keba

I'm renting a 4WD through Nippon Rent-a-car, and they assure me that the car is equipped with ETC, but that separate arrangements need to be made to activate a credit card account.

Even if the top's not open, the shuttle between the resorts is pretty good, so don't just stick around higashiyama.

Easy, cheap (not free though, as far as I can remember) shuttle bus, runs via all the airport hotels. Make sure your bus gets you to Haneda on time, the transfer takes about an hour in good traffic. Just let the Hotel staff know at check-in, and they will book you onto the correct bus.

I nearly lost my nose on one of the lifts at Niseko, with a cold in-your-face wind at the top of the lift (at the big thermometer - I forget the name of the hut there)... I suggest you get one - they're as cheap as chips - and keep it on standby.

Quote: thing is after a certain depth you can't tell anyway, the tree's just get shorter The base is only one aspect of it, Ausi... no good having even a 3 meter base when it's all hard-pack from being groomed or tracked out. You need the regular snowfall to keep a good layer of powder on top of the base, and that's what is missing in Japan at the moment. All the resorts are open, but the snowpack isn't what it should be.

Probably helps if you use a lot of two- and three-letter words, though...

Off topic I know, but on the subject of spelling, has everyone seen the National Geographic TV ad, where they write every word in a sentence with the letters jumbled, with only the first and last letter in each word in the correct place, but the sentence is pefectly readable?

There will always be those who place their own pleasure and interests over their responsibilities to their children, and too often stories like this are on the news. Here, parents will sometimes leave their children in the car while they visit the "pokies" and the car heats up, then the inevitable. No punishment would be severe enough...

That's interesting. Ours will be 7 months when we arrive at the end of January... do you know of any age limits for those facilities?

The compass doesn't depend on GPS link, so the back up would only be required if your batteries run out in the field. I agree that the GPS altimeter should be accurate enough, if properly calibrated, and WAAS enabled, and may be more accurate than the barometric altimeter, I reckon.

Compass would be helpful, only so that you don't have to carry one separately, altimeter is probably an optional extra...

Is that because you carry stocks,SerreChe? Does that have a compass and altimeter built-in, S_M?

I'm less worried today... Bring it on!

30cm? You mean under the snowmakers, don't you? This year any snow would have been nice! We just had a baby, so had to forego the whole southern winter. Kept my eye on the reports, though, which made me feel better knowing that everyone else was missing out too

I said a BIT twitchy, I remember being the same way in Dec 2004, and it worked out pretty well in Feb for us

A dump in Falls must be close to 5cm, ausi...

Great! If the snow fails, we have a backup plan then, TJ...

We don't arrive until the 27th January, and even I'm starting to get a bit twitchy about the season...

Merry Xmas everyone... 33 sleeps! Bring on the snow now, please...

TJ, Sake for me, and lychee liqueur with ginger ale for my wife please... 35 sleeps

36 days before I have a drink at the Whitehorse Bar... and I will be needing it, TJ.

No-one uses a GPS unit in B/C? I mainly carry one for fun, but surely the hard-core skiers/riders out there might find them actually useful... and not for calling in air strikes.

Here's one... just Google image "barium meal"

Not enough to cash in on their own reputations, someone has to drag Dan Brown into it as well? What is the conspiracy theory here? Do we find out that Yoko and Linda had a thing going if we play it backwards?

I was sitting on the bus from Chitose to Sapporo, and once we hit the outskirts, I could connect to unsecured wireless LANs when we stopped at traffic lights, not long, but long enough to download emails and some web pages. Was cool watching the LANs (dozens of them) come in and out of range, and trying to log in before the bus had moved too far... felt cool anyway... for a geek Getting real-time GPS data at the same time, tracking route into Sapporo. Still managed to get off at the wrong stop. I'm on a 54Mbps WLAN at home now, I can't really tell tell the difference between this and