Japanese Marketing - a taste

A casual browse in a Japanese convenient/souvenir/corner/random store always brings about golden photographic opportunities for interesting and/or quirky items - see above example (it is a loafer).

We paid a 500 yen voyeur fee yesterday to watch snow monkeys bath in sulphur stinking onsens. Animal attractions I think are a good reminder of the similarities between humans and animals, and the fact that we are actually not that far up the food chain.

And I don't know why these places always have squat only toilets - eek! From techy bidets to squat and possibly pee-your-pants/shoes toilets - this is a massive from grace.

Snow was about 90% epic today. Was bucketing down the entire day. The landscape of Shiga Kogen was completely different to what it was yesterday and the day before.

We soaked our weary limbs (and my bunged shoulder) in the in-house jacuzzi and onsen - so relaxing. Now we are chilling out in our room, with Asashis in hands and about to head out to dinner. As noted in Shar's guest blog, food places aren't easy to find around here. The customary practice is to hang out at your hotel, hence the abundance of hotels at Shiga Kogen.


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Buckets at Shiga Kogen

I suspect today will be an awesome day on the snow. It is snowing buckets outside which is a welcomed change from the clear blue sky and rain (eek) we got yesterday.

The trees are all covered with white stuff and there are sporadic mini avalanches from the accumulation of snow on roof tops.

Let's hope the shoulder holds up today.


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Arriving in Shiga Kogen

Hi everyone, this is Sharlene, guest-blogging on Marissa's blog from her blackberry! Very techy of me!



We spent today travelling from Hakuba to Shiga Kogen via 2 bus routes. There are a lot of aussies around which can be a bad thing, especially when they're being rude to the locals. We had an incident on the bus (which was packed) from Hakuba where an aussie mom was telling off a japanese local for minding a seat for her partner who was loading the luggage outside. Granted she had kids, but there are kinder ways to go about it than being high and mighty, also in the end there were enough seats for everyone.



After all that drama, we arrived at Shiga Kogen (after thrashing Marissa in Tetris DS, but have to admit she was kicking my ass on the first bus leg) and staying at the Sunroute Hotel. After dumping our stuff, we took a walk around town, and it is very traditional i.e dead quiet! A lot of school kids skiing, but all the shops were closed! No fresh snow, very sunny and nothing much else to do but eat. Depending on the conditions tomorrow, we will visit the snow monkeys (who have their own onsen) instead of snowboarding, so that should be interesting and fun!



One last thing about this place, apparently, there are two snow areas where it's skiers ONLY (YDG will love that). It's not an area that is extremely open to snowboarders, apparently the mountains are suited to skiers, so we shall see when we get on the slopes! Big dump happening in the next couple days, can't wait!



Okay enough story telling, it wasn't a very interesting day so had to blab about nothing! Oh yeah, no internet in the room, have to go to the lobby to connect! So, Gregan, please be patient with the games :)



Signing off!

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