yeti ski trip

This weekend, I went on a ski trip to Nagano! It's a yearly event organized by YETI (Yamanashi English Teachers International), and JETs and their friends from all over come to participate - I think there were something like 100 people there, which is crazy. Even crazier considering even though I said it was organized by YETI, I'm pretty sure one person did basically everything, which is really impressive.

We had a decent sized group of people coming from Chiba, so we all met up for dinner before hopping into a giant 10-person van to carpool to Nagano! It took a little over 4 hours so we didn't get there until after midnight, but it was a fun car ride involving funny stories and Disney singalongs, so it went by pretty fast. When we finally got there, I was super excited to be in a place that was entirely white with snow (even though it made the roads a little scary).

We stayed at a place called the Resort Hotel Lady Diana, which felt more like a lodge than a hotel (which was great). The room I stayed in had a little loft with little stars painted all over the walls and ceiling, which I loved. Anyway, after settling in (it felt like a big slumber party with four futons next to each other!), we went to bed to get some sleep before skiing/snowboarding.

View of our loft from the ladder (it was kind of hard to get a good picture)

The next day, we got up bright and early to head out onto the slopes! We went to Hakuba-Goryu Ski Resort just up the road, and which included both the Goryu and Hakuba47 ski areas. It wasn't too cold (I took off my hat and put it in my pocket because it was warm and promptly lost it, oops) and the snow was nice and powdery (my supervisor tells me that Hakuba is famous for having good snow), which was great.

I had originally signed up to ski for one full day and snowboard for the next morning, but a few days before we left I decided to switch them around, and I'm glad I did! I've only snowboarded once before, but it came back to me pretty quickly and so we decided to go all the way up to the top of the mountain. We stopped around halfway down for lunch and then split up into two groups - a fellow beginner and I decided to just go all the way down while the more advanced people moved to the other mountain. It turns out it was a good thing we did too, because apparently they had to go through some black diamond areas, which we probably would not have survived! That said, both my friend and I found the afternoon pretty challenging as the sun went away and we got tired, but we managed to make it safely back to the bottom!

Winnie the Pooh on the slopes!

After that we all regrouped at the hotel before heading out to a nearby onsen, which felt amazing after a full day of snowboarding. They had an outdoor bath, too, which meant I got another chance to soak in a hot spring while being snowed on - probably one of the best feelings ever. :D After that we had dinner back at the hotel and just chilled for a bit before going to the big party, which I think almost everybody on the ski trip came to. Highlights included the annual 'boat race' with the US vs. the World (sadly no victory for the US) and meeting lots of other JETs and people from all over!

On Sunday morning we managed to drag ourselves out of bed to spend a little more time on the mountain before leaving in the afternoon. Like I said earlier, I had decided to switch it up and try skiing again (which I haven't done in years), and almost as soon as I started going down my first hill I decided that I liked snowboarding more after all, haha. Admittedly I was already sore and tired to start out with from the day before, but somehow snowboarding just felt a lot easier than skiing! Guess I know which one I'll be doing if I go back next year. :)

I only managed to do a few more runs before it was time to go back to the hotel and pack up. After a quick lunch and a late start, we piled back into the van and said goodbye to Hakuba! The ride back was a little quieter this time, since we were all exhausted, and thanks to a couple of detours we didn't get back to Chiba until just barely before the van was due at 8.

It was hard to believe that the trip was only for a weekend - somehow it felt way longer, which was awesome because it was super fun. I had been debating whether or not to go, so I'm glad that I decided to go after all: got to spend some quality time with friends from Chiba, meet some new people from all over, and try snowboarding (and skiing) again in a place covered with snow! :D