Going all Euro

So, after leaving Japan I flew to Munich to meet up with Paul and then catch a train to Austria. Paul had a conference in St. Christoph Arlberg in Austria so we decided to meet up a week earlier to go snowboarding as the conference was right at the bottom of the mountain. After that week, Paul went to the conference and I was an "accompanying person" and basically just did more snowboarding!

This was my carry on luggage from Osaka to Munich, Europe has real strict rules about taking liquids on and I had a bottle of Shochu in my backpack and this had to check in my carry on backpack, so they gave me a rubbish sack to put my stuff in, wicked.

This place is MASSIVE

The powder is awesome

This is an 8 seater covered lifts with HEATED seats!!!

Jumping into snow is neato super rad fun times

Bye bye snow

Olympic ski jump in Innesbruck, shit!
Interesting tree art, Sardagna Italy

Cheese/salami/bread all bought from the market, mmmmmm

Venice

We spent Christmas with Laura's friends, both of whose boyfriends were chefs, thus we had a crazy massive feast.




After Venice we rented a car named Skyrat, Skyrat by day but Discorat by night!!


Verona
This hot chocolate was so thick the spoon stayed upright.

New Years, Genova (we actually did leave the hotel, honest!)

In Milan they do this thing where you go into a bar and buy a drink and then they have all this real nice "snacky" type food like cheese and meats and stuff, its awesome!

Milan

Hokkaido fun snowboarding times

After, leaving my home of Kurume to go back to NZ I embarked on a big adventure on the way home which consisted of seeing many people and going to many places, the first being meeting Dom, and also Trinh and my old student Emiko, in Tokyo then going to Niseko Hokkaido to go snowboarding and then head down to Osaka to meet up with Tomomi and finally fly out to Europe to meet up with Paul.....

I was only in Tokyo for 2 days and most of that time was spent in these places:

Then it was off to Hokkaido!

Me and Dom with Yotei san in the background, Hirafu as!

Lets Go!

Ichiban codomo crew ONLY rides though the trees in untracked powder, ONLY!!

Mountain services in Japan are much nicer than in NZ, imagine chilling here with your boots OFF and eating a delicious bowl of Miso ramen and then possibly having a lie down on the tatami before heading outside for some more knee deep powder tree runs....oh, its terrible......

After lunch funtimes, yup thats my track, the ONLY track

Every night we went to the Onsen (Japanese thermal hot pool) which was REQUIRED after a hard days boarding, I took no photos there (cos its a whole bunch of naked men!) but the Onsen was awesome, outside with snow covered rocks around it, some nights it was snowing when we were in the Onsen, super awesome. This photo is taken walking down the mysterious road going towards the Onsen.

This is the main street of Hirafu village where we stayed, just past those traffic lights is where the lowest lift was and our lodge was just behind me and down the road, only a 5 minute walk! Snowing looks good at night.

It often snowed REALLY hard at night.

Inside our lodge, fire going strong thanks to Aussie Koppa! We stayed with these dudes called Niseko Powder Holidays, it wasnt very expensive and was SUPER good, real nice lodge, real onto it lodge managers who helped you out with anything AND cooked you eggs in the morning!

Bye bye Hirafu Niseko Hokkaido, see you again real soon k?

Then after a MAMMOTH travelling expedition of buses/planes/train/shinkansen/subways we made it to Osaka and magically met up with Tomomi somehow even though I had disconnected my phone at that point. Apparently this place where this photo is taken is a famous place in Osaka....

Rollin' rollin' rollin'

After going to the 280yen Izakaya we of course went to Karaoke! This was/is very important especially since it was my very last night in Japan.

So yeah, that was Hokkaido etc, next up, Austria!