Markie

Yes, of course you can. And you can also drink water instead of beer. But why should you if you have a choice?....Not because the wife says so I hope!

Thursday, how can you let your wife hog the ensuite toilet. If it's there, you should use it. I've already notified a couple of lodge owners in Hakuba (you know who you are) that they should get them installed if they want my business.

I'm sorry, Thursday, but to qualify as a separate resort, it must have a separate lift pass. So Hanazono, Hirafu and even Alpen would only qualify as one. Of course you can call all of Niseko just one if you like. But most of what you say never makes much sense anyway.

Well, I did 10 in just the last week in Hakuba: Kashimayari, Aokiko, Sanosaka, Goryu, 47, Happo One, Tsugaike, Iwatake, Norikura and Cortina. If I had a few more days I would have done Highlands, Minekata and Yanaba to complete the full tour of Hakuba. I also did Furano in Hokkaido and did Val d'Isere and Tignes in France. So that makes it 13 in all.

CB, stop being jealous just because Ewok 2 is talking to me.

That's interesting. When I was at university, I was pretty good at Track and Field and took part in every running event from 100m up to 5000m, including 110 hurdles and 400 hurdles and won medals in all of them. Actually, my strongest event was 400m and 400m hurdles but during those university days I was there, so was the HK champion in those two events. So in order to win some golds, I had to switch to the other events. In fact, as recently as this January I ran in a 4 x 100m race that clocked 48.3 secs. However, that fast time was mainly due to two very fast team-mates who ran at about

Originally Posted By: slow I really enjoy this annual Easter gathering with Markie Jitsuha, it cannot be an annual Easter gathering if it is not done every year and unfortunately you did not come to Hakuba in Easter last year and I missed you then. It was "bitter sweet" for me to see you again this time, especially because of your present condition. I hope you get much better soon. I will try to send you as many "genki"s as possible. Ki o tsukete.

Yeah, missed you BIG TIME CB. Had some good clean fun. But that, of course, still doesn t beat the dirty fun we could have had! Gave Goryu a miss today, but bought a nice ski jacket that was on sale there and then headed over to Rain Alpina - Sanosaka. Start skiing there and as we got to Aokiko, the rain stopped. Then by the time we made it to Kashimayari, Yappari! Hare narimashita! And it became Sun Alpina back again!

Cheers, TJ, I`m at Goryu now and it`s raining quite a bit. Probably take it easy today.

Weegeoff, so glad you could make it. It was nice to meet you as well as stillnoprogress and Tsondaboy. And of course it was great to hear sunrise perform and to see Fattwins and the Missus and the little Hannah, Ewok2, Slow and Mr Wiggles again. Anyway, I'm with TJ OZ and Sunrise right now so better sign off and get back to them.

BCS, were you at Iwatake yesterday. I thought I saw you and called out to you, but you didn t hear me. My sore throat didn t help much either.

If anyone is interested, I will be doing a shuttle pick-up at about 6 pm on Thursday. Hakuba-NaganoEki-Hakuba.

Skis ready to go? That's good. But are the boots ready to melt?

Fattwins, expect me (with Doris and Steve) at your place at about 7 pm tomorrow. Cheers, Markie

I have seen many English novels translated into Japanese and these are easily available at bookshops. But I don't recall seeing any that were only written in Hiragana though. You need to have a pretty good grasp of Kanji to read them. If you had JLPT Level 2 standard, that would not be a problem.

Actually my interest in that is not very high at the moment.

Lent, for me, is the $ you borrowed.

Nagpants you heathen. Holy Thursday is Mar 20, Good Friday is Mar 21 and Easter Sunday is Mar 23.....and don't get me started on Lent!

No, not that one either. Never mentioned her before to anyone. Maybe because I always thought she was way out of my league (Fattwins, don't you think so?). I never dreamed she would look twice at me.

No, sunrise, I have never mentioned anything about her to anyone ever before. In fact, after that first meeting in Hakuba I didn't see her again till January this year after I got back from Furano. We bumped into each other at a dinner party and I asked her out after that. I never got a chance to even talk to her while we were at Hakuba (maybe because slow was there, so guess where my attention was focused). I am supposed to be her first date in 7 years since her divorce because she kept brushing off everyone. I have no idea why I got so lucky and all her friends were very surprised when she

I wish this had happened earlier. I've been in the market for a decent condo at Hakuba for some time but never saw anything I liked. I suppose somewhere near Sun Alpina overlooking the lake would also be nice.

Thanks for pointing that out, Weegeoff. I was aiming at Saturday all along but wrote 23rd because that was when Mantas said he was arriving. Then I tried to pull a fast one by putting the two togehter! So which date is better, Saturday or Sunday?

Sounds good, Mantas.

I don't think you actually got round to meeting (or even seeing) her on the trip, CB, so you surely won't remember. Anyway, thanks!

Thanks TJ, hope to catch you while we're there. CB. Jitsuha, the girl in the pic is still head-over-heels with me even though we officially broke up more than a year ago. She nevertheless has lunch with me every day because she works in my school and has been crying her eyes out every day when we are at lunch because she knows about this serious relationship. BTW, she is also the one whom I said sent me Valentine's Day gifts, the only time I had ever received them in my life....and they were pretty expensive gifts too!