Day 1 of snowboarding

Today was a great day! I picked up my board and boots and we were then dropped off at the foot of the mountain (which is only 3 blocks away). I had a 2 hour private lesson booked for 1:30pm, so until then I just mucked around trying to remember everything I'd learnt about snowboarding two years earlier in New Zealand.

It snowed really hard all day long, so there was constant powder on the mountain and it didn't hurt at all when falling over. My lesson was fantastic and he taught me lots of new techniques and I can now fairly comfortably go down a green run with pretty decent speed (even according to Mike!).

Mike spent most of the day skiing all over the place, mainly on black runs and he's still adjusting to the power here and is thinking of getting a private lesson himself. He took this picture with his phone from the top of one of the slopes:

At the end of the day, when it was pitch black and the slopes were lit up with huge lights (they're open till 8:45pm), Mike and I went down two runs together and for the first time I was (sort of) able to keep up with him.

Like everything else in Japan, the slopes run magically. Everyone has an electronic lift pass which is attached to your jacket and beeps when you go through the gates. There is absolutely no waiting to get onto a lift. The lift operators have little brooms which they use to brush the fresh snow off each chair when you hop on - how considerate!

We're now going back into the snow to buy a thermal nose/mouth/chin cover thing because our faces pretty much froze today.