Siberia eventually arrived in Nozawa Onsen, albeit it a touch late. When I headed up the mountain on Tuesday morning, it looked like this:
This gave me a few times for some quick runs and then down the back run for a hot chocolate at the bottom of Skyline. By the time I got back up to the top of the gondola (20 mins from the sunny outdoor hot chocolate I’d just consumed), it looked like this:
And that was the rest of the day really, it was throwing down a lot of snow, making each run you did, a fresh track run, as previous tracks had all been filled in between lifts. Fabulous! Also…. Exhausting! Skiing in powder can tend to take it out of you and is quite tiring. By around 2:30pm the visibility had dropped even further, and even though it was my last day, I decided that it was time to take myself off the mountain. I wasn’t keen on breaking anything on my last afternoon.
It continued to bucket down with snow through out the night. To which point, in this blog, you’ll get no dinner update for Tuesday, because I just had a spicy Nozawa Kebab and chips! Not exotic at all. It was bucketing with snow, most of the places I had checked were booked out and I really didn’t have the inclination to tramp around in massive snow drifts to find the illusive place that just happened to have space left in it! Kebab it was.
Overall, Nozawa had 70cm of fresh snow during the day and over night on Tuesday. This makes me sad, because I was leaving Wednesday, so no more powder for me.
Actually there had been so much snow that there was a strong possibility that some of the Shinkansen’s would not be working. After a rather dicey bus ride down the hill (chains on, seat belt on), it was a relief to see that the train were still running, but perhaps just a bit behind time?
Wednesday saw me heading to Kanazawa, which is on the north western coast of the main island, facing the Sea of Japan. I have no more skiing on my itinerary and am now site seeing around Japan.
My home for the next two nights is a 300 year old Ryokan, which has been in the same family all that time. A Ryokan is a traditional Japanese guest house and is very different to a “hotel”. My room is a tatami room, house keeping roll out my futon in the afternoon, there’s a traditional breakfast and a communal onsen. Given that it’s been snowing for much of my time here, I may well partake of the onsen!
Kanazawa is famous for it’s fish markets. They weren’t open today, so I will definitely be hitting them tomorrow. Today I headed over to the very snowy Kenrokuen Garden and Kanazawa Castle. Much of the castle is no longer there, due to various fires from almost the beginning of it’s life. It as originally built in 1546, in 1602 it was hit by lightning and sections burned down, in 1620 the palace burnt down, reconstruction took placed after that. The Great Kanazawa fire of 1631 caused further damage…. You get the drift. Buildings built of wood and bamboo have always been a huge fire risk.
The Kenrokuen Gardens have had some similar challenges, burning down in 1759. However there was no fire for us today….. Just the powdery white stuff.
I think I have also found the best vending machine thus far also, pics below.
Lunch: Salmon & roe sushi, squid & wasabi sushi, sea urchin sushi (& 1 small beeru) 1,500 yen $16.20
Temperature: -2 degrees Celcius
Snow depth: 2.3m (no more snow updates from here on in!)
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