Our senior came at 6.50am to pick us up. The place that we will be snowboarding is Mizuho Highlands, which is located in Shimane Prefecture, northwest of Hiroshima Prefecture. Mizuho is a popular skiing and snowboarding resort in the Chugouku region and people from Kyuushu Island and Hiroshima, Yamaguchi and Okayama Prefectures would choose this resort! (Finally I am out of Hiroshima! Hehe...) The whole journey took about 1 hour 10 minutes but the return trip took 2 hours and 35 minutes cause my senior chose the route that do not need to pay toll charges. Our senior was surprised when he saw us initially. He said I brought little stuff to change while Claire wore too much clothing until she looked very beefed up. (maybe 7 layers for upper body, 3 layers for lower body and 5 pairs of socks!) However, I still don care and we just drove off...
As we approached nearer to the resort, we could see that the ground was covered with patches of snow and so were the mountains. We were so fascinated that we kept saying "Wow, wow!" as this was also the first time Claire was seeing snow too. We reached the highland and my senior went to check the ski and snowboard package (equipments, clothing rental and entrance pass). But to our disappointment, it was not offered on weekends and hence, we decided to get to one of the smaller shops outside the resort to rent our equipments. The breakdown of cost is as shown:
- Car Rental = 5000 yen for each person
- Toll Charges = 800 yen for each person
- Snowboard Equipment (Board + Shoes) = 3000 yen
- Clothing (Jacket and Pants) = 2000 yen
- Gloves = 500 yen
- Entrance Pass = 5500 yen
- 2 hour Morning Lesson = 3500 yen
(Today really spent a lot. Must save up next time!!!)
Snow covered places as we are reaching the resort
One of those equipment rental shops just outside the resort
Yeah! Finally got my own clothing and equipments!
After testing out all the equipments and clothing, we immediately head back to the resort as the lesson that I am going to register starts at 10.30am. We then went back, brought the entrance tickets, took a 10 minutes Gondola (something like cable-car but it brings you up to the peak of the mountain where the actual skiing and snowboarding is being carried out. And just in time, I was the last to register for the morning class and was so lucky that since there was another foreigner, there will be a teacher just for the 2 of us and the lesson will be conducted in english. (I initially thought that I would just look at the hand guestures of the teacher if I am in the japanese class) The foreigner's name was Angel and he was from Puerto Rico. Cool! Our sensei, whose name was Yoshiko-san, brought us to the ameuter's slope which would take 10-15 minutes to reach the bottom. We did some warm-up and then she taught us the basics. For the 1st half of the slope, I was being taught how to balance myself, control my board using my heels to brake and slide left and right. It was a struggle and I fell down a lot of times. But during the second half of the slope, I managed to control my speed and can shift sideways along the wide slope. Yeah!!! Then we repeated another 2 times by going up to the peak again and slide down. This time, I was being taught how to control using my front toes and the third time, turning 180 degrees. (I haven't master this fully yet...)
A 5 minutes ride up to the ameuter slope. Doesn't this look so fairytale?
Me with my sensei, Yoshiko-san and Puerto Rico classmate, Angel
Along the way, I saw Claire. She did not take any lessons and was trying out on her own (skiing). She was stuck at the trees when I slided past her. She told me she had banged against a tree and has injured her leg. Oh dear! So during my second slide-down, I saw her sitting down stoning. At the third slide-down, she was making snowman! Haha! Overall, she only skiied twice. One in the morning and the second after lunch where she now banged against the rock and the staff medical team put her on a sledge and brought her down! Overall, I snowboarded 7 times, fell down more than 20 times, had one very hard impact for my butt onto the hard ice, got stuck near the trees once and knocked onto another person and injured my shin. Now my butt hurts real bad and think I will have sore legs tmr. haha... But nonetheless, I really enjoyed myself and just wanna keep going and going!!! But a note to first-timers, try attending lessons if possible as the instructors will teach you the basic techniques and give you advise on how to improve. It will definitely be better than learning on your own as you will just keep falling and falling and maybe get a phobia after that.
[Interesting Fact: Most of our cameras died off when we were up at the resort. Maybe the cold temperature froze the akaline liquid inside the battery, causing it to be low batt even when I charged it the night before. Hence this explains why I could not take that many shots. However, Angel's camera is working fine and I will take the pics from him when he visit Hiroshima next week. =)]
Top of the slope...
15 minutes down to the bottom...
We stayed till 4.40pm as they were closing at 5pm. There was this very long stretch of slope, at some parts very steep, which starts from the peak all the way to the bottom of the mountain and the whole slide down takes ard 30 minutes. But because Claire was injured, I helped carry her ski equipments and we took the Gondola down. But next time, I must definitely try out this finale long slope. :) At the bottom, we changed back to our normal clothing and return back all the rental equipment before our senior drives us home.
Yeah! We have finally reached home!!!
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