As soon as school finished on Friday we packed our snowboards, skis and gear, got some munchies for the road and began our 4 hour journey north-east. Sophie drove and took Matt and myself with her.
We stopped at a sushi restaurant in Kakunodate for dinner and randomly met two of our friends that were also on their way to Appi. We travelled in convoy from there. Before arriving we were lucky enough to see one of the snow rabbit that are on the logo of the Appi resort. We finally arrived at our pension guesthouse at called Mutti.
We met the rest of the group there. Many were ALTs from Akita, but some were from Iwate and Aomori, and some Japanese people joined us as well. We had a relaxed enough night, just sitting around and chatting having a few beers. One guy brought a load of different spirits and tried making us drinks... perhaps it was his first time, they were pretty bad!
The next morning we got up at 8 for breakfast and headed to the ski resort. We could see the mountain approaching and its long lifts stretching to the top. Sophie made a right turn at a point that looked like we were nowhere near the lifts, but as it turned out the main lift was very long, about 3.5km! By the time we had assembled and got our tickets it was close to 10am. The weather was beautiful, barely a cloud in the sky.
Appi is the largest ski area in Tohoku. It has 21 trails, 18 lifts and its summit is 1,328m. The longest trail is 5.5km long. As opposed to Yashima, our local ski-jo, which has 7 trails, 2 lifts (1 of which is usually closed as it only goes half way up the slope), an elevation of only 690m and the longest trail is 1.3km long.
We skied and boarded for the day. Before the most snowboarding I had ever done in a day was about 3 or 4 hours. That day we were on the mountain for about 6 hours! My legs were wrecked. We headed back to the pension for dinner and had a huge dinner and then went to the onsen at the ski jo. We stayed up for a while drinking and chatting that night, but were aware that we had to be up early the next morning to do it all again!
The weather the next day was beautiful again. We headed off the mountain and stayed there till just before 5. Because it was our last day we decided to ski in the out-of-bounds areas, as the consequence for being caught is having your pass taken, assuming you don't get killed. The areas we wanted to go in were directly under the gondolas as the snow there only had a few tracks in it, and it was fast and had many little jumps! We had to avoid the moving gondolas as at time they were low enough to hit your head off. It was a lot of fun though, and we didn't get caught!
Before we left for home we went to another onsen to help our aching muscles relax! I love onsens!
It is very beautiful scenery！！
ReplyDelete