Japan Part 12 - Nice day for a white wedding (proposal)...

Having Ant around and the need to get up to go to his lessons gave us all a reason to get up and hit the slopes before 10 am. Unfortunately - with Ant`s departure - we were all struggling to leave the appartment before midday...

My Master Skiing (aka my mum) and I were both determined to ski over to An'nupuri, as we didn`t quite make it the day before due to the shockingly bad weather and a "freek out" by my mother. The weather today was, in my opinion, the best we had experienced all week. Even though it was snowy and overcast, it was only minus 12 degrees (joy!).

An'nupuri was sort of like Higashiyama - although it had a few more runs and lifts.... and instead of the annoying J-Pop blaring out of the loudspeakers - they had a Beatles album on high rotation. I tend to agree with Beavis and Butthead when they said that "the beatles killed rock and roll"....

After hoonin` down a couple of black runs at An`nupuri - I am slowing coming to the conclusion that the black runs at Niseko aren`t that challenging (my brother will murder me for saying this!). I mean - most of them are ungroomed, a little bit steeper and have a couple of moguals here and there but I don`t think the Black runs here at Niseko at even at the Australian black run level....

After Mum was doing her usual "nah-nah" ("I am so cooold!"), even though we were experiencing minus 12 degree weather (a new Niseko temperature high)- we headed to a noodle ticket restaurant for lunch. I wanted to "mix it up" a bit and ordered "Chinese Wine Vingar" soup instead of miso soup.... boooyah!".

It was sort of getting late in the day (even though we had about three runs before lunch) so we both set off back in the direction of Hirafu. The weather in the afternoon was sort of "closing in" and my mum had had enough on our second run down Higashiyama - so we parted ways - the Master and her Guide (in our usual daily fashion). My mum had discovered some secret way from the slopes back to our apartment via skiing - but we never skied together by the end of the day.... so her secret way to ski back to the apartment remained safe.

Because I had been sooo lazy in terms of night skiing the previous days, and my 5 day lift pass didn`t include skiing on the fifth night (for some crazy japanese reason), I thought I might get a taste of night skiing (even if it was 4PM in the afternoon). I caught the King Hooded Triple Chair a couple of times with the night skiing lights blazing - and I have to say that the visibility of skiing under the lights is sooo much better than it is during the day.

As our final day of skiing here at Niseko draws to a close - I have to get a couple of things off my chest about it. Although Niseko`s runs aren`t as long as those in Nth America or Europe, and it`s size is similar to that of Perisher Blue... the snow quantity is about 50 times greater than that of Perisher (and the quality of the snow has been better than my last couple of trips to Nth America and Europe).

When I got back to the apartment - I did some blogging and drank a few too many 500ml beers (uggh!). In the usual Niseko fashion - when we went around to all the restaurants for dinner - they couldn`t handle the fact that we had more than 4 people wanting dinner. After being rejected from so many places - we headed over to the first Izabuya we had gone to a couple of nights ago (aka best meal in Japan this trip).

During dinner - Sacha came out of the "engagement" closet when he casually mentioned that he and Taeko were going to get married. Sacha had built some "will you marry me" message on the slopes of Hirafu during today and when he lured Taeko there - she apparently couldn`t read it....

My mum suddenly got very "clucky" - and wanting to know all of the gossip and juicy details. She mentioned something about having a bet with Dad thinking that Sacha was going to propose to Taeko the night of the big meat family feast in Mabashi.... but alas she was wrong. Taeko was wanting both an Australian and Japanese wedding - but I think they will have a Japanese one and have some sort of wedding reception in Australia...