Board (not bored) in Hiroshima

so snowboarding in Hiroshima was neato, although it has been a kinda bad season and also kind of warm so there wasnt much snow, so the mountains i went to had like half of the mountain closed due to lack of snow which was a bit of a bummer, but it was still fun none the less

so, itinery was: Saturday night after work went back home got my board etc together, caught a taxi to the JR station (aint no way Im riding my bike with my snowboard!!!), caught the train to Hakata station to catch the OVERNIGHT BUS (of the dead!!!!) at 10:35pm. now get this; normally the bus ride is 4 hours to Hiroshima from Hakata, but for some reason when you take the overnight bus this magically transforms into SEVEN HOURS!!!!!!! why? you might ask, well, cos at about 1am the bus pulls over into a carpark and stops for THREE HOURS, thats right, a 3 hour stop for no apparent reason, so you are meant to sleep (I later found out that this is so the driver can have a sleep too, whats the matter? cant handle a 4 hour drive in the middle of the night?? ever heard of coffee?? pussy.). but combined with me being relatively tall and the bus seats being mad uncomfortable and then me get progressively annoyed at the bus not moving and not knowing when we would be moving again and then me getting hungry and not having or being able to get any food resulted in me getting NO SLEEP for the whole entire journey of the bus ride of the undead, thus arriving at the lovely hour of 6am totally wacked. anyways, so me and my fellow bus ride of the undead traveller Nicole got off the bus and proceeded to find the haven of early morning breakfasts, the evil McDonaldsness monster. got some breakfast, hung out for a bit, at this point at about 7ish nicole decided to head off too Aussie Johns house in search of sleep, while I hung out in Mcds a little longer as I had to wait till 835am for my bus up the mountain (I was "hittori" or "by myself" for the sunday as the others preferred to budget for only one day up the mountain in favour of alcohol instead)

so now i am by myself and went to figure out exactly where the busstop was, i knew it was close to where i was (somewhee by the art museum), so here i am walking around hiroshima at 730am with my snowboard, it couldnt have a more bizzarre sight to see i think, i got to the art museam and circumnavigated the whole thing to find nothing which resembled a bus stop, so i asked in a hotel and the nice man showed me exactly where it was, lucky i asked, as it was just an area on the side of the road. this is about 8am now, still 35mins till my bus, so i leave my stop in search of a toilet to get changed into my snow gear and stuff. get some food and stuff and a genki drink for later, go bakc to the bustop, im the only person there, slightly worried. but now worries, about 5 mins later two dudes with snowboards turn up, safe, then some more, and some more, sweet, this is the right spot. still no sleep. get on the bus at 835 am, get a window seat (i cant sleep without leaning on something, hence also why i had such a prob sleeping on the night bus as i had an aisle seat) and thus have a most glorius and well needed kip on the 2hr ride on the bus-of-the-scary-japanese-lady-tour-guide

finally arrive at the mountain "Utopia Saito" which was all open except for the 5th lift. so it was pretty sweet. all the photos i took are of this place, as the place we went to on monday "Osa" wasnt really as fun (but still fun of course!!!! snowboarding is always fun!!!) cos only the very bottom lifts were open due to lack of snow, it seemed like it would be real fun if the whole mountain were open, but oh well, i just messed around doing butters all day

back to sunday, so after spending the day by myslef at utopia (and meeting a japanese dude that spent a year in NZ and worked at coronet peak, random!!!) i got the bus back, obviously being totally tired i went straight to sleep and sleept the whole way back to hiroshima, i was in such a deep sleep that the tour lady had to wake me up when we got to my stop, haha that was funny, i had stripped down to my t shirt as the bus was really hot and so quickly grabbed my shit and ran off the bus as i had no idea how long people had been waiting for me (the baka foreigner) to wake up, so got off the bus and the bus drove off and then it hit me, im only wearing a t shirt and ITS FRICKING COLD!!!!!!!! haha that was funny, and i was still half asleep, so rung up John and they were at a bowling alley nearby, so got my shit together and rocked on up to this bowling alley half asleep with my snowboard in tow, then ended up going to an izakaya and also a bar WITH my snowboard, haha was soooo weird and funny walking around town with my snowboard, anyways finally went back to Johns and i got some well deserved sleep horizontally as opposed to in a shitty chair. then the next day we went to Osa as aforementioned above with John, Nicole and 2 other peeps from Hiroshima, twas neato

both days the weather was totally sweet, like spring styles, had just a t shirt on under my jacket

so caught the 7pm bus back to hiroshima which must have some magic time machine or something cos it only took 4hrs as opposed to the overnight 7hrs, hehe. finally got back to my apartment at about 1230am on monday night. tired, but happy

wow, i just wrote a bit of a story right there. nice