Skiing in Japan
The final highlight of this winter has been skiing. I have been skiing for the past four weekend in a row. The last weekend was a three day weekend and my new buddy, Dereck, and I decided to take a trip up to one of the famed spots near us called Appi. Appi, we heard, had the most terrain, including the best lodges and some high speed chairs and gondolas. Since it was a three day weekend, we had some trouble finding a ryokan to stay at since most places seemed to be filled. Dereck and I searched and searched on the internet, but were only finding space in the high-end hotels. At school I briefly mentioned that I wanted to go to Appi for the three day weekend but was having difficulties finding a place, and suddenly Atsushi-sensei, our head teacher came to the rescue. Atsushi-sensei is an avid skier and had been to Appi many times, so he recommended a guest house that he had stayed at that was cheap and close. We found the place online and it seemed too good to be true since it was literally a five minute drive from the lifts and only $60 a night, including breakfast and dinner, and $10 off of lift tickets. One of my English teachers, Dai-sensei, was nice enough to call the place and there was one slot left! We booked immediately. Early Saturday morning Dereck and I drove up to Appi and what we were told would take 2-2.5 hours actually only took 1.5 hours! We found our ryokan, fairly easily, got our discounted ½ day tickets and had a great day of skiing. It was a beautiful blue bird day. After skiing we headed back to the ryokan for a wonderful Japanese style 5-6 course meal. This was the first ryokan I’ve stayed at where there was so much food that I couldn’t finish it all! The next two days were full days of skiing. Appi was indeed what it claimed to be. My only beef with the ski areas I have been to in Japan is in the odd stair-step way the lifts are designed. Often you have to take 3-4 little lifts to get up to the top of the ski area. Well Appi didn’t have this problem at all. Quite the contrary, Appi had 2 gondolas and one high speed lift that took you right to the top of the mountain. The other issue I have had with Japanese ski areas are that the runs are fairly narrow and there isn’t many open or back country areas. Although the runs at Appi were very long, they were indeed fairly narrow and straight down. This, coupled with the fact that it was a busy weekend and the slopes were packed created the potential for some treacherous collisions. Luckily, there were no problems of that sort. The snow here in Japan is amazing because it’s so cold, and Dereck and I found one whole area of the mountain that didn’t have as many people and some fun runs. On Sunday evening we went out to the local large hotel in the area looking for some nightlife, but there was none to be had. We headed back on Monday afternoon, tired and content, both agreeing that it was a wonderfully successful weekend.