Hokkaido Ski Trip

On Saturday I left with a group of 9 teachers from Yokohama and flew up to Hokkaido for Ski Break. It was crazy in the airport I didn't have to take off my shoes through security. I never even showed ID to get on the plane. It was great to just get my boarding pass and get on the plane. We flew into Sapporo and took a bus from Sapporo to Niseko. It was only an hour and a half flight and a two hour bus ride. Once in Niseko we got into our cabin and a small group of us quickly set out for some snowshoeing. It was great to get out into the snow. We went for about a two hour snowshoe trek in the hills near Niseko. There was tons of lovely powder as we hiked around. We walked up a hill, had some tea, and then on the way down the Nepalese guide, Basant, had us "sled" down a steep part of the trail. I suggested the use of plastic bags to make the sledding a little more fun. 

The next day we got up and had breakfast all together, then most of the teachers took the 5 minute walk to the ski slope, while two of us went snowshoeing. This day's trek took us along a lovely river. It was snowing quite heavily most of the day, which made for some good pictures. As we were shoeing along we got to see numerous "River Mushrooms", or rocks covered in snow. It was beautiful! We didn't do any sliding this trek, but we did make some snow angels. After snowshoeing for three hours I decided to go snowboarding, needless to say I was a little sore. But the -30 C and near zero visibility didn't really help. But the powder was amazing. 

On Monday, Elif and I convinced a larger group of people to go snowshoeing with us. We walked near a temple and the up behind a ski hill for some spectacular views. We found a cool snow cliff, and decided it would be fun to jump off, it makes it more fun when there is about 20 feet of snow and 5 feet of powder. We spent quite a bit of time jumping off into the snow. After that we continued up and around to the top of the ski hill. Once there we stopped for a bit of tea. After our tea Basant asked if we wanted to slide down a or walk down part of the hill. Most of us decided to slide. He then pulled up two plastic bags, he was really excited to see how they would work. After one slide he said that the plastic bags were the best thing EVER! So we continued to take turns sliding down the hill. We continued down the hill back to the van. 

After snowshoeing Elif and I played with some squishy mud and did some pottery at the hotel. It was nice to do pottery, I haven't played with squishy mud in a while. Elif made some lovely garden markers for her herbs and I made a cool mug and some other little cups. The people at the hotel will glaze and fire them, and then send them to us in Yokohama. It was nice to have a little down time for arts and crafts. 

The next day we had even more people that went snowshoeing with us...Elif and I are very good sales people. On this trek we started out near a large boiling sulfur spring. Then we hiked up to another sulfur spring. We of course enjoyed sliding down some hills and having tea time. We also had a snowshoe sprint. I won... After we snowshoed we went to a Sulfur Onsen near the trailhead. The Onsen was awesome. It was all outdoors and had four baths and a mud bath, with warm squishy mud at the bottom.  It was a great way to end a great four day weekend. The only down fall was that I kinda smelled like sulfur the rest of the day. This was a great trip I got to bring plastic bag sliding to Japan, and snowshoe through some of Japan's wonderful wilderness. 

Here is a video of the snowshoeing and sliding in Hokkaido: