After our two fabulous bluebird days, we experienced a real change in the weather and the rain set in for the lower parts of Hakuba Valley. Not deterred by a bit of rain, Day 4 on the snow still treated us to some surprisingly good conditions. Keen to keep progressing with his snowboarding, Finlay locked in for another full day lesson and K stuck with her usual half day.

Like the ocean, the mountains look completely different depending on the weather and it was kind of cool to see the clouds across the valley.

After a few hours of riding, Andy and I made our way back down the mountain for some lunch before picking up K. We had spotted a sushi place near the ski school pick up so decided to check it out for lunch – perhaps our best meal so far. We have come to learn that booking a table for dinner is pretty much essential in Japan (if you want to eat anywhere other than the pub) so I decided to book the sushi place for dinner that evening.

We picked up a slightly soggy, but still very happy Kiera after her lesson and, after a change of gloves and a hot chocolate, she declared that she still had a few more runs in her so off we set back up the mountain.

Finlay had a great day in lessons and moved up a level from blue to red group. He has been enjoying the full days and riding with different kids each day.

After another day on the snow, we were all ready for dinner (again) and I felt slightly smug that I had managed to get a reservation, for once, before we all reached a 9 on the hunger scale. However, my smugness was short lived and I really should have checked the menu before booking! It turned out that the sushi menu was only a lunch time thing and the evening meals were more catering for fine dining (aka super fast expensive) set meal type experience. Thankfully, the final page of the menu offered some small a la carte options, one of which thankfully included fish and chips for K or we would have been in trouble. Finlay is a lot happier to try different foods and was quite content to try the fish curry which was apparently one of the best curries he has ever had. I tried roast wild boar which was also delicious. One of the waitresses was very keen to take a photo of us and upload to their instagram account. As I don’t use instagram, I have no idea what the post said but probably chuckling at the Aussie’s who came to fine dining and ate fish and chips 😂

Another day ending with smiles and ready for another early night. This snow thing is exhausting!