Nagano, etc. etc.

Happy New Year everybody. It's the year of the Rabbit and you know what that means? No, really, do you know? I don't. But I like rabbits.

I spent my winter holiday in Kobe and Nagano. The night before I left for Kobe, I had to use all my cash to cover a year end party I organized because they didn't take credit cards, but luckily for me, my buddy Tim was going with me and had the cash to cover my bus ticket, because it left before the ATMs "opened". That's right. 24-hour atms don't work for Japanese banks. Remember that.

Tim playing with his food. Yeah, the restaurant had cotton candy!

Anyway, we took the 4 hour bus to Kobe, which was actually fun with Tim there to chat with, and when we got to Kobe we met up with some friends and grabbed lunch.

Tim took this! Thank you, Tim. ...Thim.

In Kobe I met with like 5 old friends from my study abroad days, which is always amazing since there were 40 of us in total so that's practically a reunion!

My friend Masa who owns a Hawaiian restaurant in Kobe called Oluolu was SO NICE to invite me and Kui (visiting from Hawaii) to his home for a nabe (hotpot) party complete with fresh bought seafood from Okayama!

Me with my left-handed chopsticks

 Then I took off straight to Nagano. The trains from Nagoya to Hakuba (specifically Kamishiro, where I stayed) took FOREVER but the view was incredible the whole way.

 I met up with my buddy Micah, who also lives in Hiroshima and got settled in to our lodge Tabi-tabi (a play on words, cuz "tabi" means journey and "tabitabi" means repeatedly).

 The lodge itself was really awesome and run by a young Japanese guy and his Canadian wife, who were both avid snowboarders. When New Year's Eve came they busted out all these crazy costumes and we all played dress-up. Such innocent, random fun! (Jesus Freak and the dude on the bottom right are the couple that run the place, bottom-middle are a couple from Netherlands, top-middle are a couple, Yellow from England, and Blue from Australia, and Carrot-Bear-Santa is Micah)

You guys know you can click on these pics to see them bigger right?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The morning after I got there the wife, Jesus Freak (her name is Angela, but i LOVE that shirt) drove Micah and I to Happone, the 1998 Winter Olympic resort, for a full day of snowboarding in the craziest conditions of my life! Micah, whose been doing it more than twice as long as me, also remarked that he had never been in as much deep, heavy powder. It was very hard for me to adjust, but eventually I got to the point where I was able to move around and enjoy it properly. We also found this sweet spot with about a 5 foot drop which Micah attacked and I tried timidly, but twice.

By the end of the day I was exhausted and actually took the next day off to relax and recuperate for boarding another full day at Goryuu (five dragons) with Micah, Warren, Emiko and their friend from Gunma, Takki.

It was insanely cold that afternoon and a wind started blowing that made them shut down a couple lifts and slow down the rest to a crawl. We parted ways to have dinner and get changed, planning to meet back up for the New Year's Eve countdown and fireworks, but the fireworks were canceled due to the wind, Taki's car got stuck in the snow, and we ended up meeting at 12:10 1/1/11. But we took it back to their lodge and had a low key party of potato chips and local wine.

Coming home on the Shinkansen (bullet train), one of my co-workers sat down next to me on the train! How improbable is that! He sat down right next to me, and neither of us even noticed for about 5 minutes! Not only were we both on vacation outside Hiroshima, he wasn't even on his way back! He got off at the next stop to bring some New Year's decorations to his parents' house! You gotta love Japan for those kind of coincidences, which seem to happen much more frequently than in the states.

Anyway, I took the next two days very slowly. Cleaned my apartment, a week's worth of laundry (which already needs doing again), and watched some movies. (I highly recommend Summer Wars, which is coming out in America soon, if not already). Great family movie, like Spirited Away, but at the same time, completely different.

Also, just to warn you, my next post is going to be long, rambly, and have nothing to do with my life per-say, but I want to write out some philosophical stuff I've been mulling for the last few months! Feel free to leave comments! (I've written some other stuff in the past I'm very proud of too, so if you haven't yet and you're bored, take a look at my older posts).