Onsen - Day 4 and 5
Day 4
Hit the slopes with Liam right in the morning. Conditions were quite a bit better than yesterday as we had a whole 5cm overnight! I'm looking at the whole weather situation as optimistically as possible. I'm here in Japan to experience the food, culture and people, and if we happen to get some good snow and skiing, that will be a bonus.
Skiing with Liam was great. Our skill level is perfectly matched and we are both confident enough in ourselves to ask for what we want and go with the flow. I was feeling pretty done with skiing not long after lunch and was totally comfortable letting Liam know that I was going to head home, knowing that he would choose to keep boarding or not without pressure from me. It's quite rare to be around people that don't need validation from others and that are fully comfortable being on their own. When I made up my mind on Day 5 morning not go skiing, I knew that my decision wouldn't impact Liam or Kyle, and I also knew that I wouldn't feel any pressure from them to change my decision. I think that is an amazing characteristic to have in travel partners.
Kyle's back has been spasming for the last couple days, so he went to Nagano to see a chiropractor. Liam and I grabbed a steamed bun appetizer after skiing and went for dinner to the Sushi place to try a little bit of everything. I still can't get over how delicious the salmon is: the consistency, the taste, the juiciness and colour are all magnificent!
We bumped into Kyle on the way home and the guys played some Yuniv with several other people staying at the hotel while I touched up some of my pictures.
Day 5
Today was quite lazy. We woke up early for breakfast and since I wasn't going skiing due to the lack of snow, I just hung out and got things started slowly.
I went for a bit of a photography walk around the town, as I'm really lacking in pictures of the place. I'm not sure what it is about the town but there hasn't been a lot that has jumped out at me to be captured. I'm not sure if this is because the style is similar to Canada, or if I'm not as intrigued by the things I'm seeing around me. This could be a continuation of the lack of culture shock I'm feeling. It seems like a slipped into a comfortable feeling very quickly upon arriving in Japan.
Taking the photography walk was well worth it. It really forced me to explore a bit and look at everything with a more critical eye for things that are out of the ordinary. I really want to capture the essence of the town: to be able to communicate its vibe to someone who has not been here through pictures.
I've struggled a bit with the blogging I've been doing. I've really had to force myself to get some content down everyday. I've put pressure on myself to be succinct, interesting and share vulnerabilities in all my posts. I want these posts to be high quality, but I don't want to feel burdened by the editing and rephrasing - it can take quite a bit of time to change things around to ensure easy reading. One of the unintended benefits of this writing has been a refresh of my punctuation knowledge as well as practice putting my ideas into words quickly. My hope is that I will improve as I go, and I am going to allow some subpar posts in the interest of making the process easier and more approachable for myself.
We all had a bit of a lazy day today and hung out at the hostel for the afternoon. We went to another one of the Nozawa Holiday hotels for happy hour and then went to a couple different places for dinner with a guy from our lodge named Paul. He was a great addition to our trio and we chatted about everything from economics and investments to life passions and exploring culture. He was quite clever and well educated about a range of topics and an absolute pleasure to converse with.
Our dinners were an adventure in food. We had the opportunity to try chicken on a stick, horse meat, pork tongue and Soba (buckwheat flower noodles). The horse-meat was "squishy", the pork tongue was "chewy" and everything was delicious, as usual!