December 29, 2024
We got a more reasonable start for a change, and we caught the 9:30 bus. In spite of Kerrie and Mae missing out on the tour, they decided they would go with us to the town to check it out. Almost 100% of the time we were in the Nagano prefecture area, it was snowing. Not blowing, but falling softly, and constantly. But in the morning as we walked to the bus, it was sunny yet crisp and the sky was blue. The views were breathtaking.
The Kassirers got off at the ski hill and Mae and Kerrie headed into town. It turns out no one rents goggles out, so we had to buy some. Money well spent, as it was snowing like crazy and skiing without goggles proved to be impossible. You will notice in the photo that Aubrey decided to try to ski with sunglasses at first, but halfway down the first run we bought him a pair as well at a vendor selling them at a restaurant along the hill. His glasses were so fogged up he could barely see anything (beyond the white-out blowing snow ski conditions at the top of the hill) skiing down the hill.
Aubrey on the hill
Later we met up with the boys for a great lunch at a small cafeteria style restaurant in the middle of one of the runs.
We all loved skiing and snowboarding at Nozawa Onsen Resort. The only drawback was that sometimes visibility was poor because we were skiing through a snow cloud. Otherwise the conditions were great. I have never seen so much snow.
I am going to put this video in now even though it was from Madarao resort the night before – This is a short clip of Noam going over a jump. You can see it is snowing hard, but there were times during the day at Nozawa Onsen that it was snowing much harder.
While we were skiing and snowboarding, Kerrie and Mae went to an onsen (hot spring). Mae and Kerrie said the water was so hot, it took them at least half an hour to get in. We looked it up later and the water temperature was 60 degrees Celsius!!! That was the second onsen they tried to go to because they didn’t realize you had to bring your own towel – they had to go and buy themselves towels at a convenience store first. They explored the town but there wasn’t too much to do, so after buying some convenience store food, they headed back to our apartment for some down time.
We stayed at the hill until it started to get a bit dark. We were supposed to have a comfortable 25 minute cushion in between buses. We figured it would give us time to get breakfast food and go to an ATM. Unfortunately, due to the weather, the bus took much longer and we had only 6 minutes to get from one bus to the other with all of our equipment. We frantically gathered all of our equipment while Aubrey bought our bus tickets. Once again, we found ourselves running through a station while carrying heavy things. We just made it. This time, the bus was a city bus with nowhere to put all of our ski equipment. The bus driver told us to put it on the floor.
We got home, exhausted and hungry. We had a bit of down time then we went to the onsen at a nearby hotel. the water was only 41 degrees there. They was an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a sauna and a cold plunge pool. The outdoor pool was really neat. We got to sit outside while it snowed, in an esthetically pleasing pool with a cute little waterfall. The pool was made with large stones and there was a a statue of a laughing buddha.
After the onsen we went out to a little bar/Vietnamese restaurant that was right next to our hotel. Unfortunately because it was so late they were sold out of many things, but what they had was tasty. I left the restaurant early to figure out logistics for the next day, and missed dessert, apparently there were only two things on the menu – and neither of them tasted great, but they sure looked pretty 🙂
I had a great day, but was absolutely exhausted at the end of it. My sleep tracker told me that I had my highest heart rate dip ever while I was sleeping – which is apparently a good thing.
Tomorrow we head back to Tokyo…