just to pass the time: Winter Holiday in Hokkaido (6)

3rd January of 2013

Snow board day!

I am very bad in snowboarding. However, that was my last winter holiday in Japan, so I went to Niseko to play snowboard! Niseko is one of the famous snowboarding place in Japan, even a Malaysian company, YTL Coroperation owned a resort called Niseko Village in Niseko. Me and my friends chose not to stay in Niseko because all the accommodations there are very expensive! The Japanese word for Niseko is ニセコ, in Katagana form, weird, so I google search the origin of the name, oh, it came from the Ainu language, an indigenous language from Hokkaido.

Kutchan Station (倶知安くっちゃん - cute name)

welcome bell in Kutchan Station

from this photo, we could see how deep the snow was!

Anyway, since we bought the JR package, we had to take the early normal train to Kutchan 倶知安 (the nearest station to Niseko). Ah, it's holiday season, so some of us couldn't get a seat, that's including me. So tired! After we reached Niseko, we had to wait for some time to board the bus to the ski resort. Actually the bus schedule sync with the express train schedule. Luckily, before the crowd from the express train came, we already boarded the bus, yeah!! Some have to stand with all the snowboard gears. Actually, for the JR package, one can choose the express train, just need to add a few more yen.

Then, on the way to the ski resort, I applied layers of sunscreen to my face, when I snowboarded the last winter without any sunscreen on my face, I had really bad skin peel off. The snow will reflect the sun light and cause more UV reflection to the skin! Since then, I understood the necessity of sunscreen. Although I live in Malaysia where the sun shines brightly every day, I have never use sunscreen before that. Now, I had one for face and one for the other exposed skin area! This is to reduce the possibility of getting skin cancer too.

Finally, we reached the ski resort. We went to the information counter to register ourselves and paid for the ski wear. The package only cover for the transport and snowboard. One had to pay 1000 yen deposit for the lift pass too. After getting ready, already almost 11 am. Since there are newbies on our team, we trained first with one of our friends who are very good in snowboarding. It was very cold until I couldn't feel my mouth, I forgot my scarves, luckily the restaurant on the ski station has a small corner that sells ski wears. I bought a neck warmer to keep myself warm.

Ski Resort in Niseko

Ski resort in Niseko

Night Skiing

Night skiing

Night Skiing

I really had a hard time here, I kept falling down, frontwards, backwards, sideways, the only I did not have is rolling down, hahaha! Anyhow, I managed to go up and down for three times. By the third time, I had bruises all over my body and I felt the pain. So, stopped, rest and had tea with my friends. Only the good ones continued.

Lift Pass (have to return it to get back the deposit)

Since we had to catch the train, around 5 pm, we already returned all the snowboard gears and got ready to go back. Oh, of course we remembered to give back the lift pass and get the 1000 yen back. By this time, the lights were switch on for the night skiing, actually it looked very nice, so dreamy. We used another bus to go to Kutchan Station because the one included in the package was not so suitable with our schedule. We reached Sapporo quite late and managed to have soup curry in a famous shop as dinner. So lucky, the shop was not closed yet. Well, it was not as delicious as I have imagined, but it was not bad, kinda special!