YETI Trip Day 2

Woke up early again at 7:15am, everyone else was out cold because of last night’s party. There were a few people around in the dining room for breakfast, but the majority were still sleeping so there was no line at all. There was so much more food for breakfast this morning! I’m not sure if it was cause they felt bad for the lack of food yesterday, or if they just somehow forgot to serve all the other food…? We even had Subway rolls prepared for us! There were also hash browns, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, curry and rice (!), a ton of different cereal (fruit loops, cocoa puffs, etc.), fruit, bread rolls, and toast. What a feast! Because of the much bigger breakfast today, the walk to the ski field was much easier too. I headed out by myself first since everyone else was still getting ready. It’s nice to get to the ski field early because not everyone arrives right on opening time (though there were already people skiing down) so there’s no lines for the lift at all. I did a few runs on the Goryu side before going over to 47 and heading to the park area. Met up with 2 other ALTs (Takasaki crew!) there and we spent a while in the park doing the jumps. I tried my first jump and also the sliding box thingy too! So much fun, but I completely failed at getting more height and airtime for the jumps. We filmed each other too, and it’s so interesting to see how low I was jumping when I felt like I was in the air for so long and so high! Having the video really helped though, cause I could see everything I was doing wrong. One of the ALTs had a pretty bad fall on one jump though, so we had an early lunch to rest a bit (I had omurice and melon soda). He then headed back to the accommodation first, while the other ALT and I hung out in the park area for a bit more.

After we’d had our fill of jumps, we headed back over to the Goryu area planning to do a few more normal runs, but it started to snow really heavily so visibility started to get pretty bad. We decided to do the long run all the way to the bottom and get some gelato instead. The gelato was really nice! Plus the display of gelato was really cool cause it was in this spinny thingy which the staff moved by pressing a pedal with their foot. I got Italian milk & chocolate, tiramisu, and hazelnut which was basically Ferrero Rocher! All of them were really good, but the hazelnut really stood out. We had planned to do a few more runs after finishing the gelato, but then decided to just call it a day because the snowfall was picking up instead of slowing down, plus we were pretty tired. Walked back to the accommodation and packed up, returned our lift passes for ¥500 back, and then headed to the nearby fancy onsen to relax before the drive home. This onsen was super nice! If I come on the trip next year, I’m definitely coming to this onsen for both nights. It was so nice to onsen with the snow falling, and normally I can’t stay in onsens very long cause I get super hot, but because of the snow and cold temperatures I was able to stay much longer this time. We decided to eat dinner there as well since we were absolutely starving after the long bath. I had the 焼肉定食 and it was nice because rice, miso soup, and pickles were self-service so we could enjoy those while waiting for the meal. After dinner we started the drive back! Felt much faster than the drive here, and I even passed one of our friend’s cars and they had set off earlier! Dropped of my friend and finally got home myself at around 21:45, not too bad at all.