Snow fun

X'mas @ Tabitabi

And it snowed.....


We had a lovely Christmas dinner at Lodge Tabi tabi complete with a snowball fight after...

...and a really cold group photo session...

Merry Christmas!!

RandA Japan: Phase 2

We're now in Hakuba, Nagano. The snow is aplenty. Today is just absolutely beautiful; blue skies and lots of heavenly white snow.

We arrived on a wet rainy day with not much snow at all (it took us about 10 hours, with 7 train transfers, a great karaoke session in Yasu, Shiga and no sleep).
















But that all changed on Christmas Day when it started to snow heavily. Skiing is just sublime and sweet. The powder is awesome to ski on, albeit a little difficult for me! I'm so used to skiing in icy Australian conditions. At least it doesn't hurt when you take a tumble!

We had a Japanese-style Christmas dinner at the lodge. The lodge staff made 'nabe' which is a hotpot of delicious vegetables, mushrooms, oysters and chicken for 30 people. Beautiful, simple, slow food. Still miss Dad's christmas cake and pudding though...any left Dad?

It was sad to leave Osaka...I received so many lovely cards and gifts from students, teachers and staff members. I didn't really have time to get too sad in the last week as there was so much to organise. I did have a few cries on the train home a couple of nights. But the next stage of my journey is going to be so exciting - travelling around South East Asia for almost 3 months.

Now it's just chilling out in the snow for another week and a half.