Yeah, this time I was kind of on vacation. My Sensei had allowed me to take part in an excursion of the International Office for International Students, so I was on the road for 3 days. But 1 day alone was lost just for the trip. Our destination was the Hakuba valley (with the village of the same name Hakuba) in the Japanese Alps. And for what? Of course for skiing, even if it was only a short time in nature. I don’t have many pictures of the skiing trips in the area of Tsugaike, but there are a lot of others. But what I was particularly pleased with was to finally see snow again, I need it once a year. And what a lot of snow I’ve seen! 2-3 m height was not necessarily rare now. Beautiful landscapes were also present. By the way, what has become especially clear to me (which I already knew before and have already written in other places) is that Japan consists mainly of mountains, which are rather rarely cultivated and therefore mostly crowded together in the valleys. This also leads to the fact that even huge valleys are completely covered. And now the pictures.
On our way there we were also well-fed for lunch and we got an Ekibento. A Bento is, as already explained in simplified terms, a take-away meal (quasi like a lunch box), whereby the food itself is not fixed, only the form of serving. Usually in a box or box-like. “eki” means train station, together it makes a train station bento. These can be bought (logically) at the stations and may contain specialities from the respective provinces. In addition, some of them are also becoming famous throughout Japan. Like the Ekibento we received. Once again I can not remember the name and province,therefore, I ask for forgiveness. We could keep the clay pot as a “Omiyage” (gift).
On our way we also visited Matsumoto Castle, one of the national cultural treasures. Since a lot of things were destroyed during the Meji restoration, mainly only the main castle (something like a keep) is left. It should be very impressive, if there is still snow on the roofs, like this morning. Unfortunately, it had already melted by the time we arrived at noon.
On our way we also stopped at a resting place where we could see this frozen lake. But this was already thawing, which became clear on the way back (2 days later) as it was already completely ice-free.
And now a few pictures directly from the pistes. Since I was skiing for the last time about 11 years ago, I called myself a beginner and took the training course. But I was surprised how much I was still able to do or quickly learned again (not that I was a pro before) so I quickly shot my own things on the (beginner) slopes. If the trip had been longer, I would have switched to the medium-heavy ones, but one day is not enough.
Here I was briefly underneath the summit, as there is also a beginner’s route down into the valley.
I was here with two of my group and one of our accompanying Sensei whom we met by chance during the ascent, unfortunately we also met another one of us up there who shouldn’t have any business there. He had totally overestimated himself, but the only way down is with skis. Since we couldn’t leave him alone, he went down with us and not only slowed us down, but also caused some problems. Unfortunately, one of us had an accident, so he was brought down to the valley with an emergency evacuation by snowmobile. It was at least not an open break as far as I could judge by my first aid. Later in the hotel I learned that luckily only the kneecap jumped out (as far as I understood it in Japanese). Well, after that we started our descent, but because the whole rescue had taken a long time, the mood of the other two beginners suffered, we had only visibility of 10-15 meters due to some clouds (which I thought was pretty cool, because a Blizzard or storm was missing which would have made it really difficult) and it got dark in the meantime, we needed a long time. Sensei and the other one first, and I’m the last one with our problem child. Eventually the lifts were closed and before long the piste patrols came to check if anyone was still on the slopes. During this I had a nice conversation in a Japanese/English mix with one of the patrols. Well, at that time I somehow lost my front group….. Since the Patrol also noticed the problems of my companion, he had ordered two taxis. So we were brought down to the valley with the snowmobiles. I have to say, it was a little bit cool to ride at full speed in dark and sometimes bad visibility conditions. I would have liked to finish the descent on my own, but on the one hand I didn’t want to occupy the patrol any longer and on the other hand safety was the best choice here, taking a (still) unknown route at night and with bad visibility is not necessarily clever. Besides, I didn’t know how long it would take. With the mobile we also needed about 10 minutes. On the way down we looked for our front group, but we couldn’t find it. They were later found, they somehow changed the route without noticing it. Of course, the whole accident spoiled my fun, also that I couldn’t finish the route. Maybe I can do that again sometime. The next day I’m not on the tracks again in the morning, because only the professionals of our group went on the skis again and the rest were not. Alone then on the tracks I didn’t want to go. So I went for a longer walk and found some nice landscapes and took pictures and I have to get a new camera (most of the pictures are only smartphone quality….). At noon we went back to Shizuoka.
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