Sushi on a Conveyor Belt! Finally!

So last night we FINALLY went out to eat sushi at a conveyor belt style restaurant!! Yeah, yeah, I know, you can do that in NYC. But it's special here! We went with our friends and their daughters. So here's the view from our booth next to the belt:

That faucet you see there dispenses hot water for the green tea powder that they also provide on the table. Kakkoi!!

If there's anything in particular that you want that's not going around on the conveyor belt, you can order by writing down what you want on slips of paper. Here is our friend's daughter making special orders for us:

They were having a special deal that day- 3 pairs of different types of salmon sushi for 126 yen!!!

I had already eaten one of them before taking this picture. Haha. The last pair that's wrapped in nori (seaweed) is actually called the parent-child roll because it is salmon with salmon eggs on top. Oishii!!!

How do they know how much to charge? By the number and color of your plates!!

This is our stack of plates towards the end of our sushi feast!

After you're done eating, you can make some soy sauce art, as demonstrated by our friend's other daughter here:

Ohkay, that's not really true- She just got bored and wanted to play with soy sauce.

Well, I've got to run to work!! Just wanted to make a quick post!! OH and I should also mention that I FINALLY got to have a taste of sea urchin (uni)- it is DELICIOUS! More later maybe...

Niseko vs. Furano and other things...

I was going to make a post comparing Niseko and Furano but I think it's pretty apparent what the differences are. The biggest difference is that there are no drunk Australians in Niseko. Other than that- Furano has better snow but Niseko was more challenging runs (and is bigger in general). Furano is much more peaceful and feels like/is a small town while Niseko is a a pretty developed ski resort. The end!

So I think there's one last "Blessed with Snow" entry and it's going to be about Yuki Matsuri. I have over 100 pictures to go through but should be done this week!

I really want to start a series of posts about food. Good food, Bad food, Weird food...Once my cold subsides and I can taste flavors again my first subject will be なっと ("natto" = fermented soybeans). YUM! Not really though...I've had it before and it was not pleasant. Ryan said maybe I should eat natto while I'm sick so I can't taste it. But I want the full experience and so do you!

Stay tuned!

"Blessed with Snow" Part Ni: Furano Ski-jo

aka ふらの は すばらしい でした!!! ("Furano wa subarashii deshita!!!" = Furano was awesome!)

Furano is known for three main things: lavender fields, the television drama きたのくにから (Kita No Kuni Kara = From the North Country; I think that's what it translates to), and Furano Ski Resort. Well, the lavender fields are buried in snow and I don't know a thing about that television drama...so I guess all I have to talk about it is the skiing! Of course!

Furano is 142km east of Sapporo. It's smack-dab in the middle of Hokkaido- which is why it's sometimes called the へそ ("heso" = belly button) of Hokkaido. They even hold a へそまつり ("heso matsuri" = belly button festival), which is during the summer and will not be talked about here- though you should do a google image search of the festival because it's pretty funny. (ohkay, i made you guys a link...just click google image search.) This city (8th largest in Hokkaido!) is surrounded by the biggest mountains in Hokkaido- Mt. Tokachi-dake of the Taisetsu Mountain Range, also known as the "roof of Hokkaido," and Mt. Ashibetsu-dake of the Yubari Mountain Chain.

Furano ski resort has two zones: Furano Zone and Kitanomine Zone. In the Furano Zone, they have a super high speed ropeway; it takes 101 passengers something like 2,330 meters in less than 5 minutes. I think we only rode it once the entire time we were there though. Haha. Just like Niseko, Furano is blessed with snow from the Sea of Japan and Siberia except that its powder is even drier than Niseko's. What?! So it basically sounds like THE place to ski, doesn't it?!

Well, it is!! Furano is hands-down my favorite place right now. I'm having a lot of trouble keeping this entry organized because I just want to rave about Furano...Let me just give you a short recap:

Ryan and I ended up getting ourselves a 4 day weekend last week (Ryan actually got 5 days off!!) so I booked us a bus to Furano and pension accommodations by the gondola in Kitanomine Zone. It took about 3 hours to get to Furano and it was a half km walk from the gondola to our pension, Pension Ressha House. The pension was nice but we didn't get a room with ensuite bathroom so it really was more like the Japanese ryokan we stayed in in Hamamasu. The bathrooms were dorm-style and the shower/bath was gender separated Japanese style. I never actually had to share the shower/bath with anyone so it was like having a huge shower room all to myself and my own pool to soak in afterwards. I have to say that although it was a really nice place, I never felt rested there. Maybe because I was too tired or starting to get sick (I've got a pretty bad cold right now) or it was too hot...or maybe it was the weird elevator music that was constantly playing. That REALLY bugged me. They did turn it off at a certain time at night but still. Anyway, like I said before, the pension was 0.5 km from the gondola and unlike Niseko, Furano doesn't have its own free shuttle bus service for the resort area. It wasn't a terrible hike though.

What the walk looks like from our pension to gondola

So the first day we decided to take the bus into downtown Furano for some おみやげ ("omiyage" = souvenir) shopping and dinner. I happened to see that there was Geo in town (Geo is a multimedia store that sells lots of used video game stuff) so of course, we had to stop in there so Ryan could get his video game fix. The best places to find rare items are in small towns in the middle of nowhere and Ryan really lucked out because Geo was having an insane sale.

After buying the souvenirs and some games, we had dinner at Teppenyaki Masaya where we ordered the Furano Omu Curry and their super fluffy おこのみやき(okonomiyaki), which I can't remember the name of anymore. You can translate okonomiyaki to "whatever you want cooked" and that's basically what it is- a pancake type dish with whatever ingredients you want. In most okonomiyaki restaurants you actually cook the pancakes yourself and have a choice of toppings and sauces. In other places the chef makes the okonomiyaki on a grill in front of you. The specific okonomiyaki we had at Masaya was different in that it was extremely fluffy. It was actually the first okonomiyaki I've had so I have nothing to compare it to. It looks very light and fluffy but since it is made with potato it is also pretty filling.

Masaya of Teppenyaki Masaya making our food!

Our Okonomiyaki

The Furano Omu Curry is Furano's signature dish. First of all, Omu Curry is just rice wrapped in an omelette with curry on top and can be found pretty much anywhere. To be a Furano Omu Curry you must follow these rules:
1. Use Furano-raised rice, vegetables, and eggs.
2. Must be served with a glass bottle of Furano Milk.
3. Must be under 1000yen.
If it follows these rules, only then can you plant a little "welcome to Furano" flag in the rice before serving. It is very tasty and the milk was really good too!

Furano Omu Curry

So we had a good restful first day. The next day we had breakfast at our pension and then made the hike up to the gondola (which, not gonna lie, was not the best part of my day). I soon found that even though I had to climb uphill in my boots with my skis and poles, it was totally worth it. Furano powder is awesome and plentiful! I was scared at first because there was a sign that read "Attention Beginners!! There are NO beginner courses at the top of Kitanomine gondola!!! Take the lift instead!" But boy, do I feel sorry for those beginners who stay away from the top...the view is amazing!! (Also, it would have been another uphill climb to the lifts from the gondola station.) And as I would soon find out, there is almost no course in Furano that I CAN'T ski. I have to say it's a combination of the amazing snow and the fact that the courses really aren't that hard as compared to Niseko. I think that first day we skiied pretty much everything except for the three expert courses and the mogul run.

That night we ate at Panier. We had chosen the restaurant because it advertised homemade pizza but when we arrived we decided that we weren't in the mood for pizza and it didn't really look like a pizzeria anyway. The restaurant was really cute- pretty big but also just felt like we were sitting in someone's home. I suspect many of the places around the ski resort are like that especially in the Kitanomine zone, which is known to be an area full of pensions and small hotels. That's part of the charm of Furano- it doesn't feel touristy; it's just a small town with a really big mountain. We ordered mushroom black curry and pumpkin gratin. The black curry was apparently their specialty so we had to order it. It was a pretty mild curry, very dark and thick. I was surprised by the serving size- it was almost as much rice as our rice cookers puts out- and we have a 3 cup rice cooker. Luckily, I have Ryan. The pumpkin gratin was really good too. We ended the meal with chocolate banana cake a la mode! Yum! The vanilla ice cream had a delicious blueberry sauce on it. It was Ryan's favorite part.

Mushroom Black Curry

Pumpkin Gratin

Third day we were there was a bluebird day. I forgot until now to mention the weather. Furano was really cold but not as cold as we were expecting. Maybe around -8 celsius? Not sure, maybe it was colder. Anyway, it wasn't as windy as Niseko but it did snow a lot while we were there. So the third day, we skiied everything except maybe one of the expert courses in Furano Zone...but it's hard to tell sometimes which course you're on or where exactly you are. So who knows. I was so happy to be able to experience Furano during some snowfall and some sunlight. I have to say in either situation, the view is breathtaking. I especially loved the views from Furano Zone's highest lift- aptly named "Downhill Romance."

Don't actually think this is from Downhill Romance...
But it's a pretty good representation of what pretty much all of Furano looks like.

The mountain was full of students that day- I think a high school school was having a field trip. It was pretty funny to see all the students dressed all in the same ski outfits- from their matching hats and goggles to their ski/snowboard boots. We're not sure if they were dressed like that so it would be easy to spot them or keep them in a group or if it was just for solidarity. Probably a little bit of both. It's a pretty interesting sight to see from the lifts- the whiteness of the slopes dotted with groups of people all dressed alike. There were also men dressed in green camouflage or solid olive green snow suits using really old-school looking cross country skis. We decided that they were members of the self-defense force's mountain unit. Wish we had pictures of all these...

In Kitanomine Zone there is an expert course called Furikowaza which slopes downward off the edge of an easier course and is ungroomed. When we approached it that day we found a group of high school boys laughing like crazy and having a ball basically falling their way down the course. So, of course, we joined them! I got a lot of encouragement from imagining that their ski instructor at the bottom was yelling "がんばって" ("Ganbatte" = Try your best!) to me as well as to the boys. I wish I could have skiied with them all day! Haha.

At the end of the third night, we decided to go back to Panier because we just liked it there so much. A different man served us at first and brought us a Japanese menu but the previous waiter saw us and was so excited to see us. Both of them were very impressed with our Japanese. This time we ordered the potato gratin and a mushroom doria. とてもおいしい!! ("totemo oishii!" = very delicious!) And of course we ended dinner with cheesecake a la mode, just so that we could have more of that delicious blueberry sauce.

That night we also went to Ningle Terrace, a string of 15 cottages where artisans create and sell their products. It's advertised as a "fairy tale arts and crafts village" "lit up with thousands of fairy lights" and has "well dressed snowmen and huge snow mushrooms on every log cabin." It's behind the New Furano Prince Hotel, which is huge and has its own onsen and is probably really expensive to stay in. Anyway, it was a really cute "forest boardwalk" but we were freezing and didn't want to miss the bus back to Kitanomine. I did get to buy an awesome kaleidoscope made out of a tree branch and we tasted the やき ミルク ("yaki miruku"= a baked milk drink) at Chu Chu Cafe. We were really surprised when I ordered it because the cashier just brought it out from under the counter. I really liked it though. It had a really tasty kind of caramelized skin on top. I think it would have tasted better hot though.

Yaki Milk!! So Good!

Ryan and the ferociously cute snowbear!

Should have borrowed their scarves...SO COLD!

On our fourth and last day, our bus wasn't leaving for Sapporo until 5PM so we decided to check out of our room in the morning, store our bag at the pension and ski for a few hours. It was another beautiful day. On this last day, I pretty much got all the falling I didn't do the other two days out of the way. I figured it was a good day to fall a lot since I probably wasn't skiing the next day. My best fall was when I decided to ski into the ungroomed powder on one side of a course and face planted into it instead. Hahaha. I guess I underestimated how fast I was going and how deep the powder was. My skis basically just sunk in and I tripped over them. It was the first time my skis popped off though and I had quite a time trying to get my skis back on on a slope. It was a lot of fun though!

So...that's basically everything that happened in Furano. I just want to get this posted so ASAP since I've been working on it like all week and I'm getting sick of it...more later...

I'm going to ski off the horizon!!!

Please click the link below for the full album!
(Unfortunately we're not the busiest shutterbugs...but it's better than nothing!)

Furano

FURANO WAS AWESOME!

Hello, blog readers! We have just arrived from Furano and I just wanted to get you all pumped to hear about it. However, now is not the time for an update- super tired tonight but will get you that update ASAP!

As per SOMEONE'S request (ahem, Eric Cho), I have changed the colors...it's true, that green was pretty garish...it just took someone's nudge to get me to finally change it. In the end I would like to make this site look nicer. Hm...someday when a vacation means not skiing everyday all day.

AND guess what! We are starving and for Valentine's Day I told Ryan I would get him Pizza Hut pizza (which we are hoping lives up to our standards of real Pizza Hut pizza). So I just ordered pizza over the internet IN JAPANESE!! Haha. Should be here in half an hour. Guess that's another future topic.

BTW, in Japan, on Valentine's Day the women give the men chocolates. So that's why Ryan gets pizza today. Happy Valentine's Day!!

"Blessed with Snow": Skiing around Sapporo and Niseko!

So, it's already February?! Gomenasai (ごめんなさい), dear readers...Sorry for the long break between posts! This year really hit the ground running for us. Hope 2010 has been as good to you as it's been to us so far. There's so much to update about.

Right now, we are in the midst of the 61st Sapporo Snow Festival (さっぽろゆきまつり- Sapporo Yuki Matsuri) and boy, is the weather really celebrating it. At first it seemed to be warming up in Sapporo but by the time the festival started, the temperatures dropped and so did the powder! The festival is really a wonder...I hope I can put it into words- in another post!

So "Blessed with Snow" seems to be the slogan for Sapporo (click on Sapporo to see it on the website), but I think it applies to pretty much all of Hokkaido and to us because we live here. We've been skiing a lot and still have the rest of the season. Lately we've stuck close to home- Bankei ski resort is only a short subway ride and an even shorter shuttle bus away! It's in Chuo-ku which means it's in Central Sapporo. It's close, it's cheap, and it's a pretty nice little mountain! (Bankei from the bus stop)

But I know you all want to know about Niseko!! (Those of you who know we went...)

I guess a quick geography and background lesson is in order here so we're all up to date on the what and where: (though most of this can actually be read at Niseko's Wikipedia)


So Niseko is about 2.5-3 hours west of Sapporo through a beautiful mountain landscape all dressed up in snow. Niseko is actually the name of a town, the municipal area but is commonly used to refer to the ski resorts that encompass Mt. Yotei and the Annupuri range. There are 6 of them: Grand Hirafu, Higashiyama aka Niseko Village, Annupuri, Hanazono, Mt. Moiwa and Mt. Weiss. The first four are called Niseko United- can be skied in between at the top and has free shuttle service at the base with your Niseko United lift pass. In 2007, Niseko was number 2 in Top 20 Snowiest Ski Resorts in the World in Forbes' Traveler with an average of 595 inches.


Ohkay...so WHY so much snow? Niseko is fed by the weather fronts coming from Siberia and the Sea of Japan which creates a very consistent and powdery snowfall. Apparently though Niseko powder is not as dry as other parts of Hokkaido! Does this mean it gets better than Niseko?!

We left for Niseko on January 3rd after celebrating the new year very quietly with lots of soba noodles, of course! We took the Niseko Bus from Sapporo Station- our bus fare came with complimentary lift tickets.The ride there was pretty awesome- just took in the snow-laden landscape. There were really great views of Mt. Yotei from the bus. Mt. Yotei is also known as Ezo-Fuji (which means Fuji of Hokkaido) because it is supposed to look like Mt. Fuji. What do you think?
Our lodge was in the Grand Hirafu area of Niseko, which is where most hotels and restaurants are. Our particular accomodation would be called a "pension," which is taken from the French word for boarding house. Basically it's the westernized version of a Japanese ryokan. It's a very economical alternative to a resort hotel or business hotel, which are very expensive.

Alpine Central: Our home in Niseko

Alpine Central has a great traditional hinoki bath (Japanese cypress) available to all guests. This was the second best part of a good day of skiing- the best part being the skiing. It wasn't ski-in/ski-out but the free shuttle bus was right outside and only took at most 5 minutes. If we really wanted to, we could have walked up to the lifts- but hey, this is still a vacation, right?

Our first meal in Niseko was pizza, of course! It didn't really live up to our expectations. I guess coming from New York, we have a very discerning palate. Hehe. We thought that since Niseko was known to be more "international" that maybe the pizza would taste less...Japanese. But I guess ingredients are the same everywhere. The search for good pizza continues!

I would like to coin the term "Little Oz" as a new name for Niseko because this whole resort was basically made up of Australian owned businesses and full of Australian people- working or vacationing there. It didn't feel like we were in Japan anymore. It was pretty surreal.

So I guess I should get to the skiing part right?!

Our first day was pretty nice- we tackled Hanazono, a little bit of Grand Hirafu and Higashiyama. The snow was awesome! One of the employees at the lodge warned me that it was a bit of a shock to see your skis disappear in the powder but that I would get used to it quickly- or at least I'd have to. IT WAS CRAZY and exciting! The trails were awesome and wide but every now and then I would get brave enough to go into the trees where the best snow can be found!

We ended the night as we would for the rest of the trip- a nice long soak in the hinoki bath and dinner at a place we carefully chose from the guidebook. Our first night we ate soup curry at Tsubara Tsubara- which was just down the street from our lodge. For our second night (first day skiing), we got take-out from a sandwich shop called Graubunden. Ryan got a mushroom omelette sandwich and I got an avocado, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. And for dessert we got some crazy fruity roll cake slice that cost as much as a sandwich! Worth it though.

The second day was much more intense. We got up early, partook in our lodge's breakfast buffet, and got to the mountain early. We took the lifts straight to the top of Grand Hirafu, crossed Higashiyama, and took one last lift up to the peak to ski down into Annupuri. This last lift was called Wonderland Chair lift. It was a single person chair lift and that morning it felt as if the chair was transporting me directly into a blizzard. This was a white-out the likes of which I have never seen! (OK, I'm a new skier but still this was extreme...) I could barely see Ryan in the chair in front of me. I was holding onto the chair for dear life!

Coming off the lift and turning onto the run, I worked hard to ski down and keep the terror from taking over. The peak was windblown and hard-packed and I was shaking from cold and fear. Another skier joined Ryan and I in trying to find our way to Annupuri but we both lost Ryan and then I lost the other skier. It seemed like the wind was coming in all directions and snow was swirling all around me. Whenever I stopped (which was always a bad idea!), I would get dizzy- the snow was moving in such a way that I couldn't tell which was up, down, left or right. The worst part was when I got knocked down by the wind. This set off a chain of events that went something like this: 1. Wrench your knee. 2. Punch yourself in the face with your pole. 3. Face plant and eat snow. 4. Continue sliding towards the backcountry boundary with no clue as to how you're going to stop. Luckily, I had enough sense left in me to dig my poles in, get my skis situated (guessing at which way was actually down), and stand up. From there I finally found Ryan, who was probably turning into an icicle waiting for me. We skied on into Annupuri, which turned into a peaceful winter wonderland once we got lower down the mountain. It really felt like such a treat after the ordeal at the top. The courses were wide and gentle and quiet. Once we got all the way down and got back on the lift, I nearly cried from sheer joy.

From Niseko

(Not a picture of my after Annupuri but still a good picture of me being happy.)

I can't remember if we took the shuttle bus back to Grand Hirafu that day. We must have because later that day (probably right after I got off that death chair!) all of the lifts to the top were shut down.

In my opinion, Annupuri was the most Japanese of all the resorts. I don't really know how to explain this...I guess the most obvious explanation is that there are more Japanese/less foreigners skiing in Annupuri as compared to Grand Hirafu or Niseko Village. Also it's the least developed (not counting Hanazono which to me was more like an extension of Grand Hirafu than a resort in and of itself)- Annupuri only has a handful of pensions and youth hostels and very little apres-ski. The rest house had the cheapest food of all the resorts and the fare was much less western as well. Also I feel like Annupuri is just much more peaceful and zen-like than the other resorts. But maybe my opinion is just distorted because I was just so happy to have survived the conditions at the peak.

That night we ate at a Nepalese curry place that I can't remember the name of- Bhozan, maybe? I actually can't remember what we ate. Nothing really to write home about...

The third day and our last day of skiing was spent mostly in Grand Hirafu and Hanazono. I haven't asked Ryan but I'm pretty sure that we both agree on the best run: Stairway to Heaven in Hanazono. At first I was a little intimidated by it because I considered it steep but by the end of the day I couldn't get enough of it! When Hanazono closed, we moved on to Grand Hirafu for night skiing. I conquered my fear of skiing off the lip of a trail! It wasn't a big deal at all...children were zooming past me while I whimpered and whined about how scary it was. Haha. Well, I DID IT! So, hooray for me!

Our last dinner in Niseko was at Taj Mahal for Indian buffet. When we first entered we didn't realize it was only buffet. We had to ask the waiter if there were any vegetarian dishes and if it was worth it for us to pay so much for buffet. The waiter was so excited that we were vegetarian that he urged us to stay and that there were two vegetarian dishes at the buffet but the kitchen would make two more all vegetarian dishes just for us. The entire staff seemed to be beaming at us. I didn't have the heart to explain that I was only asking because Ryan is a pescetarian and that I would actually eat meat if I thought it looked good/there weren't that many vegetarian choices. So while we were at Taj Mahal, we "pure vegetarian" as the waiter kept calling us. Apparently in all his years in the restaurant business in Japan, he had hardly ever met "pure vegetarians" and he was so happy to have met us. Ryan considered telling him the story of why he became a vegetarian but I think that would have brought everyone to tears. They served us okra curry and samosas- fresh out of the kitchen just for us. Actually the waiter nearly begged me to eat. He had dropped the samosas off at our table and was coming back with the okra curry when he noticed I hadn't touched my samosa yet. (I still had a whole plate of other food!) "Please, m'am, eat the samosa! It is very good!" And then as if he didn't think I would eat the okra curry, he shoveled it onto my plate for me and seemed to stand there waiting for me to eat. So I indulged him and ate a little bit of both while he stood there. おいしい!! (oishii = delicious) It wasn't as uncomfortable as it sounds. It was pretty awesome and fun. And the food was really good- best Indian food we've eaten in Japan.

So the next day we went back to Sapporo. And the day after I left for the Philippines. And tomorrow morning we are heading to Furano!! So...I have to cut this short here and publish this now so you guys have something to read while we're away!

Also here's the album but I don't think I'm done adding pictures...

Niseko

(I just realized while writing this post that there wasn't even a blip on the radar about New Year...Not much to report. I made New Year postcards as is tradition here. Wish I could have scanned one in for the blog...next time! OH, Ryan recontracted and my job is pretty secure so we'll be here another year! Also please excuse any weird grammar errors, formatting or anything like that...I did this post as quickly as possible!)