Our journey to Hakuba, in Nagano prefecture, was much easier than I expected. Emily and I were travelling for our skiing weekend with Julia, Cliff and Charlize, and Rachel and Ashling (with Nick following next morning). We all gathered on the Joetsu shinkansen platform at Tokyo station and boarded the Asama service. Luckily for us, the train was nowhere near full and we were able to spread out across 10 seats, instead of being confined to the four adult fare seats we had purchased. The 90 minute ride was over really quickly and with no real upset on any of the three girls' parts. I was surprised by how little snow there seemed to be in the immediate environs of Nagano city, but once we began our hour-long bus ride to Hakuba that soon changed; by the time we disembarked in the sprawling resort it was piled up metres high along the roads and beneath the sloping eaves, and before nightfall it had begun falling again.
Emily and bus travel do not go well together, and she was very close to throwing up, especially as it was stiflingly hot in the bus. When she went pale and began saying 'tummy', I decided to throw consideration for other passengers to the wind and open the window a bit, which thankfully staved off the nausea. The hotel, Double Black, had sent a minibus to take us the final couple of minutes up from the bus stop to their place, which was a wooden lodge style affair set in a wood.
We let the kids run amok along the long corridor and clamber on the comfy chairs in the cosy lounge, but as Emily and Charlize had not slept yet we had to take them up to their rooms and get them to have a nap. The hotel were very flexible throughout our stay, and had allowed us to check in early for that reason. I had to hold Emily for ages and sing lullabies to her to get her off, before laying her in the travel cot (which was a very snug fit as it was only a few centimetres longer than her). After an hour's sleep she woke and bawled uncontrollably for about an hour. I kept calm at first and tried to talk her out of it but eventually lost my cool somewhat and ended up yelling at her, practically in tears myself. Unable to think what to do I took her down to the lounge and Julia and Charlize helped snap her out of it. Roly, the barman, did his bit by juggling some oranges for her. I think it must have been a combination of waking in a strange place and teething: she is cutting a molar at the moment.
After the girls had eaten we dressed them up in their winter gear and took them for a short foray into the snow outside the hotel.
We didn't stay out long as it was a little slippery under foot and the snow had also frozen quite hard so we couldn't make a snowman. In any case, we had to go off in the minibus again to arrange our equipment hire for the next day. In the meantime Donna, Andrew and Marianne had arrived so it was a big group of us to kit out; the four children were a bit fed up waiting around at the hire shop for so long and there was too much dangerous gear there for them to roam freely. I managed to elicit the fact that Donna's husband Andrew was a huge Arsenal fan, so hoped he and Nick would have time to chat next day. By the time we returned to Double Black it was snowing hard and new powder was building up fast, boding well for Saturday.
After the kids had their dinner at 6.30, Julia and I took Emily and Charlize into the hotel's communal hot bath. The girls had fun playing with the showers and wooden bowls and then we took them in the bath. The water was almost scalding, but we sat next to the cold water tap and let it gush, finally getting the temperature down enough so that we could immerse our legs. Upstairs they watched some DVD stories on Julia's portable DVD player before we brushed their teeth and split them up for bedtime.
It took Emily an hour and a half to go off to sleep, by the end of which time I had reached what I call the 'screaming inside' stage. Unfortunately all I had managed to eat in 12 hours was a raisin bun so I was shaking with hunger when I finally made it down to the rest of the group in the dining room at 9.15. Our big order took a long time to prepare, so it was about 10.30 before it made it to the table, by when I had quaffed a fair amount of red wine and become rather loquacious, to put it mildly! Poor Donna and Julia, both pregnant and sober, were on the receiving end of a lot of drivel, and I also had a phone call with Nick that ended up in a row as we had both had a drink and were feeling raw for one reason or another. My meal, when it came, was superb: a massive tuna steak, meltingly tender, and with delicious accompaniments of red wine risotto and herby wild mushrooms. As soon as the food was finished everyone else went off to bed, but in my drunken state I decided to hang out at the bar and ended up staying until past midnight. The hotel is run by Aussies and a lot of the clientele are also from there (Japan is a big winter sport destination for Antipodeans); the barman Roly was very entertaining and I got talking to him and a girl of about 20 about piercings and tattoos. I remember discussing how hard it must be for young people to shock their parents these days. I'm sure that by the time Emily is in her teens there will be new ways for her to do so, but fervently hope she is more level-headed than I was. As I retired for the night the snow was still coming down hard.
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