We woke up to day 5 to a windy, cold and rainy morning which spelt doom as the rain melts the soft powdery snow into wet slush. We checked the forecast and it was confirmed a blizzard was coming through, but we didn’t care and got ready to get up the mountain anyway, hoping that the snow will be untouched by the rain at higher altitude.
As we inclined on the chair lift, the wind howled and literally blew the sleet that was forming into sideway bullets, geez it was cold!! Not only were we battered by the sleet, the fog was incredible with a solid wall of white haze. I started to get a little anxious at this point as you literally could not see your hand when you placed it in front of you. I was packing poo a little because you could not see anyone that was on the slopes and I knew that if I had to suddenly stop or turn, I would definitely roll down the hill or hit a tree or something. We only had a couple of runs up the triple king lift down on the Rinkan run before they closed so we decided to head back down and get ready for lunch.
Lunch was at a quaint little cottage that they formed the downstairs of their home into a little pasta resturant. Café If is ran by an old couple and you can tell they have been there for a while with all the old national geographic magazines and other Japanese mags that we were reading which dated back to the early 90’s. Most of us ordered the prawn and scallop pasta which was in a creamy sauce, and man it was good. I was so surprised on how good it was and found it hard to relate good pasta in japan!
After lunch we decided to wait around the apartment for a while and check to see what lifts were operating. It was around about 3pm before the wind and fog died down a little for the higher lifts to commence, so the rest of us except for Kim and Nancy went back up the slopes. We didn’t end up staying out very long as the wind and fog picked up again and it was getting dark very quickly. Fortunately at Grand Hirafu they have night skiing with heaps of floodlights on around the mountain, but that didn’t help one bit in the fog which acted like a thick white blanket.
The highlight of today was dinner. Mike made reservations to a resturant called ‘Yo’ which was only really a 2 minute walk down the road from the apartment. Upon entering the restaurant, there is a beautiful Japanese garden that welcomes you before you sit down at the dining tables.
9-Course Degustation.
Food after food kept coming as each course presented perfectly arranged food, so appealing that you didn’t even want to eat it. After a few Ooohhh’s and Aaahhh’s, we dove into our meal and seriously it was to die for!!! Lisa and I shared our meals as we usually do since she had the seafood degustation and i had the meat. The food was amazing and it was think it was the best example of excellent traditional Japanese food and culinary mastership. We ended the night with a large bottle of warm sake and went home to sleep the food off. What a day!!
Filed under: Japan Trip 09!
