Hakuba Top 14

Hi everyone,

So i just got back from hakuba a few days ago. it was an intense experiency... to put it lightly. we got up at about 5:55 to be at work by 6:00. After we got there we put out all of the food and tea and nonsense before the customers arrived. Once the okyakusama began to filter in I would go into the kitchen and pour meso soup as needed. After the customers left we would bus the dishes and in some cases set the tables again for a second wave if the hotel was really full. Once all the customers were out the door we would set the table for dinner and other kids in the kitchen would wash the dishes before we all had breakfast, usually rice and some leftovers from the night before. Usually we wrapped up at about 9:00
room cleaning started at 10:00 and lasted from two to two and a half hours. i would usually just zone out listening to my iPod as i folded futons and replaced pillow covers. Important thing to remember if you ever go to a japanese ryokan - they don't change the sheets of the futons and comforters, soooo use the sheet provided.
around 12:30 we would break again and i would head for the slopes. Skiing in japan is very difference for the united states or European countries. all of the courses are roped and the penalties for cutting lines are strict aka removal from the ski area. what this means in reality is that you will be taking chair lifts up over several feet of new while you are confined to groomed runs. and unbelievably enough, japanese people are just fine with this! so weird.
anyways dinner started at five and would last until nine. usually it was about the same affair as beakfast with the exception of a different plate setting for beakfast as opposed to dinner. afterwards we would have dinner with our boss and then head to bed. usually we were to do anything but watch some tv before passing out.

sooooo all in all a lot of work and limited benefits. (rei is screaming his head off right now and just attacked his little play mate. now hes screaming baka baka baka at him. huh that was weird)



shiyacchyo (boss) and his wife outside of the hotel



this is rei with one of the hotels apron's on. I made him help wipe down tables with me, i think he loved it.



Thi is my host family! they came out to hakuba for a day and actually stayed at the lodge i was working at. On the right us Yuu-san, in the middle rei-kun, and on the left youtaro-san. kindda behind me is reis cousin fuuta-kun. he just for into high school, a sizable feat in japan, so my host parents treated him to this trip.



a nice scene riding up one of the chairlifts.




as the sign says, La montange furuhata was used a press housing during the nagano Olympics



I am the master of meso soup. dont know one come in that kitchen and act like that big pot isnt my personal property.



Some of my fellow prisoners, i mean workers.



nice scene of the hakuba mountain range from town. i think Vaso and i were going to McDonalds when we took this picture



SNOW!



This is me relaxing after dome delicious apple pie. they most have been a speciality of this place cause they were little personal size ones and they were ficken awesome.



me in front of the ski area. the run on the right of me would always be swamped by racers. BORING!!!!! where is the powder!



ah here it is. This chair lift is broken so i was continuously hiking up to this lift to do the chair line course. I probable had some of the best power days on my life here and on a snowboard no less! and, as much as you skiers out there dont want to here this, a big powder day on a board is incredible.



our room. continuously a bio hazard.

And hakuba

Hi everyone,

so its been a bit of a whirlwind weekend. i went skiing with my extended host family on sunday and monday (today), took the shinkansen back to tokyo, and just finished packing for my month long job at a hakuba ski area. theres lots of things about japanese ski areas that i want to talk about but I need to get to bed quick. Suffices to say, all Japanese cultural quirks translate to their ski areas.

About my hakuba trip

I am deliberately not bring my laptop with me, it will probably be the longest time ive been separated from my baby since i got her. if you need to get in contact with me (gram) dad has my cell phone email address which will probably get a response out of me faster than my normal email would anywyas...

ummm ya.. ill be gone a month,,,, i get back on the 8th. I hope everyone has a nice February and ill make sure to put up some big posts after i get back. Bye

mom and dad – ill send you the emergency numbers stuff you want tomorrow

Atten hell – winter storm advisory

Yes tom it looks like hell might just actually freeze over this holiday system. With Sarah Myhre actually procuring a black berry portable phone she has completed the dreaded "I'm no longer a hippy" trifecta. We all remember last year when the first two parts of the prophesy were fulfilled with her getting a permanent job in the marine biology field and the discovery of razors. While many naysayers pointed to the continued use of "natural foods" and the introduction of "yoga" and "vegitarisiam" as evidence for a continued period of hippism, it looks like it's at an end with this mobile phone acquisition.

Back to you tom

Real life –

That's very cool Sarah. I want one! Everyone says how great Japanese phones are but they basically use the same simple OS we have in the US but with more features.

And the ramen

Hi yall

I thought I would give everyone a quick update. My fall semester finishes up next Tuesday, and then I have a week off before I head off to a ski lodge to go clean toilets all morning and ski afternoon. Im really excited. My time outside of Tokyo with esther was one of my best experiences so im looking forward to another change to venture out into the great unknown. Plus im going to get over 30 days of skiing in this winter so HA! Hahahahah! Hahahahahahha!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

boosh

Top Ten Trip Pictures (plus a deer)

Hi everyone,
Well Esther and I got back from our trip to the Osaka region last week and since then I’ve been going through our pictures (we have over a thousand of them) and sorting them by region. Looking through them, there are definitely a few that stand out so I thought I would put up my top ten. Some of them are of the major sights including the famous rock garden and temples in Kyoto and the Himeji castle but some of them just stand on their own.

This first one is from a game center in Himeji. The truth is, I’m hopelessly and utterly addicted to these medal games here. They are a bit like pachinko where you exchange you money for tokens, but these game are a combination of slots and the normal medal game where you try and push coins off the counter. And you can’t exchange your medals back to cash, not that you actually ever win… So anyways I convinced Esther that I would be a good cultural experience to play and so she unwittingly feed my habit.

This next picture is the famous rock garden in Kyoto. Supposedly when sitting on the floor you are unable to see all 12 rocks at the same time. From my observations, that seems to be correct. It was very cool to see but also very crowed which took away from the atmosphere.

Next up is a picture of Esther during our side trip to Mt. Koya. When I originally planed our tip, I looked at a whole bunch of pictures of temples and graves powered with snow and we actually were lucky (or unlucky) enough to arrive during a snow storm. Lucky because it was really pretty, as in straight out of a post card. But unlucky because we frozzeee

This is a pan picture that Esther took with her new camera. You take three pictures and the camera stitches them together. I think it actually does a really good job. This picture is from an obscure temple that we visited on our fistr day in Kyoto however it was definitely a highlight. If you look at the picture closely, you can see a branch from the big tree in the center that is supported by a couple of wooden braces of the gravel.

Next is a little tiny statue that I found in the corner of a temple garden. Don’t touch his cash, hes trying to put his kids through college.

The pan picture is of harbor land or something in kobe. We stopped off in kobe while traveling to Osaka to get a little taste of the city. We ended up having a really good time in their china town where we bough food from street vendors and watched up fish get wacked. Afterwards we checked out the water front where Esther took this picture. The red tower to the right is the Osaka tower or something and the Farris wheel on the left is in some kiddy water front theme park which we checked out later in the day. Kobe was a very interesting town and in the future I would like to come back and explore some more.

I really like this picture. So during our expedition to Mt. koya, which was a huge hassle but offered some great views, I bought some niku-don at a little shop on the train platform. Along with the little meat filled buns I also received two kites. I don’t exactly know where the kites entered the transaction; perhaps I bought the “happy kite meat bun special” but….. don’t know. Anyways, I decided to fly it on the train plat from during one of our transfers and Esther managed to take this excellent picture.

BTW sarah – notice the hat? I love it, I wore it constantly. The hat/scarf combo was going strong for the first few days until I lost the scarf somewhere! Sorry! Esther can attest to how upset I was. Anyways, maybe I can persuade you to knit me a new one in the future. I won’t lose that one.

Another cool picture from mt. Koya. I don’t think ive mentioned it yet, but we visited on new years day which is THE day for going to temples. Anyways we got to these particular ones late in the day after the crowds thinned out which was nice. The big red one on the right was my favorite sight from the entire trip. I’m over on the left, on the left side of the middle temple to give you some scale. The thing was absolutely huge.

Alright this ones big. This is kinkakuji, probably the most famous temple in Kyoto and up there in all of Japan. Esther snapped this amazing picture. The walls of the temple are wood, but all of the gold… color is actually gold foil that is applied in neat little squares. The detail work on this thing is intense.

Alright, this is my favorite picture of the Himeji castle. Between Esther and I, we probably to about 40 pictures of it so that’s saying something. This one was taken from inside the castle complex when the sun briefly poked its head out from behind the clouds.

Last up is a deer. And you may think you have seen deer before, but not like these things. They are like rats that have invaded the city and everyone has decided that they don’t mind so much. So everywhere you go, you see these dehorned scavengers following people trying to steal the deer crackers out of their pockets. I have a picture of the big nara Buddha which is where we were going when I took this picture but none of them really came out.

And the swimming

Ahh the dreaded synchronized swimming…. I should have known… so I thought the latest craze in your like was horseback riding… when did swimming enter the picture? I hope its not conflicting with skiing… lets keep our priorities straight…

And em

Hey em.

 

How did you "pop" your shoulder? Did you completely dislocate it or did it just "pop"? that's pretty brutal if it come out completely. Did somebody pull it for you? What were you doing? Hopefully something worthy of dislocating your shoulder rather then fooling around. Not that I have anything to say, the two times ive broken bones have not been the most worthy of occasions.