Before I venture off into the unknown, let’s have a short walk down memory lane. As I mentioned before, 2016 is the year I decided to face some fears and start crossing off things on my bucket list. One of which, was to learn how to snowboard. Now, I had a poor attempt when I visited Jasper in ’14, but after flying a stupid amount, and not having enough rest time between flights, I lasted a grand total of 15 minutes during lessons before I had to call it quits, my legs gave out. To be fair, they’d ballooned a fair bit from all the flying. It was a little disappointing, so when cheap tickets to Japan popped up, I messaged the Kiwi straight away, 30 minutes later and both of us furiously exchanging texts to determine leave and timing, I’d booked us tickets to Japan for March ’16. In the end Air Asia screwed us around, changed our flights and changed the arrival airport, I sent a somewhat passive aggressive email and eventually get a refund. Only to rebook onto Singapore Airlines at a eye-watering premium. Oh well, lesson learnt.

A nerve wrecking 8hour layover in Singapore saw me catch up with my cousin for delicious local food, misplacing my passport at the airport(!!), almost crying at the thought of being stuck in Singapore for the near future, then finding out a kind soul had turned in my passport to the info counter. It was a rollercoaster of emotions that night. But after a long nap in a member’s lounge (thank you credit card perks!), I finally met up with the Kiwi, who flew in on a later flight, to catch our final flight to Tokyo.

Again, a comedy of errors saw the Kiwi’s snowboarding bag be left behind in Singapore, people staring at me for arriving in shorts and a tee in freezing cold weather, finding Bon who flew in from Brisbane, making our way to the airport hotel, sleeping through our alarm and frantically rushing to catch the bus back to the airport to figure out where to pick up the rogue bag. By the time we picked up her bag, we were too lazy to be adventurous with our breakfast options and resorted to Maccas. Good ol’ reliable Maccas.

I wish I could say I stayed away and enjoyed the scenery during the bus ride to Hakuba, but I’m not going to lie. I slept the WHOLE way. I took time away from my comfy napping position on the reclining seats to explore the cool roadside “truck stops” and the assortment of vending machine goods, virtually missed everything else. The girls informed me that i’d missed driving past Japanese Disney. In my defence, I’m terrible when I’m a passenger in any moving vehicle, I will 100% fall asleep. I even fell asleep on the flight from Kalgoorlie to Perth, that’s only a 45min flight…

Hakuba blew my mind, it was love at first sight. It was like a sleepy little town covered in snow. Well, the part of Hakuba we were staying in was. Now, initially I was a little interested to experience sleeping in a traditional Japanese room, believe me when I say, the novelty very quickly wore off. The first night was fine, but after snowboarding, there were more than a few groans through the night as we each tried to find the least painful position to sleep in. And getting up from the ground after snowboarding the day before was definitely not fun, a lot of swearing was involved. Oh, and the “northern mountain views” listed in the ad sounded a lot more fancy that it actually was.

The girls met a few years back when they worked the slopes in Jasper, so in hopes of catching up to their level, I enrolled for snowboarding lessons. Turns out, I really, REALLY love the ground.  I couldn’t go more than a minute before stacking it, and the lessons were 4 hours long. Oh, and renting a helmet was the best money I spent in Japan. No brain damage for Maz!… This time.