasonably big accident which gave me a bit of a shock so I was more cautious after that. Ice is very fast on skis and very hard to fall on and the combination of speed and hardness makes icy conditions the worst possible to have an accident on. We still had a good day though. The icy thawed out somewhat in the afternoon so we couldn't complain too much.

It was back to the hotel after that to collect our stuff and get the bus to the airport. We thought the bus was leaving the hotel at 4.30 so we decided we had enough time for an onsen. After the onsen we emerged in the lobby only to find that the bus had actually left at 4.20 and that we'd missed it by 5 minutes !!!!! What a pisser. The other four were going to lose the head when they found out about this. In the end though we were lucky. One of the hotel porters drove us through a shortcut and managed to get ahead of the bus, which stopped when we flagged it down so we actually did manage to get to the airport. The other 4 didn't know about us missing the bus but the relief on their faces when they saw us getting off the bus was comical. We didn't tell them about missing it - I wonder what their reaction would have been if we had ........................