TimRide30x

Hi Waterlily My girlfriend did some snowboard shopping in Jimbocho. She bought a Solace 142 & a pair of small ride bindings. It was end of season, so the price was very very cheap. Like others have said, there are soooo many shops there, it took an entire day to visit them all.

samsung have a little camera designed for sports use. Most reviews of it have been pretty negative. http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Samsung-SC-X105L-Camcorder-Review.htm

my girl friend forgot about the red candle she'd lit on the dinner table. a heap of wax ended up on the carpet. sorry I can't give helpful advice - we never managed to completely clean it up - it was a real bugger. not sure how we managed to get all our bond back, but we did. google maybe? http://www.asktooltalk.com/home/qanda/faq/removal/candlewax.htm

A Japanese friend of mine strongly suggested to me that we should stay in Asahikawa instead of Fukagawa. He said Hotel Crescent in Asahikawa would provide bed, breakfast, transport & lift ticket for 7350yen. But I said we are pretty keen for a nice little ryokan in Fukagawa, so he send this link to a list of them. Here it is if anyone else is interested http://www.city.fukagawa.hokkaido.jp/web/section/shokoros/dl/01021_1.xls cheers

Hey Fossil Myself & 2 friends stayed there last year (a twin and a single room). It cost less than AU$50 a night per person. We were thinking about stopping there again this year for a few days. When I contacted the people in Kutchan, they said I needed to go through an agent this time. (send me a message if you want the contact details of the agent they suggested). As for the lodge itself, it was empty except for the dude looking after new arrivals. We had a great time in Rusutsu.

Thanks for the telephone numbers. I'll get in touch with them and report back.

Hi Slow, thanks for the reply. No, we won't have a car - we just thought since Fukagawa is so close to Kamui that transport to the resort would be the easy bit. My friends & I decided that for this years trip we'd go to Hakuba for the first half then head to some much smaller towns for the second half. Thus the questions about Fukagawa rather than Asahikawa. (I have a few Japanese friends here in Sydney helping me with the Fukagawa accom but no luck yet)

The little town of Fukagawa looks really close to Kamui. Does anyone know of any places to stay in Fukagawa? Thanks

I wasn't serious about that number of posts thing. I think this 2006 trip will involve about 4 or 5 people.

I hope there's no minimum number of posts required to attend. I'm unlikely to get through the front door if thats the case. I think I'd like to make the same offer as fb_steve but suggest late feb. I haven't booked anything yet for Japan Trip III but if its not too busy in Hakuba in late Feb, then that'll be my target.

Another vote for Shinzenkan here. Stayed there last Feb and have booked again for this Feb - the owner & staff are extremely helpful. As for the lift pass - I don't think you could spend your whole 4 weeks at just Hirafu - you'd get bored. You should at least visit the other resorts at Niseko.

After our Niseko ski trip in March this year, my friends and I went to Tokyo for a while. Had a great time looking at all the gear in Jimbocho. It was near the end of the season so my girlfriend got a new board & bindings very cheap. We did however notice that most of the gear were in smaller sizes - so personally I'll still be ordering my stuff over the internet from the US before next years trip.

thanks Yamakashi & peaker I wasn't really worried about getting caught, it was more just that I didn't want to be the cause of a helicopter crashing into a mountain or something totally ridiculous like that I've already got the power point adaptor from the last trip, so if I can just keep the radio dry, we should be set. cheers

thanks for the reply yeah, kinda cheap 2Watt radios - Uniden UH044 http://www.uniden.com.au/v3/product.asp?ID=229&Group=2

hello all My friends and I will be making our second snow trip to Japan next year and we were considering bringing a couple of handheld UHF radios this time. Here in Australia the 40 channel UHF band starts at 476MHz. I think in Japan the band starts at 422MHz. The 476MHz freq in Japan seems to be reserved for "broadcasting" but I don't have any further details on that. My questions are: 1. Any other Australians on this forum already tried bringing their gear to Japan? was there interference? 2. Can someone give me some more details on what the 476MHz range is used for