Tripping Far Side

Yesterday, the Miki Crew made a trip to a big gathering in Tajima for a snowboarding trip. I heard there was something like 67 JETs there! You know it's gonna be craziness when you bring a bunch of gaijin together for a rockin' good time.

We rented a car with snow tires to make the trip to Hachikogen. GPS was really cool, even though we went to the wrong side of the mountain. Got there, signed in, paid, and off to the mountains! Allison, Laura, Chris, and Gareth took lessons so it wasn't possible to meet up. So I was alone all day, but I got a lot of runs in. I hit both sides of the slopes, and although it was a bit of whiteout up at the top, it was still great to be back on the board.

Few gripes though. They were blaring music all day, which is quite different than what I'm used to. I like to really enjoy the silence up the lift and on the runs. After awhile though, I put on the iPod so no biggie. Also, the chairlifts are pretty slow and short. And, the largest capacity seat was 3-wide. That's a big difference between 6-wide, high-speed, and really long. Just outlining differences--I was still happy to carve some turns. The snow was really good--soft pack.

Afterwards was a great crab nabe dinner. Got to catch up with a few JETs I hadn't seen in awhile. Lots of drinking and afterwards--karaoke! Well, we weren't planning to go boarding on Sunday, so we all drank a ton. Good fun to be with Chris when he's toasted! Gareth too, as always, rocking the mic! Maybe the Miki Crew made somewhat of a reputation for ourselves by being a bit rowdy, but in retrospect, I felt a little bad for everyone who wanted to sleep. We finished at 11 PM, which was a reasonable time, but karaoke was in the rooms where everyone was sleeping. If you look at the pic, can you imagine squeezing all those people to sleep in 3 rooms of that size? Good thing they got us some extra rooms....

Thanks for inviting me out guys! That was a blast! Another good memory to remember. :)