jared

I can see MB's point though - if you are not missing out on anything because of the Aussie ski trip you may as well go. Better than staying at home. Right now, and for the next few months, you have a better chance of a good ski trip in Aus than Niseko.

If you check out the chain emails people send around most of them seem to be bollocks. Snopes.com usually have the real answer http://www.snopes.com/glurge/fleming.asp

To me piste means groomed. Off-piste just means somewhere that wasn't groomed. Course means route that has been marked on the map and may be groomed or not.

Do you not pay bank fees in Japan @tokyo? For starters its about $60 a year for our credit card, for the bank account its something like $10 a month and more for transactions. If we had seperate accounts then we would just have to pay money to move money between them. It's not all that much but I may as well have it as give it to the bank. I suppose if one partner has a spending problem or if you dont trust them it might be worth trying to protect your half of the money in your own account. It seems we are the odd ones out though so I have some questions for you lot.. If one partn

Joint account just makes sense to me. Why pay more that one set of bank fees? I guess it depends on how you view your money too. I consider all our money ours rather than my pay being mine and her pay being hers. Kind of ruins the present buying process though. "Here you go honey, I used your money to get you this instead of letting you pick out the thing that you wanted" I guess it helps that we have almost taken turns at being the one who worked and at being the one who made the most money. (and that we are generally both cheepos)

I read "First They Killed My Father" by Loung Ung. It made me realise how good everything is in my sheltered life (even when its going bad..) Still plenty of improvements to make but if they dont get made then it's not too bad as it is. That's pretty much the exact opposite effect of buying lotto tickets dreaming of how you would change your stink life if you won and then being jelious of the person who did win.

I hope roscoe took his touring gear with him... the ski resorts have good cover for this time of year but to get decent snow last weekend we had to hike to sheltered S or E facing slopes. (or his park skis, there is a little park up and running)(or his speed racer skis for coronet peak) Not looking like there will be any new snow till after the weekend either.

We got a wee house at St Clair - doesn't stop us from driving to the beach though as the surf is usually better elsewhere. Saturday at Coronet Peak was pretty good for NZ. For the first time in my history of going there they underreported the amount of snow AND there was good vis while it was snowing AND there were hardly any people there. It wasn't Japan by any stretch but in the right places we couldn't feel the hard snow below. Pretty good for a day when the report only claimed 5cm (at the bottom).

I had designes on new gear this season too... - till the disel engine in my van developed a cracked head and needed $3000 to fix. (also my boss is 3 pays behind in paying us but thats another story..) But thanks to the majic of credit cards I can still go skiing!!!

Live in Dunedin - weekends in Queenstown. They opened Coronet Peak on Saturday to fine weather and just a bit too thin snow. Sunday and Monday were whiteout blizzard and today they had an avalanche in the back bowls that took a patroller for a ride. More snow on the way later in the week too.

If you are spending a month in Hokkaido then there is no question that you should get some fat skis. Its not just about going down the hill, if its steep enough any skinny ski will do but when you get to the bottom and it flattens out a little or if you need to traverse across the hill to get to the really good bits fat skis just make it so much easier. Skinny skis just tend to sink and stop leaving you struggling to get your tips back to the surface of the snow so you need to expend all sorts of energy walking a trail to where you need to be. Such a waste of time and energy. Get some fat

We are getting plenty of snow too - with more on the way...

Had an American IPA taste off the other day. The Firestone Walker and the Deschutes had more malty sweetness to them and the same massive hoppyness that all the beers had. The Epic and the Dogfish head were dryer. My one was supposed to be a copy of the dogfish head. It had the exact same hop flavour but mine was the dryer and thinner. Next time I will make it will be a bit bigger in the malt department. To me, the Dogfish Head 60minute IPA was the best of a great bunch.

A big selection of all the hard to get outside of thier area regional beers from around Japan and no crap on tap! (well mabey one tap for the crap for people that dont know any better and are intimidated by the unknown.)

I’m not referring to anyone here specifically but some of the comments reminded me of someone I lothe and prompted me to start ranting…. Anti-refugee types make me sick to my stomach. They are worse than the people traffickers derided earlier. People traffickers may profit from desperate refugees but at least by their offering of a service they give the refugees a chance. That’s more than the “refugees are using up all the resources†types have to offer. They just want the refugees to go and die somewhere else just so they don’t have to see someone who looks different in th

Milk and any other animal secretions are pretty gross when you think about it.

I'm all about spending lots of time in one place. One of the reasons is price, you can suss out the deals on accomidation or shift there. A season pass usually makes for pretty cheap skiing if you do enough days. Also it takes time to sort out where everything is and what lifts get you there, when it is likely to be good, what order the lifts open and what order stuff gets tracked out, what weather makes somewhere better or worse than another, what lifts are likely to have huge lines / be wind affected / break down / stay open late or close early. All that helps you get first tracks dow

Pretty poor form to have a silly little bitch fight from another thread in a thread about a bunch of people that died. Thumbs down to all of you...

I watched some of Refresh from Level 1 productions last night. To me, level 1 have produced some of the best filmed and put together ski movies out there. They were initally low budget (not in look) which ment a high proportion of urban jibbing but it looks like they finally have some money and had some Alaska in it. The look and feel is very much still "level 1" though, its not just another TGR or Matchstich clone. Warren Miller even done a bit of a narrating cameo. (for better or worse)

I just used the ignore user for the first time. Pretty sure I wont be missing anything insightful, or even amusing.

So what is it you are trying to say iiyamadude? Do you want Oyuki to stop posting so that you can have the thread to yourself to fill with smug one liners. Do you even have a point or an opinion? I have more or less given up hope for the earth as we know it. Humans will burn every last scrap of oil/gas/coal on this earth and no amount or talking about it will stop that. Any species that people can make a profit out of killing will become extinct. TB is right, we are animals and as much as we would like to disagree we are as stupid as bacteria on a pitri dish. We will consume the res

Slight correction there Mr Wiggles, that should be "...befitting the country that was the second to give women the vote..." New Zealand gave woman the vote in 1893 while our slightly slow, but well loved big brother didn't get around to it till 1894.

This is well worth a watch... It's set in the American context but I think much of it is fairly universal. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646#

The trappist monk way sounds good too... they make great beer... though I suspect they don't do as much "romping" with the busty beauties.

Are you mainly interested in getting to the destination (going for a walk) or skiing the big line you just hiked. If the former then something light will do and will be cheaper - if the latter then you will want something more beefy. You can get fat ski brakes for most of them I think.