Feb 9 – Weekend

Today was the start of my weekend. Nozomi’s husband Hiro came over to visit today. I am really bad at asking for details, so I don’t know how long he is staying or where he is currently living. I am assuming that he is just visiting for the weekend as it is a 3 day weekend today. Nozomi is a lot like Mandy in my opinion. She likes to pick on me in the same way Mandy does and acts very similar to her. It makes the house feel more homely with Nozomi around.

Hiro took us all to an Udon restaurant down the street for lunch. It was excellent. I had the Nabe-Yaki Udon, but Hirai Sensei’s Curry Udon looked the best. It was delicious in any case. For desert we had parfait’s which were massive.

They took me to a ski-resort today. The original plan was to go to the Nihon Sea (the sea between Japan and China), but Hirai Sensei decided this would be better. At first we were going to go to the same place that I went yesterday with the kids. Nozomi called them up and found out that they do not offer equipment rentals meaning that we couldn’t go. Instead we went to a different place that was a little further away. It is called Mikawa-Onsen and is a gorgeous mountain. There was a ski-lift with chairs that went half way up the mountain, then all the way up. They charge you per ride, so if you want to go all the way up, it will be 2 tickets. There is also a beginner and hard course.

I got some boots and ski’s and headed out. It was rough going because I had a lot of trouble walking up the mountain in ski’s. I stayed near the bottom of the hill, practicing balancing and turning. Each time I walked a little bit further up the mountain. Finally, I got on the lift that led to the easy hill. Since I had never ridden a ski lift before, I had the guy working at it explain to me the proper way to get on and off. It is pretty simple if you can control where you are going on ski’s. At the top I almost ran into some girls putting their snowboards on, talk about talent. I got over to where the hill started and let me just say that I was a little scared. I watched some people go ahead of me, taking careful note of their techniques for going down the mountain.

When I gained the courage, I went for it. Zoom down the mountain I went! It was much faster than I expected. I noticed that it was easier to turn when going at this speed as compared to the bottom of the mountain. I was able to successfully weave back and forth to keep my speed under control, but ran into some trouble at the bottom. I must have gained too much speed by the end of my trip because at the bottom I fell and went sliding. I must say that it was not bad for my first try going down a mountain. I watched people at the other place yesterday and they could not for the life of them stay on their feet. My reasoning is that I can water-ski and wakeboard pretty well, so that must transfer over to snow-skiing.

I went one more time down the mountain. This time was much better than the last, but I still fell at the end, about in the same place. The second time I was more aware of my surroundings and worked on my turning technique. It went much much smoother. At this point, it was getting late and we had to start heading back to the house. Nozomi and Hirai Sensei said they would take me again in the future, and join me next time. Maybe I can also get some of the other sensei’s to come with me as well…