It has been another adventure

After five days of solid snow action, I think it’s safe to say that the tiredness was creeping in for all of us and bedtime was getting earlier and earlier. We had planned for family ski day on day 6 but the universe had other things in mind for this trip and a combination of bad weather, general fatigue and a small injury for one of our crew, made day 6 a ‘chill day’.

The kids have had lessons every day and it has been so cool to see them progress. The hesitation from K when she first put on her skis on day 1 are long gone and it is safe to say that she is at her happiest when going as fast as possible down a hill and that casual ‘mum style’ skiing is not for her. I think she takes after Andy in the ‘no fear’ category and seeks out any opportunity to take her little skis off piste and in to the trees to find a little jump. Happy little snow bunny.

Finlay has loved the chance to learn to snowboard and meet new people. After five full days of lessons, he moved up several groups and looks so confident on his board. Despite a small injury at the end of day 5, he has still come away with a smile on his face and keen to head back to the snow so we can actually enjoy that family ski day that never happened!

Determined to get out and see a little bit of the town of Hakuba, we decided to take the opportunity of our chill day to head out for lunch. The weather wasn’t exactly on our side but we didn’t let that stop us. One of the drivers from the hotel took us into town in the free shuttle bus and gave us a bit of a guided tour on the way, happily pointing out all of the best places to eat or buy random things. I clearly wasn’t paying much attention however, as we wiggled our way through Hakuba and when it came time to navigate our way back to the wonderful restaurants he had pointed out, we found ourselves off the beaten track in the rain! Hunger levels were rising and humour levels were definitely not high at this point, but I did have a little chuckle at the sight of my fellow Hallchurch team trudging ahead through the back streets of Hakuba with a single focus of finding food.

When we finally found the Main Street again, we encountered the challenge that everyone else had clearly a similar idea of swapping the slopes for lunch in town. Eventually we found a table in the Mexican restaurant – we seem to be doing really well this holiday at eating a range of cuisine from different countries but very little actual Japanese food! Ah well… happy (and not hungry) kids = happy parents 😀

It seems that travelling in Japan does take a certain level of organisation and pre-planning … something we are not used to (and not very good at to be honest). The team at the front desk of the hotel seemed quite horrified when I asked for them to organise a taxi for us for the next morning to take us down to Nagano to catch the Shinkansen back to Tokyo for our flight. It seems perhaps we should have organised the taxi several days earlier – ooops! Thankfully, someone at the hotel called in a few favours and (for an additional cost) a very kind taxi man picked us up bright and early to start our homeward journey.

It has been a long 24 hours journey but navigating the train system back didn’t seem quite so daunting this time and we almost looked like seasoned travellers as we traversed from taxi to the Shinkansen, changed stations a few times and eventually on our final train bound for the airport. Feeling slightly more comfortable that it was ok that we couldn’t actually read any of the signs, we followed our noses and found ourselves safely back at the airport where our journey began.

Whilst this trip was really all about the snow, we couldn’t get away with going to Japan without taking a trip to a Pokemon store! Thankfully the airport made this really easy for us…