Day 6 of Holiday.

We were woken up this morning at 7 am by some machinery outside our window (in the carpark below). We thought maybe it was bin day here, but it turned out to be a ruddy great tractor attempting (for well over an hour) to clear the snow from the carpark (a necessary evil during winter one assumes), as there had been an enormous amount of snowfall during the night.

As we didn’t have any lessons or anything planned this morning, today was going to be our sleep in day too... (sigh). And to make matters worse, I slept very badly again last night, and awoke feeling like I’d once again been hit by a truck, which made being unceremoniously woken up even harder to take.

I won’t lie to you, but as much as I love this area, and as lovely and helpful as the staff of the Stelle Belle are, I wouldn’t come back to this hotel again because of the really uncomfortable beds and pillows. Between the lumpy, hard ‘mattresses’ (and I use the word loosely!) and the pillows that seem to be full of very small beads (or rocks!), all of which make getting a good night’s sleep here nigh on impossible.

After getting up (in slow motion due to my throbbing head) we went downstairs and had breakfast, then back to the room where I had a shower and Alex climbed back into bed to delete photos from her phone (which had already reached capacity!).

Then, before heading out for the day I went downstairs to the lobby to send off a couple of quotes to prospective clients who had requested them over the last couple of days, while Alex faffed around on her iphone). Unfortunately my work took a good couple of hours to finish. By the time I’d finished, it was after 11 am.

Alex wasn’t feeling that great either due to lack of sleep, so when we got back to the room we decided have a nap. Hey, what are holiday's for, right? About an hour and a half later we got up once more but were both still feeling groggy.  During this time we had a lively debate on whether or not we should go skiing again or (because we were both so shagged) just drop the ski gear off at Japan Powder and collapse into bed again.

Skiing won (just barely) so we piled on a hundred layers of warm clothes again (so much work!) and trudged up the hill carrying our skis (which now seemed to weigh a ton) from the hotel to Escal Plaza. But even that short 5 minute walk took 10 minutes and was too much for us both and when we staggered into Escal Plaza we collapsed for a while in the food area and grabbed some yummy frozen yogurt (which tasted like ice cream) to give us a bit of energy for a ski. At least that was the plan. By the time we'd finished the frozen yogurt Alex had decided she wasn't going to ski after all. I couldn't really argue the point by this stage either as I was just as knackered as she was. So, instead we took Frosty (one of da 'boys'!) out for a quick 2 minute skiing photo op.


By this stage Alex was really struggling and had a big headache due to a pinched nerve in her neck and I was dutifully whinging about a Mount Vesuvius sized blister on my right big toe (ski boots are nowhere near as comfortable as snow boarding boots). But it was still late afternoon (too early to call it a day) so we took the skis and the ski clothes back then went to the hotel to get the other boys and some warm clothes so we could traipse, yet again, back up to Escal plaza. Once there we grabbed a Japanese Subway (with an, err...interesting, 'pizza sauce') and took da boys for a gondola ride to the top of the mountain.  After which we had a good laugh making a snowman with Frosty. Then Alex grabbed a crepe and it was back to hotel.

Once there we went down to reception to use the internet (I had to send out some more quotes, etc while Alex did some research for Tokyo).

We were starting to feel a (tiny) bit more human by this stage, so it was back to the room where we ordered some pizza and started to pack. I also went downstairs and put on a big load of washing (which took an age to dry, due partly to the size of the load but mainly to do with the fact that the hotel had a washing machine and dryer all in one. Which neither of us had ever heard of let alone seen. Like, how the hell does that thing work?!).

When pizza came we chowed down and watched an episode of the Black List and some of the new series of Big Bang Theory on the laptop.

About midnight we collapsed into a stupor, glad - oh so glad - that the day was over.

Day 5 of Holiday.

We both woke up this morning feeling a little more human, so got up and went downstairs for breakfast. While eating breakfast, Alex checked her phone and we discovered that Chelsea beat Man Utd 3 v 1 last night, so that put a huge grin on our faces I can tell you! Shame we didn’t get to watch the match, but the result is what matters. And hopefully we’ll be able to watch the West Ham game in Tokyo next week.

After breaky we headed up to Japan Powder to get fitted out for skis and ski boots and poles.  While there, we made a discovery that made us both laugh. Apparently we’d got our days wrong, and it turns out that tomorrow isn’t our last day after all, it’s actually the day after that! To be fair to us though, it’s a bit like that when you’re on holiday. You tend to live in a bubble and time loses all its meaning (which is what holidays are for!).

After getting kitted out we got picked up by the shuttle bus and driven to Iimori again for our level 1 ski lessons.

It was during this short 10 minute journey that we discovered that neither of our sets of ski boots fitted properly. We’d both been unsure of how they felt when we tried them on, but we were running a bit late and the shuttle bus was due, so after trying on a couple of different pairs, we just assumed that ‘tight’ was good.

I’m sure tight is actually good when it comes to ski boots, but not to the point when it cuts off circulation! (Mine more than Alex’s) Still, we were at the ski resort by the time we realized how tight they actually were, so there was nothing to be done but grin and bear it.

The skiing lesson was taken by a nice English bloke named Matt (a Stoke fan as it turned out) and there were four other people plus us in it. Alex took to skiing like a fish to water and had got the hang of stopping and changing directions better than all the rest of us put together in no time at all. I’ve never been the quickest study, but when I ‘get’ something – especially something sporty - I tend to be able to get very good, very quickly, thereafter. But with skiing I just couldn’t get it together at all. After about an hour and forty five minutes I’d sort of managed to work out how to stop (sort of), but could not for love nor money change f*cking direction! OMG it was so frustrating! It got the point where I had a right old dummy spit (with myself) and tossed my skis and poles to the ground and said (to myself), ‘Right, that’s it. I’m done. I just can’t do it’. Alex saw this and skied over (expertly!) and tried to show me how to change direction and talk me into trying one more time to master it. But I said no. Then Matt came over and they both tag-teamed me to have ‘just one more go’.  So, against my better judgement I did.

Matt came up the slope with me this time to show me one on one how to do it, and as we made our way up the slope he said, ‘You’re a very competitive person aren’t you?’ And I said (sarcastically), ‘What gave it away?’. He smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I completely get that. I’m the same. You don’t care so much that you can’t do it properly, just that Alex is one of the people who are obviously a natural at the sport and can do it really well, really quickly’. I replied. ‘Well, yeah, there is that. But I hate it when I just don’t ‘get’ something that really isn’t that hard. I mean, I know it’s not ‘easy’, but I’m probably in the bottom percentile of people you’ve taught, which really gives me the sh*ts’.  He laughed at this and said, ‘Are you kidding me, I regularly have people who can’t even stand up on their skis after the lesson is over, so don’t be so hard on yourself!’.

Anyway, all of that made me feel a bit better, so...once more unto the breech dear friends...

This time Matt skied in front of me and changed direction left then right, and I went down the slope after him and tried to copy him. And, wouldn’t you know it, but I did it! No idea why (or why now) but something seemed to just ‘click’. I couldn’t tell you why I couldn’t do it before and I couldn’t tell you why I could (sort of) do it afterwards.  But for what little it’s worth, I at least managed to do it in the end.

By that time the 2 hour lesson was over and Matt had to head off. After the lesson Alex wanted to go up in the chair lift to the top of the run (the run we’d snowboarded down a couple of days ago) and I and another guy (who was about my ‘standard’) from our beginner group agreed to go with her. But I won’t lie, I shouldn’t have. I felt completely unprepared. At least when we went up for the snowboarding I had a little bit of (false!) confidence about the process.

So the three of us went up the chair lift. And, as appears to be my ‘calling card’ when it comes to such things, I completely stuffed up the dismount from the ski lift and fell over and barely managed getting clubbed on the back of the head by the next chair. I also pulled the exact same muscle as I fell off it (behind the right shoulder blade) that I pulled when I fell off the chair lift while snowboarding two days ago.

Say what you will about me, but I am nothing if not consistent!

This time at least the guy who was coming up with us fell too, and worse than I did (so Alex told me – I didn’t see it myself as I was on the chair / ground in front of him and was going through my own crash while he was). So at least it’s not just me who has trouble with this then!

After recovering a modicum of composure, the other guy, I and Alex fronted up at the top of the slope. And boy did it look daunting. Still, there was nothing to be done now and so off we went. Alex naturally zoomed off in front of the two of us (the guy and I remember where of a similar standard), but within about 30 seconds Alex fell over (she hadn’t fallen over once during practice, not even stumbled). I was the first to her and asked if she was okay (she was), after which I proceeded to ski down the slope. And not half bad! I was zooming along turning left and turning right at will, and slowing myself down ‘snow-plough style’ whenever it looked like I was picking up too much speed. And, just like with snowboarding, I ended up being the first down the mountain. After being crappy in practice, as soon as the ‘race’ is on, I just come into my own. It’s just like high-school all over again. I never gave a rat’s about practice, it was always about the ‘race’ or the ‘event’ or the ‘game’. That’s when I always seem to come alive.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying I skied well, or that I’d suddenly mastered skiing. Far, (far!) from it. But if you’d seen the difference between how I was skiing in the practice and how I skied when we went down the mountain, you’d have thought it was two different people.

By this stage Alex and I were well shagged. My ski boots particularly were hurting like crazy (and were really hard to walk in, unlike the snowboarding boots we had before) and our legs were sore from all the walking up and down the slope with skis on. So we decided to grab a drink and call it a day. But, after sitting down in the nearby food hall and reviewing the pics we’d taken today, we discovered that there wasn’t another bus to take us back to the hotel for another two hours. So, rather than just sit there, we thought we should at least have one more attempt at skiing. This time we went up a different ski lift (just for the fun of it). This run was for an intermediate level (far too hard for us) and had a very steep dismount off the chair lift at the top of the run. But, ironically, I got off this one just fine (after Alex explained what I should do). Go figure!

Anyway, once up the top of the run we skied sideways and down across a section of an advanced run (dangerous!) to get to the top of the run we’d done earlier in the day (a lot of runs seem interconnected at certain points in the mountain). That was very nerve racking for a couple of reasons. One, because the slope was steep and we were skiing down, and diagonally across it. And two, because advanced skiers and snowboarders were hurtling down the mountain at cracking rate of knots around us!

Still, we got to the top of the other, more modest slope in one piece. But both Alex and I were feeling really, really tired by this stage, and our leg muscles were twitching of their own accord, so neither of us were in particularly good shape to ski down the slope. Unfortunately we really didn’t have any other choice so...

Alex was, this time, taking it really slowly (just to be on the safe side), but I, over confident and over tired, went down faster than I should. And within about 15 seconds I’d crossed the front end of both my skis (while trying to slow down, ‘Mr Plough’ style) and  - while trying to uncross them – I got my left pole caught under my left ski. While madly pulling that out the crossed skis got worse and I went down like a ton of bricks. Again though, while the angle I fell at could’ve seriously damaged my left knee (it twisted like crazy), God was smiling on me as the boot popped out of the left ski a fraction before the twisted knee got to a critical angle and I came out with nothing more hurt than my pride.

Needless to say I was super careful on the way down from that point on (as was Alex).  At the bottom we decided that enough was enough so we went back into the food place and had some pasta and waited for the shuttle bus to arrive at 3.15 pm.

Back at our hotel Alex chilled in the room for a bit while I went down to reception (where they have wireless remember) to check my emails and post yesterday’s travel blog. Unfortunately I discovered that there were a few grumpy emails from clients that needed to be attended to, and went up to the room to tell Alex about it. She said she’d come down too, and so we spend about an hour and half or maybe two hours there, me putting out client fires (and checking some of the Chelsea v Man Utd match reports!) and Alex emailing her family and doing some research for things to see and do in Tokyo.

Around 7 pm we went off through yet another dazzlingly beautiful and mysterious night with snow falling all around us, and had some really good Mexican food at a place called ArribaArriba. Then we headed back to our hotel around 8.30 pm because we had a...wait for it wait for it...onsen booked for 9 pm to 9.30 pm!

Onsens are, for those of you who don’t know, giant hot wooden baths, which you soak in after a long day on the slopes. They’re a feature of Japanese ski resorts and every hotel has at least one. Our hotel has three. The two downstairs in the basement level of the hotel are male only and female only (and neither of us have a great desire to bathe but nekid in a tub with other but nekid men / women!). But the big one outside, and to the side of the building, can be privately booked by couples. And this is the one we were going to.

There’s a ritual to attending these things which I won’t bore you with, but it ends up with you dressed in your undies (which you lose when you get to the onsen) and a traditional Japanese robe, and small slip-on slippers.

So attired, we ventured outside and braved – 5 degrees temperatures and deep snow dressed in a robe that was thinner than a T-shirt and made our way to an adjacent building around the side of the hotel.

The onsen is very impressive when you see it for yourself. It’s like a giant round wooden hot tub that’s about 6 feet tall (deep) and about 10 feet in diameter. So we get there and strip off and I lower myself into the piping hot onsen to sooth my weary limbs. But unfortunately Alex, despite 15 minutes of trying, couldn’t get into it because it was just too hot for her (she’s very temperature sensitive).

After I got out, we made our way back to the hotel’s main entrance, and it occurred to me that I wanted to ditch the traditional slippers and walk bare feet through the snow (having never done it before). Ten seconds later I realized the error of my ways when my feet turned into blocks of ice and dozens of icy daggers seemed to pierce my feet down to the sub-atomic level! OMG!

When we were back in the room I realized it was not so much that the snow was super cold (though at – 5 degrees it was) it was more the fact that my poor tootsies had just come out of a piping hot onsen AND THEN been plunged into – 5 degree snow!!!

Still, ya live and ya learn don’t you? ;)

Day 4 of Holiday.

Awoke today to the brilliant sight of snow falling heavily outside. Hard to tell you how beautiful it was. It was like waking up in a dream inside a snow globe. If I had to put one word to it, that word would be magical. But I suspect that word barely does it justice. Everybody should wake up to this type of view at least once in their life.

Today we were booked in to have ski lessons, but as it turned out we both had an awful night sleep and felt like we were hit by a truck. Maybe not the same truck, but certainly 18 wheelers the pair of 'em. This bed is just not conducive to sleep. And the pillows are not made of feathers but seem to be full of beads of some kind (best guess?). Either way, the combination of the two is makes Jack (and Jill) grumpy campers. 

My lower back was sore again when I woke up (it hasn’t yet recovered from flying economy!) but beyond that dull ache there was the excruciating pain in my coccyx from falling over repeatedly on it yesterday during snowboarding. And Alex was exactly the same (it is apparently a very common injury when snowboarding). So much so that neither of us could sit down on anything for more than 10 minutes without the pain flaring up. Consequently we decided to postpone the skiing lesson for a day, and to have a day off. We are after all, on holiday!

Instead of skiiing we had a leisurely breakfast and then – after popping into Japan Powder’s office to re-schedule the skiing lesson and book a snow mobile tour – we went back to the hotel and I spent an hour or so catching up the travel blog while Alex went back to bed. And OMG did I regret forcing myself to sit down in the lobby to post the blog, as I literally couldn’t get back up again due to the firestorm of pain in my coccyx afterwards!

With skiiing off for the day, we instead booked another activity. And at 12.30 pm we were picked up by Lion Adventures and driven to Hakuba 47 where we had a terrific time doing an hour’s snow mobiling. Alex sat tandem with one of the two instructors for the hour, but of course I wanted one for myself (boys and their toys and all that!). So with snow falling heavily and a winter wonderland that had to be seen to be believed, we zoomed around on either bank of a semi-frozen river (and even crossed through it) for an hour. Really great fun, and we got a bunch of cool pics for the album as well as the memories.

About 1.45 pm we went to Escal Plaza (a tiny shopping and food court area by the Hakuba 47 ski run) and bought some souvenirs and had some lunch while watching the skiers and the snowboarders do their thing. Then we went on the gondola a couple of times to the very top of the mountain. Spectacular view, but I’m still grumpy that here they don’t allow you to go up and down the chair lifts. Because, if you go up you’ve got to ski or snowboard down. Which is total bollocks because tourists with valid lift passes should be allowed to go up and down the chair lifts as well. And it’s not as if they’re putting anyone out, because the chair lifts have to come down anyway! Don’t get me wrong, being in a gondola is great, but the plastic windows are always scratched and dirty, and you’re protected from the elements and it kind of makes you feel kind of removed from the experience. At least it makes me feel that way. And I love, I mean absolutely love, going up and down chair lifts at places like this. What with the spectacular winter views all around, and the snow and cold winds pummeling my face. If ever you want to feel connected to nature, that’s how you do it.

After getting off the gondola we bought a couple of dessert crapes and went back to our room. When there we decided to veg for the rest of the day and rest our weary limbs by watching the third series of Sherlock on the laptop in bed. So ensconced were we as it turned out that we didn’t even bother to get up to go out to dinner. I had booked a private onsen at 10 pm for us, but by that stage we were both way too tired to move to the end of the bed, let alone go outside in the freezing cold and traipse through the snow to get the the onsen.

But, everyone says you can’t go to Japan without at least trying an onsen, so we’ve booked a private one for 9 pm tomorrow night (which will technically be our last night in Hakuba). It will be a nice way to end things. Plus, with our aching limbs, inflamed coccyx and a day’s skiing behind us, I suspect we shall need it! 

Day 3 of holiday.

Woke up about 7.30 am and got dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast. Breakfast at the Stelle Belle is a modest affair, but adequate. Scrambled eggs, hash browns, ham (but no bacon), two types of cereal, bread, rice, miso soup, coffee, tea, orange juice, a little bit of fruit and some weird looking pickled vegetables that neither Alex or I were game enough to try!

After breakfast we walked the short distance up to the Japan Powder office to get fitted out for snowboarding. That was fun, especially when Alex ended up in bright pink pants and a sky blue jacket. Nothing like getting kitted out like a 13 year girly-girly! (especially if you're a Tom-Boy like Alex is). I on the other hand was decked out in black and grey and looked (in Alex’s words) very ‘hard core’.  (Ha! If only!)

We then walked back to our hotel and an Aussie driver called James picked us up and took us to Iimaru which is one resort / ski area away from Escal plaza. When James dropped us we went and signed in for our snowboarding lesson, only to realize that Alex forgot to bring the lift passes and had sprint outside to catch James just as he was driving off! En-route to stopping the bus, Alex bumped into three people and knocked someone’s snowboard over and watched it slide merrily of down a slope...

When Alex got back – fully 30 minutes later – she exchanged the lift passes for lift tokens and we went to the Level 1 (beginners!) snowboarding lessons. While awaiting the instructor we struck up a conversation with a very nice couple from Perth (Charlotte and Chris). Charlotte was a very good skier apparently but has hurt her knee, so she was on a watching brief. Chris was like us, a beginner.

Our instructor was a pleasant Italian woman who through broken English did her level best to teach us the fundamentals of snowboarding. Unfortunately the lesson didn’t really seem to have a structure, and it felt a little like she was winging it.

After showing us how to get on the snowboard (ridiculously difficult at first because both feet are secured to the board and there is no leverage!) and how to go down a tiny slope with the board side-on, while leaning back to slow down your rate of descent, we then went up in the ski-lift to the top of the beginners slope (which did not look like a beginners slope if you ask me!). Unfortunately I was not paying attention when our lovely instructor told us how to get off the ski lift. We’d boarded the ski lift one at a time, with one foot secure in the board and the other free. The theory being (so I discovered later!) was that when you get off the ski lift you put the board down, secure foot first and put your free foot on the board itself and the momentum of the ski lift pushes you out of the way of the ski lift directly behind you.

Alex, who was on the ski lift in front of me, dismounted with surprising ease and grace. While Logan, in his infinite wisdom, decided a better look would be to get the snowboard caught under him, while twisting backwards at an impossible angle while being struck on the head by the accompanying ski lift.

Degree of difficulty for this dismount? 9.8.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth followed during this from the Japanese chair lift attendants while this was going on. But, despite being twisted like a pretzel and battered quite severely about the noggin, I bounced up like a kid with a look of ‘What’s all the fuss about’ on my face, much to the relief to all and sundry. 

It was cute straight afterwards though because I heard our instructor say to Alex, ‘Gosh you must really love your boyfriend as you looked SOOOOO worried!’ :)

Now, when you’re a rank beginner and can barely stand up on a snowboard, standing at the top of a steep slope (and for a beginner it was a very steep slope, despite what a more advanced snowboarder would think) facing the journey down the hill is nothing short of daunting.

However, Alex, Chris and I gamely attempted it. And, despite being the worst of the three of us when we were getting the lesson it was I, who zoomed off down the mountain and got to the bottom first!

Fortunate, as they say, favours the brave.

Or the stupid!

Needless to say there was much falling over and hurting our asses on the way down though!  And f*ck me but it was exhausting work!!! At the end of the run we all collapsed on the snow and just lay there.

The lesson was over at about 11.50 am and Chris went back up the mountain for another few goes (a glutton for punishment apparently!) while Alex, Charlotte and I went to the cafe to grab some soft drinks and chill out.

While there we got to know each other a bit and found out that Charlotte was wealth of touristy wisdom about Japan and Bali, so we got several ideas of things to see and do in both countries of her, which was great.

About an hour later Chris came back and went and had lunch with Charlotte, while Alex and I bravely ignored the flaming pain in our respective coccyx (you've no idea!) and went back up the ski lift another 2 or 3 goes. By the 3rd attempt I managed to get off the ski lift with my dignity intact and could’ve almost convinced the casual observer that I knew what I was doing.  Almost.

I won’t say that by the end of our snowboarding adventures that we were any good, but we certainly were a considerable amount better than when we started. I was particularly proud of my efforts because the one time I’d tried snowboarding before (when I was in Åre in Sweden back in Christmas 2008) it was an unmitigated disaster. Like I’m not kidding when I say I was no more able to stand up on the damn thing at the end of the 2 hour lesson than I was at the beginning. But by the close of play today (about 2.30 pm) I could go down the mountain and stay on my feet. Which the more I think about it, is quite remarkable, all things being equal. And the same goes for Alex, who was looking very confident by the end (though super tired!).

By this stage we were well over the day though. Everything hurt (especially our asses – OMG!). Honestly, you’ve no idea. I can’t speak for Alex, but I have fallen over more today than I have fallen over in the last 10 years, and I hurt in places I didn’t even know I even had muscles!

After waiting about 45 minutes for the shuttle bus to pick us up (James was half an hour late) we went back to our hotel and stripped off our wet clothes and collapsed into bed.

Which is where we stayed until about 6.45 pm when we got up and headed off into the night to get some dinner.  We had a booking at a local pizzeria called Pizzakia. But when we got there we discovered out ‘table’ was in fact just a couple of stools at the counter. Either that or a tiny table the size of a couple of laptops right by the cold door. Neither option appealed so we just walked out. It was a cold night and it had begun to snow and everything was magical, so we didn’t certainly mind the walk

About 20 minutes later we ended up at a place run by a very nice middle aged Aussie couple called ‘The Bike Bar’, where we had some really nice food (I had a whopper burger and ‘fat chips’ and chocolate pudding and ice cream and Alex had a huge ham, cheese and onion jam pizza and some of my chips), while watching extreme snowboarding and skiing videos on a projection screen. We also had three games of pool at the end of the night, which was fun.

Then we walked back to our hotel through the falling snow around ten and climbed into bed. Exhausted!

Day 2 of Our Holiday.

Woke up around 10 am after a surprisingly good night’s sleep. And, miraculously, my neck wasn't hurting!!! Which, let me tell you, was a BLESSING given how much agony I was in the previous night!

Alex too slept surprisingly well. This was probably more down to both of us being exhausted, rather than the hotel having super comfortable beds.

Checked out just before noon.

Walked to the train station and had no idea which platform we needed to go on to get to Negano, or which ticket to buy. It’s a huge station with lots of entrances and the only guard we could did not speak a lick of English.

I said to Alex, what we needed is a young Japanese person who speaks English to help us, and literally about 10 seconds later, a young (mid-20s) and very kind woman who spoke English, saw we were floundering and bought tickets for us (with our money) and walked us down through the gates toward the correct platform. How Japanese people nice or what?!

We had a bit of time before the next train so we grabbed some sandwiches and then boarded the Shenkusen (the Bullet Train) at 12.30 pm.

There are two type of tickets you can by for the Shenkusen, reserved seating or unreserved. We had the latter and so had to board the first four carriages only.

The train ride was effortless and pleasant. Though given the futuristic appearance of the bullet train, the inside was a little old fashioned and drab.

When we got to Negano it was snowing very lightly and we bought tickets for the connecting bus to Hakuba. With half an hour to kill we got out of the cold and sat in a cafe. But the cafe had a connected smoking room. With no door. So naturally the smoke came into the non smoking section. After about 20 minutes Alex was having trouble breathing so we left and stood downstairs in the cold. Not that we minded that at all as it was lovely.

Eventually the bus came and we got on and off we went for the hour journey to Hakuba Guru. The bus was packed and I used the time to catch up on the travel blog while Alex listened to music and looked out the window at the winter wonderland.

Late in the journey the guy next me, a navy guy from Perth as it turned out, starts chatting with me. Wouldn’t you know it, but while we were chatting we missed our stop! (my bad). No harm no foul though as we got off at Hakuba station and took a short 10 minute cab to our hotel.

Stelle Belle Hotel Review

We checked into our hotel, which is a bit plain looking from the outside, compared to some we passed in the cab, and our room (which was their most expensive ‘suite’) was two rooms and a bathroom. It’s nice but dated. No problem though because we knew what we were getting when we booked the room. And given we booked late, it was the best available.

The ‘King’ bed advertised however we discovered were two twin beds pushed together. And both were very hard and not overly inviting or comfortable.

After getting to our room we collapsed on the bed and chilled (which we both needed). I started a new book (Joe Hills ‘Horns’) while Alex did some of her puzzle book. Then, after about half an hour, we both had a much needed nana-nap.

Upon awaking (around 6.30 pm) we bundled up and went outside to find somewhere to have dinner.

The gal behind the counter at our hotel (the one who spoke English) suggested we might like to eat at the Sushi Katusu (?), and as it was on a few minutes walk away, we did.

When we got there, who should greet us but the self same woman, who obviously works at both places! (and no doubt get commission for suggesting guests eat there).

After originally sitting at a table by the door, we were able to move over to a table by a nice crackling open fire. The food was traditional Japanese and a little underwhelming. But, the service was polite and friendly, and the atmosphere very relaxing (we were the only people in the place). So no complaints from us.

After dinner we went for a bit of a walk in a vain attempt to find a 7-11 that was rumoured in myth and legend to exist, somewhere near.

After about 40 minutes of wandering around in the snow we gave up and headed back to the hotel. Not that we minded the walk of course. This place is like Narnia after all! And wandering around here at night is fantastic.

When we got back to hotel I went down to the lobby (the only place with wireless) and checked my email for the first time in 3 days (so nice not to be connected to the net all the time, I can’t begin to tell you) and posted a travel blog.

By the time I got back to the room, Alex was sound asleep, so I read some more of the Joe Hill novel, ‘Horns’, before falling asleep myself.

Day 1 of Holiday.

We were flying from Sydney to Tokyo via Taipei, where we would have a 12 hour lay-over. Alex wasn’t a fan of the layover but my logic is that if you’ve got half a day, you get to leave the airport and see some of the local sites. Because be honest, when is the next time we’re likely to be in Taipei?  Plus a layover splits a long international flights into more manageable bite-sized chunks (and the tickets are cheaper of course).

Now, being a strapping six footer, it is fair to say that I am not designed for flying economy class as there is never enough leg room for me. This flight was no different, except for the fact that this plane was a bit smaller than the normal plane you fly on when going overseas (747 or Air Bus, etc), consequently we’d managed to snaffle 2 seats on their own. Alex with the window seat and me with the aisle seat (so I could stretch out a bit if I needed to – at least for a few minutes). This made the journey reasonably bearable. 

We’ve never flown China Air before, and when you’re with a new carrier you never quite know what you’re going to get. Take Thai airways for example. Looks fine until you sit down and find out the back of the seats (where you rest your head) are like concrete. I mean rock hard. Or Hawaiian air, who saturate you in purple and drown you in Hawaiian lift music the whole journey to the point where you want to smash open a window and jump to your death, because that’ll be a lot less painful and easier to bare!

China Air Review

Fortunately there were no such complaints flying China Air. The queues to get our luggage checked in at the airport were, as I mentioned, nonexistent. The flight attendants were friendly and attentive. The journey from Sydney to Tapei itself took a little over 8 hours and was largely uneventful. Alex dozed for a fair bit of the journey, while I pottered away on a new novella I’m working on called (working title) ‘Roadside Assistance’. The seats were acceptable without being super comfortable, the food was acceptable (though they ran out of the only western dish – bacon and eggs)  and the air hostesses were very friendly. My TV froze on the back of the seat, which was a trifle annoying, and despite the air hostesses twice saying they’d ‘reset it’ to fix the problem, they didn't. But I wasn't too fussed as I was either pottering away on the travel blog during the flight or - being exhausted after a very stressful and long day (and night) sleeping. Though by the end of it I won’t lie, my lower back was killing me and my neck was sore.

Did I mention I wasn’t designed to fly economy?

Taipei Review

After getting off the plane in Taipei we jumped a short shuttle bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 (where our plane to Tokyo was departing from later in the day) and then went in search of somewhere to store our hand luggage while we went adventuring. But, as our plane had arrived at 4.30 am, Taipei time, nothing was open. So we went and had some breakfast in a food court and a little after 6 am we stowed our luggage and went in search of a bus to the city. A half an hour wait followed by a 40 minute bus ride later (that I slept completely through!) and we arrived in the city.

It was at this point that we realized that my being in a T-shirt and tracky pants (I tend to overheat in planes, and always under dress) wasn’t the smartest thing, as Taipei was about 10 degrees. For some reason we’d assumed that Taipei was like Singapore (no winter, just degrees of hot and sticky). But nope. It was cold!

Anyway, with things being cheap here we decided I’d just buy a jumper or a jacket or something and solve the problem. But of course, it was about 8 am by this stage and most of the shops didn’t until after 9 am.

Being a Viking though I felt I could cope with the cold, and so we worked out which trains to board (well, Alex worked it out!) to get to the Taipei zoo and the gondola (which was going to be the only thing we really had time to see while here). Except when we got there at about 8.45 am there was an enormous queue to get into the zoo (like the sort of queue you have to join if you’re trying to get up the Eiffel Tower, say). And we didn’t have enough time for 2 hours of queuing.  Also, where the zoo was, the wind-chill factor made the 10 degrees seem considerably colder, so – much to Alex’s annoyance – I suggested we train back to the city (15 minutes) so I could buy a jacket or a jumper (the shops would be open by this stage) and then train back again. My logic here was that if the queue to the zoo was gone when we got back, all well and good (because the queue could’ve just been a queue before opening), but if it still had a queue we would just do the gondola (about an hour all up) instead.

So anyway, we trained back into the city where Alex and I both bought thermals, and then we head back out to the zoo. Unfortunately by this stage we’d realized that we wouldn’t have time to do the zoo and the Gondola, so we just got on the Gondola.

The Gondola is something I’d highly doing if you’re in Taipei as the views of Tapei from it are wonderful. Go at night if you can, because the views would've been even better then (I assume it runs at night too?). We went up the mountain on a Crystal Gondola (glass bottom) and came down in a normal Gondola (because the glass bottoms of the Gondolas are scratched so much it’s barely worth looking through them – and if you’re a couple you can go up or down the normal Gondolas just the two of you, but if you go in the crystal Gondolas they make you go with 3 other people to fill up the Gondola - one assumes because there are more of the normal Gondolas).

Still, we really enjoyed the Gondola and afterwards trained back to the city and bussed to the airport (where I again slept the whole journey!).

Back at the airport we collected our carry on luggage, grabbed some Hungry Jacks and went through immigration to wait for our plane.

Again we were there with plenty of time, so it was all stress free. Well, notwithstanding that my lower back was complaining and my neck was starting to really hurt from all the uncomfortable places (planes, busses etc) I’d been forced to sleep.

Flight from Taipei to Tokyo

The flight to Tokyo from Tapei is only 3 hours and we both slept most of it. Upon arrival at Narita airport in Tokyo we collected our luggage and boarded the Skyline bus to Ueno (in Tokyo). Needless to say more napping was involved. And by the time we got off in Ueno station my neck felt like someone had stuck a blunt hot knife up the left hand side of it and I was in sheer agony.

Finding our hotel, the Ueno no Mori, took some doing, and we were forced to backtrack around the local area several times before we found it. Which let me tell you is no fun when you’re dog tired, your lower back hurts, your neck is on fire, and you’re pulling a 25 kg suitcase with a dodgy wheel!

Still, I was in agony in Tokyo, baby! So, you know...things could've been worse! :)

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, and at about 11.15 pm local time Alex and I checked into the hotel. The Ueno no Mori is a cheap and cheerful 2 star hotel (the only such hotel in our holiday) and the room was tiny. Tiny but functional. It had two single beds (I’m too tall for them but it was only for one night) and a bathroom and a TV. What more do you need I ask you? For our needs (and for one night) it was perfect. So we dumped our luggage and climbed into bed (fully clothed as it was very cold in the room) and I took 2 mersyndol and was out like a light.

Today was NOT a fun day. The plan was to catch up on last minute client SEO work until noon. Then I’d have all afternoon to pack (leisurely) prior to getting into the cab we’d booked for 6 pm.

But, to quote Burns, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang aft agley".

The trouble with running your own business is, when you go away, the work stops. So naturally I was trying desperately to do as much work for the clients as I could before leaving to make sure that nobody misses me when I’m away. My logic being, if the clients are getting good results from Google, they won’t even know I’m gone. And if I do get the odd email while I’m overseas, I can reply promptly, and they’d never even know I'd left the country.

Now this would’ve worked out just fine if all I was doing today was the regular client work. But I was also trying to launch a new website we just built for a client. And what with all the back and forth, back and forth with this particular client tweaking this and changing that, I’d underestimated the amount of work I had left.

Consequently it was well after 5 pm before I’d finished all the work I had to do, and even then the website still wasn’t 100% finished (so I had to leave Tony – my Head Tech – to get it over the line and launch the site tomorrow).

I will be the first to say I am not anywhere near as organized as I should be in my day to day life. But when it comes to travelling I am, for reasons that I’ve never quite been able to work out, super organised. This time however...not so much.

When you work for someone else and go on holiday, that’s it. You clock-off at 5.01 pm on Friday and voila, your work is done! After which time there’s nothing to do save organize yourself for the holiday. But when you’re running your own business, and you ARE that business, clocking-off has no meaning. It should, don’t get me wrong, it really should. But in the first few years as an entrepreneur in charge of any new business venture, there is no 5.01 pm, no clocking off, no ‘beer o’clock’ on Friday afternoons, no weekends, no public holidays, nor time off for good behaviour, no passing go to collect $200. There’s just, ‘What work needs to be done today?’ and ‘What the heck day is it anyway?’.

But, I digress...let's get back to today's fun and games!

So Alex arrives at my place, super organised, about 5.30 pm. And of course I was nowhere near ready. Consequently my packing was a mad, frantic, stressful rush and the cab came and went at 6 pm without us, and I was getting more and more agitated (why can you never find what you’re looking to pack at times like these?!).

By 7 pm – when we eventually got into a cab to take us to the airport – I was over it. Tired, grumpy and generally not a happy camper.

The cab driver said traffic was really bad on the way to Sydney airport due a broken down bus on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but I got him to take the tunnel instead (despite his protestations that we should take the bridge) and the journey was fine.

By the time we got to the airport my normal, Zen like ‘Holiday Mode’ had descended upon me, and all the stress of the day was finally forgiven and forgotten.

Which was probably for the best given that Alex, in her infinite wisdom, made us queue for 30 minutes in a line FOR THE WRONG AIRLINE (Air Asia)! Lucky for us, when we went to the correct Airline (China Air) there wasn’t a single person in the queue.

Now, I’m Catholic, and the quintessential ‘Caucasian’ (Part Celt, part Viking, all white!) and never get pulled aside for a ‘random check’ at airport security. Alex however is Jewish and ALWAYS gets checked. Consequently we have a running gag that this must be because the airports have ‘Jewdar’ to better point out any red sea pedestrians in their midst!

At Sydney airport, once again, I waltz on through with nary a care in the world, while Alex gets her usual ‘random check’ from some airport security type who thought she looked suspicious. But since we last flew internationally, Sydney has installed the full body scanners (that can see through clothes) and I noticed that the ONLY people being taken out of the queue and made to go through these were hot chicks in thin dresses. And I think Alex was secretly a bit miffed that she was deemed worthy of a ‘random check’ but not deemed hot enough to go through the full body scanner!

Naturally Alex denies this... :) 

Once inside the airport we grabbed some food and Alex charged her iphone. Because, as it turned out, despite leaving the house and hour late, we still got to board our flight with plenty of time.

Stress? Not in Holiday Mode :)

It's two days before we (Logan & Alex for the uninitiated) head off on our holiday to Japan (via Taipei) and Bali (via Kuala Lumpur) and it's only now that the fact that we're actually leaving soon is hitting me. Up to this stage it's almost felt like all the talk about the holiday was in the 3rd person.  'They're going here. They're going there. They're going to do this. They're going to do that'. Like it was all some kind of strange out of body experience where you're watching a movie and the protagonists look like you, but surely they can't be you. Can they?

To be fair, I'm so busy with work at the moment that I really haven't had a chance to focus on the upcoming holiday. Plus I'll actually be working while I'm away. Clients have work that will still need to be attended to, same as always. But that's the good thing about running a webby company like mine, because all the work I do is in the cloud. And so long as I have a laptop and an internet connection, I can do the work just as easily from a hotel room in Tokyo as I can from a coffee shop in North Sydney.

Naturally I won't be slaving over the work while I'm away. But as with every holiday, there'll be quiet times where we're relaxing in a hotel room, and Alex has fallen asleep, and I get an hour or two to myself to faff around on the net. And I'm more than happy to spend that time fixing this and tweaking that on clients' websites. Because let's be honest here, it's not exactly digging ditches is it?

The thing that brought the holiday sharply into focus today, was that Alex and I headed up to Chatswood to get four different types of currency for our trip. Up until now all the spending was done via the web or the phone. And punching your AMEX into a travel site prior to a holiday is a very disconnected type of experience. Whereas getting a wedge out of your bank account and transferring it into foreign currencies is not.

Still, look on the upside, we are now apparently millionaires. Albeit in what looks like Monopoly money! 

The other thing that made the holiday seem real today is that Alex channeled her inner OCD over dinner and made me a list of 'Things to Do v Things to Pack' before we leave. And OMG! No way I'm going to get through a fraction of what needs doing before I leave. Not unless I have more arms than Vishnu!

Take now for example. It's 10.40 pm on the night before we fly out, and I'm meant to be finishing off a client's website so we can launch it tomorrow before I leave. So what am I doing, slaving away knee deep in the CMS? Nope. I'm writing the first entry on the Japan & Bali Holiday 2014 blog, that's what.

Can the class spell, 'Procrastination'? ;)