Mountains of Niigata
I went skiing in Niigata (Uchiishi Yama) one weekday before leaving for Hawaii and the mountains were gorgeous as you can see in the picture I took with my Nokia N73. While the mountains are much shorter, they look like a miniature version of the Himalayas. I had not been skiing in over a decade and was a bit rusty. The rental skis where too short, unwaxed and the edges not sharp at all so I was slipping and sliding around a lot and could not go too fast. Still, it was a glorious sunny day and great experience. There were great restaurants all over the ski hill. I had an excellent Korean lunch of bibinba and a superb salad. In the afternoon I went to a German beer restaurant and drank some very good draft beer. The trip by bullet train was only 70 minutes from Tokyo station to the ski hill where a shuttle bus brought me to the slope. From the moment I left my door to the time I hit the slopes was a little less than 3 hours