Snowboarding weekend

Here are some pictures from my snowboarding trip to Fukui Japan. Fukui is north of Kyoto, on the sea of Japan side. This is supposed to be the biggest Ski resport in Western Japan. (Nagano and Hokkaido being the best of snowboarding in Japan)

I went with my friend Marcelle (who is an English Teacher from Austrlia for the same company as me), the Japanese English teacher at her school Yuri, and their beautitian friend from Morocco named Raddy.

We took a night bus from Kyoto station at 12am, drove for 4 hours, slept in the bus until 8am, boarded all day, got on the bus at 4pm, and got home at 9. Pretty tiring day.

Me on the slopes.

Overall the mountain was somewhere in between Colordao and New Mexico size. But it was probably the best snow I`ve ever boarded in.
Marcelle Yuri and I on the lift, except my huge head is in the way.
Mario snowman.

The lifts, snowboards, orange slow signs are all exactly the same as in North America. Its kind of strange really because the only way you can tell you are in Japan is because the Ski Slope names are in Japanese.

One thing I noticed was Japanese snow is stickier than North American snow. The snow forms into balls on the trees, espcially at the top. I`d never seen that before.

I would say the moutain was about 90% snowboarders. It was mostly young people though since all college students are on a hoilday right now.
Overall I have to say Japanese snowboarding is just about on Par with North America. Except I`ve heard it gets really crowded at the weekend. I went on a Monday so almost no lift lines.