Winter Sport 2007

I intended to keep all winter sport trips for this season in one blog, that's why I never wrote about them earlier. I don't know if my decision is right cuz I think I ended up having too many photos to post. But well, we try to keep them concise. The rest, visit my flickr album!

Trip#1: [2007.02.03-04: Tsugaike Kogen, Nagano]
:accommodation: Albint Inn (close to Gondola Station)
:rental: Spicy Rental
:members: Mai, P'Au+, Nott, Chadin, Woody, Lar, Nhong, Bee, Kee and Pe~ (total of 10 people)

My first trip for this season. We picked to go to Tsugaike Kogen. Trips in February is usually very expensive since it's the spring break holiday (yes, it's so-called Spring!) But we managed to get a package that was still affordable. We left, as usual, on Friday night, spent a night on the bus, reached the ski resort early morning of Saturday. Then, put our stuff in the hotel, changed our gear and headed out for equipment rental and ready to get some fun. Our hotel (well, actually lodge) was quite close to the slope, but I think people there had some kind of attitude that wasn't so nice for their guests. The weather was PERFECT! I meant it. It hasn't been snowing for a while and we were afraid for bad slope condition. It turned out that the resort was hit by snow for a few days in a row before our arrival. So we had completely new quality snow of about 10-20 cm with clear sunshine day.

Pe and Bee were our newbies for snowboarding, so we spent the first morning in a chill-chill way. It was so funny to see beginners like them perform sooooo incredibly well once I took out my VDO camera. :) On the other hand, falling was not restricted to only beginners. We all had some shots like this too (see below)

name unrevealed...(but please look at the outfit!) haha
the VDO mentioned above
The next thing we realized, before lunch time, Pe's was already on the snowmobile! What a great excuse to ride that instead of snowboarding down the hill!! tsk tsk!

great snowmobile ride
After our KFC lunch, we splitted in groups, leaving Chadin and Bee to go on our Olympic training with Coach Lar+ as usual. Welcome Woody on board the team for the first time! Coach was accompanied by Kee who seemed not to like the word "breaking" or "stopping", making the rest of the team members so exhausted. Nhong and I snowboarded at the same speed, so we are always buddies when we go snowboarding.

the two powerful skiier&snow boarder
snowboard fight!!!
Nott & Nhong

The second day, we also had perfect weather. It snowed during the night time and the sky cleared up in the morning, allowing us to enjoy new snow in bright sunlight. We could see Hakuba Iwatake and Hakuba Happo Kogen Ski resorts from Tsugaike Kogen. Happo looks sooooo tempting, though I heard from a friend that they have tiring trails. Maybe next year!

It's Tsugaike! (this sign came with the national ski competition which was held on Sat)

Trip#2: [2007.02.18: Ice Skate @ Hirakata Park, Osaka]
::credit to Pote for all photos from Hirakata Park::
::members:: Bee, Lar, Chadin, Nhong, Mai, Pote, P'Au+ & Kee

Just for a change, we went ice-skating! I also went to this very Hirakata Park's ice square last year with Bow and Pear. (the birdy dancing uncle and the two pro-look kids were still there at the ring this time!!) Please remember there is McDonald's inside the park!! I forgot there was food there, so we had to suffer eating something not so good in front of the park instead.

It was Sunday that we went. The crowd was just toooooo much. We barely had room to move. And when we were in the center of the ring, there were people cutting across, so we couldn't really do much. There was a nice uncle who seemed to come skating so often. He saw me and Nhong trying to do some moves, so he came to teach us. Now I can make backward circles!! yippee~!! It was nice having someone to learn something together cuz it really helps with the speed of learning :) I didn't bring out my camera, so every photos from this trip were of p'Au's and Pote's. P'Au's brought his fish-eye lense which we really enjoyed so much. (see the Kyoto Doc collection)





Trip#3 [2007.03.01-04: Niseko's Grand Hirafu, Hokkaido]
::accommodation:: Lodge Kuropokuru
::rental:: (forgot the name -"-)
::members:: 22 people
- Tokyo: P'Ni, Nui~, Jib, N'Pook, P'Bao', N'Som~, Job, Vee (8)
- Nagoya: Ae~, Roong~, Pete, Ping~ (4)
- Osaka: Palang, Poy, Moo+, N'Gift, N'Or (5)
- Kyoto: Mai, Nott, Yok, Donut, Ball (5)
** thanks Palang for the trip arrangement **

beautiful view of Mt.Yotei (from the top of Hirafu)

Below is the map of Niseko's Grand Hirafu's slope. Our lift tickets allow us to ski/snowboard the whole areas on this map except for the farleft area (to the left of the bending line). The slope opens from 8:30 - 20:00. The tickets earn us automatic permission to access the slope for night skiing, which was really cool (and much like the US standard). Niseko town's people can speak fluent English since roughly half of skiier/snowboarders are non-Japanese, most of which were Australians.

map of Niseko's Grand Hirafu Ski area
The trip was composed of a mixture of us from Kanto, Nagoya and Kansai areas. Most of us spent 2 overlapping nights together in which we were able to enjoy some fun activities together. Thanks Nui, Vee and P'Ni for preparing the Wii, remote controls and projector. We had fun trying out the Nintendo's Wii games! It was truly addictive!! =P

great snow up there
Niseko is famous for snow powder in which, yes, I loved the touch of it. But it was quite disappointing that there wasn't much snowfall which resulted in a not-so-good snow quality this year. In the upper mountain, the snow was still very great. However, at the bottom, especially by the end of the day, most parts turned into sorbet-like wet snow that was quite yucky.

waiting for group members along the way
There were a lot of us that most of the time we had to split into groups. While I was teaching nong nong, there were these Milo kids who took private ski lesson that really caught my attention. I saw them since before they got on the ski lift. Then while I was on the slope, I saw them coming down in line with their instructor at the front, sometimes like flying airplanes. They were just so adorable! I admire how these instructors have the psychology to plays with the kids. :)

Milo kids
captured by p'Ni
It was quite a relax trip this time, if compared with our usual exhaustive Olympic training with Coach Lar+. =P But man... it was still quite an exercise for my leg muscles anyways.
since my outfit stays unchanged, you have to look at snowboard colors to be able to distinguish which trip it was! =P

Trip#4 [2007.03.10-11: Hakuba Goryu&47, Nagano]
::accommodation:: White House Hotel
::rental:: Woody Rental
::members:: Mai, P'Au+, Nott, Chadin, Woody, Lar, Nhong, Bee, Kee, Donut, Yok, P'Ton, Best, Pote + Poy&Moo+ (total of 14+2 people)

Our last trip of the season was just this past weekend! 14 of Kyoto people got together to leave on the Friday night bus, while Poy and N'Moo of Osaka joined us only on Sunday. (<-- meaning they spent Sat&Sun nights on the bus and only skiied/snowboarded for a day!)

We got an accommodation right on the slope, that we basically could ski/snowboard to the hotel entrance. Really cool! It was the hotel, so yes... beds, not futons. The funny thing was that they didn't have a cafeteria. The room was more like a pension style equipped with kitchen and dining area. All (fresh) food was served in the room and we made hot-pot for dinner that day. We had fun in a way though :)


Our pass permits us everywhere on this slope. Our most favourite place is the longest red line toward the right side of this map. The snow condition for the first day wasn't that good eventhough it had been snowing in the past few days before our arrival. However, it wasn't as bad as I imagined it would. The weather was VERY hot that we didn't really need the heavy winter jacket (but too bad, we had them on anyways.)

behind the scene of our photos on the slope. Coach must have been very strict that Chadin turned out like this! =P
The second day was a total opposite. Snow storm hit the slope on Saturday night, leaving us with brand new snow of approx. 20 cm or more. Even after the storm had passed, we still ended up with fairly strong wind the whole second day that lifts toward the top of the mountains were all out of operation. We got stuck at the top of the highest lift for a while before the sky cleared up a bit and allowed us to make our path down the mountains. We, then, moved ourselves to the 47 side and sticked to the red line which Coach Lar+ had our Olympic Training! Yok, Donut and Pote moved back to Goryu side and splitted with us since then.

to save time and energy, we moved our luggage by snowboarding / skiing down the slope to put them in lockers at Escal Plaza after hotel check-out, instead of walking down the road
turning our backs to the wind

Since then, we didn't really bring out our cameras for photo shooting. The VDOs we have are way too large to put on youtube. But if you got to see them, I'm sure you'd laugh. =P Btw, Coach.... who passed your final exams?? =P (There were 8 of us. Take a guess who's who!)

::lesson learned:: you don't need great skills to enjoy this kind of sport. But you definitely need to have good speaking skills to enjoy the most part of it! <-- "I'm lovin' it"

returning our equipments, calling the end of this winter season