nagano nozawa onsen tokamachi snow festival and joetsu kokusai

Spent a busy weekend down south in Tokamachi and Nagano. Naomi and I went to Tokamachi late Friday night so we could take advantage of a full day of boarding on Saturday. Marshall recommended we cross the border into Nagano and so we went to Nozawa Onsen. The powder was ridiculous! On one run we decided to off trail it but the powder was so deep that once you fell you couldn't get up. I unfortunately had the luck to fall right underneath the lift from where I was serenaded with claps and laughs in my struggles to gain hard ground. Needless to say we didn't try that again but the powder elsewhere was wonderful. It is more fun to try new jumps and tricks when the falling doesn't hurt!.

My new baby which I dealt down about $250.00!


After this picture he did hit a tree! Oh irony!

sick powder!!!

The trees looked really beautiful with their snow blanket.

Quite the views!!!

My pants aren't very waterproof so my butt tends to get cold. I have remedied this by putting hokkairo (heated sticky things) on my butt. They look pretty ridiculous once I take my board pants off though.

That night we went to the snow festival to discover it ended a half an hour before we got there. The food stalls were still up so we were able to get something in our bellies and check out some of the snow sculptures.

We were craving meat though so we headed out to a Korean BBQ restaurant and ate some delish meat and soso bibimba.

The next day saw us snowboarding as well at Marshall's home resort. The snow wasn't that great but we were happy to find a small half pipe and enjoyed the time there.

Later on Ruu and Futoshi invited Naomi and I over for supper. It was oishikatta! We had nabe, yummy salad and delicious cake we picked up!.