Oddly enough, one of the first segments on CBS Sunday Morning was about toilets in Japan. So I says to myself, "Self! You can totally relate, you were just there!" If you are seriously interested, watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DutQl7a7Kk. Seriously, it was confusing, at times horrifying, and sometimes pleasant (huzzah for heated seats!).
SO, Japan.
Epic trip. Never mind we had to drive through a blizzard to catch our flight from Chicago to Tokyo (all flights from NC and surrounding areas were canceled), once we were there it was very much worth it. I did not know that Hakuba Valley (the ski resort area we were staying at) was the place for much of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics.
Hakuba is surrounded by many resorts, we were able to hit five of them, each of which offered a different type of skiing. It definitely pushed my snowboarding skills, but I am a much better rider because of it.
We took a day off on Wednesday to check out Zenkoji Temple in Nagano city, the snow monkeys outside Nagano, and then visit a Sake distillery before our ride home. The temple was VERY cool. There is a completely pitch black, no sound, super cold, ancient passage under the temple that Buddhist monks built for one reason or the other. To take it is to represent the "slow and arduous path to enlightenment," but it definitely meant different things to each person of the group. To some they thought it represented what birth is like. To me it felt like death. Cold, black, and definitely nowhere near certain of what is around the corner - not in a sad, morbid way, but more of a calming, relaxing way. I dunno.
Moving on...We resumed the snowboarding on Thursday and Friday, then headed back to Tokyo on Saturday morning.
Tokyo was an absolute blast for the 12 hours I was there. We wandered the streets, ate very strange foods, stumbled into secret bars, got kicked out of said secret bars, got yelled at, did some yelling, and took in the Robot Restaurant -- which was the highlight of Tokyo.
All in all, a GREAT adventure, and at the perfect time too! The Mrs. is 11 weeks pregnant, so if all goes according to plan, I'll probably be home for a while -- which I am really, REALLY looking forward to!
Kampai!
