Snow!

After visiting the snow monkeys, we drove on to head to the snow proper, and our final stop for the whole trip (not counting the drive back to Tokyo and flight home to come). On our way to Ishiuchi, we stopped for a lovely lunch in a random snowy town (including a post-lunch run through town looking for a working ATM to top up on cash to pay for lunch – I came back with a centimetre of snow on my hood).

The drive got a little hairy at times as we got higher and snowier, but Canadian-era muscle memory and good snow tires on the mighty Honda Fit got us through. We did better than a few trucks we passed at one point, who were finding it too slippery to continue.

Then, on F's birthday on Thursday, we hit the snow. A switched back to snowboarding since her trial of skiing did not pan out in New Zealand in 2023, but we boys all skied.

The conditions were excellent – we'd gotten at least a few feet of snow the night before, and it continued to snow lightly throughout the day. With the clouds around, visibility was occasionally a bit mixed, though usually pretty decent (and sometimes amazing). We spent the day mostly around the Ishiuchi Maruyama gondola (A is not keen on chair lifts after a knee-wrenching experience some years back).

Unfortunately, on our third run down the mountain (on our way to a lunch break), F stepped through some thin snow in front of a cafe. His boot got stuck (it took a bit of digging to get his leg out) and he wrenched his foot a bit. So F and A sat it out for most of the rest of the day (I think A had probably had enough by then too). After resting up for a while, they both made it the rest of the way down the mountain without any issues.

In the meantime, J and I skied down the mountain, then took the gondola and a few extra chair lifts to the very top of the mountain for an extra long run all the way down. J was also pretty had it by the end of the day (I think he and I probably did about another three or four long runs by ourselves), so we decided to return our gear (we'd only rented and gotten lift tickets for one day, to see how we all went) and take a break for a day (and hopefully get back in the snow on Saturday).