Japan Part 6 - Travellin to Niseko

We had a really friggin early start at Taeko's parents' house. She had set a couple of alarms in our bedroom. We said that we would like to wake up at 4:50am - but the alarm was running twenty minutes early. Can't get enuff of these early starts.

To add to our embarassment from last night (recap - we took over Taeko's parents' bedroom) - most of the family were helping us at the wee hours to get to the local station. Taeko's brother (and girlfriend) drove Ant and I to the station. Taeko's parents drove Taeko and my brother to the station. Everyone else waved us off. (I didn't really want this to be a big deal - especially before 5am in the morning).

We met up with my parents and took the JR line into town. To our surprise - the 5:20am train into town was "chockers". There were even a couple of old japanese dudes reading manga pron on the train. It is sort of ironic - it is really rude to use your mobile phone on a japanese train. In fact - this is probably the worst crime you could commit in Japan - yet heaps of people read hard core pron on the train.... WTHIWWJP@!

On our way to the airport - we had to catch the Tokyo "Monorail" - which didn't really feel like an old skool monorail (eg: one of those sea world / disney world / sydney darling harbour deals) -rather it felt just like a normal commuter train (it wasn't 20 feet off ground level). We were foiled in having a Springfield monorail experience - d'oh!

Due to my brother's crazy plans of getting us to the airport - we had more than an hour to kill at the airport (after getting up at pre 5am in the morning). Ant was not a happy camper! :(

For any of you would-be terrorists - domestic check in at Tokyo is quite curious. Taeko organised it for us all (after going to about 60 counters)... but she did it for us without the need for identification or passports. Also at the gate and security checkpoint - they didn't ask for ID as well.... It is 9-11 times 0.043 peoples....!

The flight was OK to Sapporo except for the munchkin sized legroom on the seat (which is only 1 inch smaller than the dwarf sized legroom in Qantas - according to Ant).

When arriving at New Chitose airport - Ant had never seen so much snow in his lifetime.... it even topped Thredbo. We all had to stick around until 11:30am after missing a bus by 5 minutes. Ant and I checked out the mall-esque section of the airport - and the airport had this weird "Dr Evil" style aquarium with weird looking shark-sized cat fish (who you could fit freekin lazers to them).

The bus trip was fairly non-eventful to Niseko - except for the poltegist controlled television - which kept switching on at random moments during the bus trip to tell us the joys of "The Niseko United" which Ant refers to as "The Grammar Corrected!". We had a mini-style lunch at one of those truck stop kick back places that buses always stop at. We had some pork/lamb style chinese buns for lunch... The toilet was a little bit strange as there was a robot playing piano playing crappy Andrew Lloyd Webber shite. Next to the piano was a small theatre with a couple of seats... As if anyone would watch the robot piano play ALW shite and applaude at the end?! It is just what you need when you urinate at the trough - a robot piano playing ALW shite.

On arrival to Niseko - my mum was in fine "angry" form when our tour operator wasn't there to greet us from our bus. She quickly grabbed Taeko's phone and "bringed the pain" to the tour operator's japanese receptionist (who didn't speak too much engrish).... Of course - our van arrived half a minute later (they were just running late).

As the van to the apartment couldn't hold the six of us - Ant and I volunteered to go first. The apartment was called "Miharashi" but was totally geared to Australian tourists. There were australian power points galore as well as australian maids cleaning our apartment upon arrival. Lucky for us - we got to bags the best bedroom which had some big f### off windows.

After my brother was hijacking the apartment radio and playing the Chemical Brothers for the umpt-teenth time - Ant and I decided to scope out his snowboard hire shop. As Ant and I are totally risk-adverse travellers - we always book stuff on-line before we go. This time - Ant booked all of his snowboard equipment and snow-wear gear on-line before we got to Niseko.

We wandered down to "SAS" or "Scott Adventure Sports", which was situated in a fibro shack next to a septic tank (or it smelt like it was next to a septic tank). Ant managed to get all of his gear - except his jacket and pants were about two sizes too small (sleeves didn't quite reach his wrists and pants didn't quite cover his boots).

After our first SAS experience - we headed down to the local Niseko "Quik-E-Mart" - one of the two "super"markets in Niseko. When I say "Supermarket" - I mean that Niseko's supermarkets are about the size of a Shell Petrol Station "Mart". If you plan on making dinner from here - you had better like to have 2 minutes noodles every night.

Against our friend's advice - we all decided on not having the "two minute noodle" deal - and went to the 100 yen Noodle shop - where extras (eg: anything other than noodles) ARE extra. It was all good - you could get a decent meal plus a big beer for about $10AUD. This equates to being good value-for-money in my accountant books.