Kansaiash
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Posts posted by Kansaiash
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My goggles are ******. I have a set of smith phenom and the lens completely failed on me during my trip to Nozawa over the last 2 days. They were continually fogging up. I would take them inside and let it clear and by the time i was back in my bindings and ready to go they would be fogged up again. At first I thought it was because I made the mistake of wiping the inside of them late last season but now I don't think that would have made any difference. The part that is continually fogging up is between the 2 lens layers. Has anyone had a similar problem with dual layer lenses? And is there a way to fix this problem?
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Nozawa Onsen Dec 18-19 2012
I headed to Nozawa Onsen for my first slide of the season. My snowboarding partner for this trip was my girlfriend. She had previously tried boarding but didn't like it, the only reason she agreed to try again is because I'll be in the snow nearly every weekend for the next 3 months. We arrived at Nozawa Onsen around 9 am, drove around town for a while looking for the rental shop and getting ready and we were strapping up our bindings at Yamabiko station by 11. The snow wasn't too bad on the 18th, around lunch time there was about 5-10 cm of fresh snow on top of a really hard ice layer. As the day went on the snow that was falling became lighter and more consistent.
There were limited lifts and courses open which lift me playing in the Yamabiko area while my girlfriend took an afternoon lesson. After her lesson we decided against taking the gondola down and tried to go down the Rinkan course. This wasn't the best idea as at the bottom the snow was still too thin to snowboard across to the car park area.
That night it continued to snow and we woke up to about 10cm of fresh snow on the car and a lot more up the top. The second day we ere able to get ready a lot faster and we were up the top and sliding by 9. I left me girlfriend to practice for a bit and went up to see what Yamabiko had to offer. The snow was amazing with the off piste action offering knee to waist deep snow. The visibility was pretty bad, which was made a lot worse by my goggles continually fogging up. I ended up spending most of the day boarding without goggles. As painful as it was riding without goggles it was still an extremely enjoyable morning. I did manage to get a couple of breaks in the weather and snap some photos. Most of the time it was like the first 2 photos in this post.
I met up with my girlfriend and rode the green runs down to the bottom of paradise until lunch. There was plenty of fresh snow even on these runs with the edge of paradise being knee deep if not more. After lunch the snow started to ease off a bit and we had some periods of no snow and even some blue sky.
I think we got pretty lucky with the weather and the conditions could have been a lot worse. It was my first time to go to Nozawa Onsen and definitely a place I would like to go back to in the future. We had a wonderful time and now my girlfriend has agreed to go on another trip early next years. So Jan 6-9 we will be off to Suginohara.
Also the pizzas at the Yamabiko restaurant are really good.
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Thanks for the snow dance guys. It worked at nozawa. Lots of snow up there this morning.
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Hopefully I'll be heading to Meiho (Gifu) on Friday for their grand opening then spending the night around Gujo and off to the Takasu/Gujo area on Saturday. This plan depends on weather and people sharing the transport costs with me so if I can tick those two boxes that's where I'll be.
Also heading to Nozawa early tmrw morning for Tuesday and Wednesday for my first turns this season. Not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight, too damn excited.
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ordered my board from rakuten.
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Great pics and thanks for sharing.
It looks like you have had the place pretty much to yourself. The courses and lifts look very empty.
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Some dates I have locked in.
Nozawa onsen 12/18-19
Meiho 12/21
Hakuba 12/27-30
Suginohara 1/6-8
Hakuba 1/11-14
More to come as the season progresses.
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I was planning on hitting up Skijam in Fukui for opening day on Sat but looking at the current forecast I think ill be sitting in the pub instead.
Taking the Friday off is a great idea and I wish I could do the same.
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Booked my car in over a week ago to get them done today after work. Just my luck that today it decided to snow for the first time in the area so every man and his dog will probably be at the tyre shop this afternoon.
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Snow in southern Shiga the prefecture and Kyoto this morning. No real accumulation but it snowed pretty consistanly all morning.
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Are there any decent coupons for 47&goryu? I have only found ones that give you a lift and meal ticket for 4900.
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Ontake... its big.
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You can get prepaid soft bank sim cards but they are for voice calls and phone email only. You also need a basic old school prepaid phone to operate it. They won't work on an iPhone. As far as I know the only way you can get a sim card with data is to sign up for a 24month contract.
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Not sure if these qualify as "Nice Photos" as they are only taken with my phone camera but thought I would share anyway. My girlfriend wanted to go hiking one last time before all my spare time is dedicated to winter sports, so we decided to spend the last Sunday of November hiking and viewing some of the magical Autumnal colours the mountains of Japan provide. The hike started out bad with us sleeping through our alarm and leaving the house about 2 hours later than we had planned. Since time was kind of short I decided to head to Dainichigatake as its a mountain I have always wanted to hike but never got around to. We ended up leaving home around 8 am and the drive to the mountain base took about 2.5hrs. To my complete surprise (and probably lack of preparation) we arrived to find the mountain was covered with snow at the top. Since we were short of time we headed straight up through Dynaland then cut over to Takasu SP. The top of the ski-jos had some snow and at this point I was kicking myself that I didn’t check the weather earlier and bring my board along for the hike. At the top of Takasu SP there was a very nice base of about 40-50cm, at some points even deeper. After playing around in the snow and getting cold we continued up to the peak of the mountain which turned out to be a lot harder than I had expected thanks to walking in knee deep snow without any appropriate snow trekking gear. In the end we made it up to the top, took a few pictures then raced back down to the comfort of a nearby onsen and attempted get our body temperature back to normal. The weather was perfect for hiking, and it turned out to be a mostly enjoyable day.
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I'm hoping for 30+ this season, will depend on how the funds go of course. I think i'd need to live somewhere colder to get anymore than that.
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The Tateyama web cam looks good today. Covered in snow with blue skies. If only I lived closer...
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You can see the full list here.
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Royal milk tea
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Ha-ha. No point on sending pics every three days. I couldn't grow a mo if my life depended on it. Maybe every week you might be able to notice a slight change.
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I'm trying again this year. It makes for a good laugh and I like the challenge of trying to explain the concept of Movember to my Japanese colleagues.
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Bad starts to the Season
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
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I was thinking it might be a busted seal. It annoys me because I only bought them last season. Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check them out.