Snowboard In Japan

Arriving back in Furano last night was almost like a home coming for us. Kojima san gave us warm welcom at Pension Snow Flake and showed us to our near palacial room followed by a quick tour or the pension. Far exceeding our expectations, pension Snow Flake is spacious, clean, has the cafe next door as the common area and amazing staff (a very special thanks Chikka for our breakfast this morning!!)

As promised, we made a B-line straight to R’s for a doria. It had been 12mths, but worth the wait. About 50m away from R’s is Ajito Bar, so we popped in there to see our friends Mikki and Tomo. It was like we had never left and when Nii san (the owner) came in…he nearly had a cow and shouted us a beer. We had only planned on having a few beers on getting there after dinner……3am we ended up leaving. Massive night.

We ended up hitting the slopes at 11am and having not done any snowboarding in the last year, we were surprisingly up to speed and covered the whole mountain before lunch – a customary katsu curry at the Downhill Cafe t the top of Furano Zone. Finishing up as solid day at around 4:30pm, we stopped by the Furano Tourism office to book in trips to Kamui on Tuesday and Tomamu on Wednesday. We headed to the new Furano Prince Hotel of an onsen and then back to R’s for a doria and back to Snow Flake.

There hasn’t been the traditional mega dumps of snow this season and levels are down considerably. It’s been snowing lightly tonight, however it’s been cranking thumb nail size flakes for the last coupla hours…shaping up to be a massive powder day at Kamui tomorrow. Planning on taking out the new GPS so stay tuned for a post traking our every movement.