The kids piked out on skiing today cos it is raining a bit. The rain probably turn the snow to slush. There is about $300 worth odf ski hire and lift pass that wont get used. Asan alternative I suggested we go to Matsumoto Castle. They thought it would be good so that is what we did. It was a 45 min walk to the traino then 2 hr in the train and 1/2hr walk to the castle. Matsumoto is over 400 years old and is the biggest 5 tier donjon castle in Japan. It was prett...

This is a favourite place for us cos we can ski the runs with canfidence and also start to look at more challenging runs. We have named a few of our favourites mainey, ski school and KFC etc. KFC cos it goes past the KFC that is half way up the mountain. There are lifts everywhere and quite a few meet in a central area half way up and there is a cafe and KFC right there. The weather is getting warmer and today is another heat wave at 8deg. This makes the snow slu...

Today was a rest day from skiing and we went to see the snow monkeys. The hotel took us up to the bus stop cos it was a long way. The bus trip was back through Nagano and we got some good views of the Japanese alps. The trip was about 2 hours to Jigokadani then a half hour walk up a steep, narrow, winding and icey track. The monkeys have their own onsen and they are the only monkeys in the world that do this. Story goes they started doing it about 40 years ago an...

We had so much fun there yesterday we are going back there again. It is snowing again this morning so it should be a good day. Well heat wave is a relative term. When we left home we had temps in the high 30s but here we had a heatwave today at plus4 deg. It was sunny and warmish and that turns the snow into slush. The skiing was better when we first got here but we still had a lot of fun today. We went up and down around the mountain and explored different runs,...

My Japanese is comin along beautifully. I was a bit slow and tender getting out of bed this morning. Im feeling really old. I guess I will be fine when I hit the slopes again this morning. We are going on the shuttle bus to another part of the mountains to try a beginner slope to try to get the hang of skiing. The kids are struggling, of course Im good to go.......hahaha. Tsugaike-kogen is another village north of here and we are told the slope there is way more ...