Japan continued.....

So as I left you we were in Tokyo.....next stop Sapporo!  As we flew out of Tokyo we had a great view of Mount Fuji on the plane - here is the best photo I managed to get out of the window.

Mt Fuji and Tokyo!

We could have got the train I guess, but the closest we got to a bullet train was a picture in Tokyo.

The duck billed platypus of trains?

When we arrived in Sapporo we got our first view of snow.  It was exciting sat at the airport seeing the snow outside knowing we were going skiing

snow!!!

We got the bus to Niseko which was our ski resort for 3 days.  It snowed on our journey which is always good when you are heading skiing.  Niseko gets 10+ metres of snow in a season so I was very hopeful for the skiing conditions.

This was the view that met us from our hotel room when we arrived - night skiing and snow!

The most surprising discovery of our hotel was the onsen! There was lots of instructions we had to learn - washing beforehand, wearing nothing (!!!) and putting a towel on your head, but once we got over the rules sitting outside in a hot spring with the snow coming down was an experience to remember!  Sadly there are no photos (see previous comment about wearing nothing to understand why....)

The skiing was great - we had fresh snow on the first day which meant some nice tracks through the forest, and even on the windy day the snow was blowing onto the hill so still worth hitting the slopes.  Hannah did her version of snowboarding (aka snowboarding lite - 2 hours a day is plenty for anybody) and I tried to do at least a few more hours than that.

snowboarding dude

forest tracks

this hand signal means 'i've had enough, can I go to the cafe now'

The village in Niseko was also great fun.  We went to another izakaya one evening and then also discovered a very tasty ramen cafe.  In between we found a bar behind a fridge door which served good beer and cocktails - as you will guess from previous blogs once we found this we then visited the following two evenings.

Tasty ramen joint (of course with beer)

There is tasty beer and cocktails behind that fridge door :-)

After our fun in Niseko we got the bus back to Sapporo and then had one night to enjoy Sapporo.  Our first trip was to the ski jump.  It had decided to start snowing heavily so after a walk through deep snow in the park we made it to the ski jump and got the lift to the top.  The snow did not do wonders for the view but it did make the walk there all the more pretty.  I've got a photo from the bottom, for the top I'll make another plug for my flickr site here

we went up the lift on the left

After the ski jump there was only one other thing left to do in Sapporo - beer!  Sapporo beer has been a personal favourite of mine ever since I was served it by my dad in a rather exciting "almost round but slightly hexagonal" can back in Ramsbottom many years ago.  So we made our way to the Sapporo beer house and brewery.  We had found out that the beer hall is famous for "Genghis Kahn" which is essentially BBQ lamb served with vegetables.  We also then discovered that you could have an all your can eat and drink deal for 100mins (yes, measured by time!) which of course was a challenge we could not turn down.  I've got some photos of beforehand but not after - suffice to say that after this feast all we managed was to spend too much in the gift shop (due to the all you can drink) and then waddle back to our hotel (due to the all you can eat!)

warming up for the beer house with a can in the hotel

not quite Christmas at the brewery, but it felt like it!

the BBQ, soon to be covered in lamb, and me, soon to be full of beer and lamb

and then on the Sunday we sadly had to leave to the airport and fly home.  Japan had been a great trip and we left it full of happy memories (and beer and lamb of course!!)