Niigata Ski Weekend

Last weekend, a group of us threw caution and our upcoming grade deadlines to the wind in order to take advantage of the school's seminar house in the lovely mountians of Niigata, Japan. The seminar house is a homey, ski lodge located mere steps from the base of the mountain ski area. Niigata, famous for the amounts of snow it receives did not dissapoint! I have never in my life seen so much snow! It was absolutely unbelievable! As we drove from the highway exit to the seminar house it was if we were driving through a tunnel of snow. The snow was piled up to the top of the street signs.... if you don't know where you are going... oh well! too much!
the picture above is Kent indicating with his ski pole how high the snow was. (i'm not so good at this blogging thing so i think we have kent's pic 2x!)


Now those of you reading this who know me even remotely well might be thinking to yourselves... hmmm... i never thought of sheryl as a skiier...
and you would be correct! My views of skiing and snowboarding are well known - I don't keep this to myself -- i believe that it is an absurd exercise to physically throw yourself down a mountain on slim pieces of wood (plastic, whatever! as if it mattered!) in the middle of winter -- this is fun!? ahhh... winter blues can make people do strange things....

then why was i there? well, i guess you should try all things once. but all i really wanted to do was ride the ski lift and check out the mountain views. but in order to do that, i had to put on the skis, take a lesson, and ski down the mountain. after a minor temper tantrum (those skiis are not easy to move around in!) i took the lesson with emmeline, ernesto's (my co-worker) wife. the lesson was fine. and i suppose it was fun. the ski lift was fun. the mountain were incredible. it was sunny and warm. our ski instructor, who spoke english, said we were very lucky to have the weather we did.

the next day.

we went snow shoeing! I really hope i am able to get those pics up. wow and wow again. we snowshoed into the forest. everything around me was so completely outside of anything i have ever ever experienced. it was truely beyond my realm. we were in the heart of the forest, making our own trail. it was non stop snowing, quite cold, but we were sweating, breathing hard, laughing, falling in the snow, enjoying the scenery. we were on (in?) about 7 feet of snow, so we were kind of in the middle of the snow covered pine trees.

it was a great weekend.

ps - you can see pictures of the snowshoeing and skiing here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sherylspix