#that time period from september to early january feels sooo good

[ropedropnet]

News Nuggets from Around Disney World

With D23 and various other things (like a visit to Mighty Men of Mouse HQ), I’ve fallen a little behind on the News Nuggets. Now, with only 1 week left for The Great Movie Ride and Universe of Energy, it’s about time to unleash a mega helping of Nuggets before it’s too late. (In a nice move, Disney lifted Annual Passholder Blockout Dates so people could ride them one more time.)

Before we get started, one big item to point out is the expanion of mobile ordering at quick service restaurants that started at Animal Kingdom (yes, you could say it started at Be Our Guest, but that’s a very different process.) Mobile ordering has now rolled out at Magic Kingdom restaurants such as Columbia Harbor House, Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café, Pecos Bills, and Tomorrowland Terrace; Epcot at Electric Umbrella; Disney Springs at places like D-Luxe Burger; and should be coming to The Studios shortly. (WDW Info has a page they updated with the listings). Disney also announced that there will be no discounts (AP, etc…) during this “launch period”.

Okay, now on to the rest of the News Nuggets:

Disney Debuts Automated Souvenir Vending Machines at Resort Hotels, Offering Grab & Go Theme Park Items – I don’t get it. I guess, if you have to get some kind of trinket that can fit in this machine super late at night, now you can?

Reservations Open Today for Frozen Ever After Sparkling Dessert Party: A Cool New Way to View Fireworks at Epcot – Like with a lot of the “dessert party” offerings, the $79 is more than I’d value this experience. It’ll be interesting to see what people think of these food options, though.

Kungaloosh and Other Classic Pleasure Island Beverages Returning to Dockside Margaritas for Throwback Thursdays – Have a drink while you’re going through your #tbt feed. (Though, based on this easyWDW review, I think I’ll just stick with the Kungaloosh Ale at Nomad.)

Evening Extra Magic Hours at Animal Kingdom Extended Nightly Through August 19 – Not a real big surprise, here (though I wonder if it’ll get one more extension, or if this is it.) That said, I feel like the EMH in the morning worked better to actually get on Flight of Passage than the nightime EMHs. Though, Animal Kingdom also went back to, generally, opening at 9am and closing at 10pm (instead of 8am to 11pm).

Magic Kingdom Copies Disneyland and Adds Hand-Dipped Corn Dogs, But Are They Just As Good? – It sounds like Disney was still finalizing the process when WDW New Today did this review. It’ll be interesting to check back in a couples weeks to see how things are going. (Or, more importantly, get Elyssa’s opinion.)

Disney Files Patent for Virtual Reality Captain America Shield Throwing Experience – Okay, I’d do this.

Kessler Collection Likely to Open New Grand Bohemian Hotel Near Hollywood Studios, Site of Swan and Dolphin Tennis Courts – Interesting rumor. Kind of makes sense if Marriott owns the property. I’m still hoping they convert part of the Swan or Dolphin to Marriott’s time share stuff.

Typhoon Lagoon annual refurbishment dates for 2018 – January 7 through March 18 probably isn’t too much of a high demand season for Typhoon Lagoon anyway.

Dining Reservations Now Available during Holiday Parties at Magic Kingdom – Cool? I don’t know why anyone would pay to go to one of the parties and then spend 30+ minutes of it having a sit down meal.

Star Wars AT-AT Walkers now standing over Disney’s Hollywood Studios – I just re-watched Empire, so even these outer structures make me excited.

New Pirates Set to Join the Crew of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland Paris July 24 – The big takeaway, though, is that they are redoing the “auction” scene and “the redhead” will be a buyer of things, not a “wench” being sold.

Siemens Ending Disney Parks Sponsorship, Leaves Spaceship Earth & IllumiNations Future in Doubt – I think “future in doubt” is a little strong. I doubt Disney is going to just roll Spaceship Earth away because it’s time to find a new sponsor. It will interesting to see what happens, though.

Guests offered Disney gift cards in exchange for not having their rooms cleaned – Interesting. The big thing for me is the towel service, so how does the “on demand” towel service work? If they can replace all my towels within 10 minutes of me calling, I might consider this.

Magic Kingdom to Close at 6PM to Accommodate 2017 Christmas Party Events – I wouldn’t want to be the cast members on those days telling people that the party doesn’t start until 7:00pm, but they have to leave now.

Rey Joins ‘Star Wars: A Galaxy Far, Far Away’ at Disney’s Hollywood Studios – I hope this paves the way for a Rey meet-and-greet over the next few months.

Construction Begins on Epcot Gondola Station at International Gateway – So it begins…

2017 Candlelight Processional Dinner Packages On Sale Today – It’s never too early to book your spot to see NPH at the Candlelight Processional.

UberX Now Allowed to Pick Up and Drop Off at Orlando International Airport – Lyft and UberX being able to pick up at MCO changes the cost calculation on a number of Disney vacation related charges (most notably, at the Swalphin.)

Roaring Fork at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge Reopens – Nothing Earth shattering here, but as someone who enjoys staying at Wilderness Lodge, it seems nice. Josh also has some pictures of the new Boulder Ridge pool area, which also looks pretty nice. Overall, I wouldn’t mind staying in one of the new villas..

Maui from Moana makes his first appearance in a Disney Park (but it’s in China) – Let’s bring Moana and Maui to Adventureland

Morning Yoga Now Available for Guests at the Boardwalk – I wonder if people will turn out for this, and, if they do, whether it’ll expand to other resorts.

New Nighttime Entertainment at Disney’s Hollywood Studios Celebrates Decades of Films From the Disney Family of Studios – It’s like a “Celebrate the Magic”-style appetizer before each evening’s Star Wars fireworks.

Must-Do PhotoPass Locations This Summer at Walt Disney World Resort – Elyssa and I really should have done the Tangled one.

Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort Fourth of July Golf Cart Parade 2017 and Western Mickey & Minnie at Disney’s Pop Century Resort (Photos, Video) – Even though Denise has blocked me on Twitter (still not sure why), I’ll still link to Mouse Steps when she does something cool like this. I’m good like that.

Characters in Flight hot air balloon name changed to “Aerophile” following makeover for Walt Disney World attraction – Sure.

Phew. We’re about halfway done this double-sized helping of News Nuggets. Let’s take a quick break to watch this video on the making of Pandora:

Okay, now back to the News Nuggets:

Special Summer Menu Offer at Monsieur Paul for Walt Disney World Annual Passholders – Missing this offer by a week. Oh well.

Big Changes to Disney’s Yacht Club Resort Dining Options at Walt Disney World Resort – Captain’s Grille is no more. Soon to be replaced by Ale & Compass. I have my fingers crossed that this will be the new “late morning breakfast” place for me to go to now that Trattoria is a character meal. (And, yes, I know that you can opt to get a “no character” version of the experience.)

Disney Restaurant Discounts During Orlando Magical Dining Month (PLUS MENUS!!) – Interesting to see Jiko and The Wave on this list. Elyssa and I used this to try STK last year (review HERE), and it was a nice way to try something we otherwise would not have.

Fried Chicken at Prince Eric’s Village Market in New Fantasyland – So much for a “healthy-only” food stop, I guess?

Yak and Yeti Counter Service Now Serves Breakfast Daily – With Pandora bringing more and more people to Animal Kingdom earlier in the day, it seems logical to provide additional food offerings. Thankfully, Josh has a review to make sure no one ever suffers through it.

‘DuckTales’ Star David Tennant Visits Scrooge McDuck at Disneyland Park – I don’t normally link to these, but Tennant is my favorite Doctor, sooo…

Star Wars Themed Shop Temporarily to Replace Marketplace Fun Finds at Disney Springs – Got to put that Star Wars Merchandise somewhere while they re-work the back of Once Upon a Toy. Blog Mickey has pictures.

New BaseLine Tap House Part of New Grand Avenue Area at Disney’s Hollywood Studios – If the area is going to open up in the Fall, I wonder if they will put any holiday entertainment in the area this year. Blog Mickey has photos of the current construction

Rumors of “Lights of Winter Returning” to Epcot for Holidays Around the World – I like Christmas Light-based “attractions”. Let’s do this.

Up close look at Disney’s new Minnie Van car service – Depending on the time of day and where you’re going, it could be 2x to 3x more than Uber or Lyft. Also, getting dropped off at the Contemporary is not that much different than getting dropped off at the Magic Kingdom bus stop (which is the perk everyone seems to talk about).

Permits Filed for Rockwork in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios – E-Ticket rock work on the way for Galaxy’s Edge. Believe it. (An end date of the project of September 29, 2019 seems to line-up with a late-summer opening for the WDW version of Galaxy’s Edge.)

The Disney Vacation Account Has Been Discontinued – I never used it this, but I know people who are really going to miss it.

JW Marriott Hotel Planned Near Epcot and Typhoon Lagoon – Being able to use Marriott points that close to “on property” makes me happy. (Yes, I know I can convert Marriott points to Starwood points and use them at the Dolphin. I’ve done that.) Also, this hotel looks very different from the other JW Marriott in the area.

Permits Filed for Coronado Springs Expansion Project – There is a lot of resort related construction going on at Disney World right now. It’ll be interesting to see how the various moderate resorts differentiate themselves when this is done.

The Secret Nachos Rio Grande Challenge at Pecos Bills – Elyssa doesn’t like nachos, so I guess I’ll need to make a few friends if I’m going to try this.

The Dress Shop [Returned] to Cherry Tree Lane in Marketplace Co-Op at Disney Springs on July 27 – I hope they can keep the dresses in stock this time.

Disney Park, Resort Employees See Hours Cut Starting Tomorrow – This is concerning. I’m hoping (?) it’s a response to lower projected crowd levels, so the impact on wait times won’t actually be that much. I guess we’ll see in a few weeks.

“Character Meet and Greets at Disney’s Animal Kingdom” – Looks like they’re replacing Tarzan with Timon.

Baby Tiger Cubs are Coming This August to Disney’s Animal Kingdom – Move over Stella. Someone is coming for your cuteness title.

Mission: SPACE ‘Relaunches’ Aug. 13 With Brand New Experiences – It’ll be interesting to see what the new films are like.

Endless Virtual Backgrounds Available at the Disney PhotoPass Studio at Disney Springs – I didn’t realize there were so many options.

Annual Passholders and Disney Vacation Club Members Now Get 30% Off At Select Table Service Restaurants – Maybe I should do Jiko on my birthday trip, then. Tables in Wonderland, too.

Jawas are leaving Hollywood Studios – Well, that’s a bummer.

Disney Food Blog Reports Lighthouse Sandwich Removed Columbia Harbour House Menu – Get the pitchforks and torches ready.

Polynesian Outsells Copper Creek 3-to-1 in June 2017 – Not a surprise. The dues for Copper Creek are insane.

Jingle Bell, Jingle BAM! to return to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the 2017 holiday season – Cool. Elyssa really liked it.

Coronado Springs Resort Preview Center with Scale Model and Concept Overview Video – It looks like it could be pretty nice.

Disney Springs’ Portobello restaurant will become Terralina Crafted Italian this fall – Hopefully, this takes things up to a BOATHOUSE / Homecomin’ level.

New Disney-Themed Refreshment Carts Serving Up Magic at Walt Disney World Resort Golf Courses – This probably shouldn’t be big enough news to make a news recap, but I think it’s cute.

Three New Year’s Eve Celebrations at Disney’s Contemporary Resort – It’s going to be cheaper for Elyssa and I to stay at the Beach Club for a couple nights at that time of year then go to one of these.

The VOID’s New Hyper-Reality Experience Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire coming to Downtown Disney, Disney Springs – I’m not sure how I feel about this. It really puts a damper in my knocking of Uni for their lame VR attractions. Here’s Disney’s press release.

8 New Desserts for ‘Happily Ever After’ Dessert Party in Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort – I guess we’ll see if there’s an upgrade in the quality of the items.

New Mission: Space Earth and Mars Signage Debuts at Epcot Giving a Glimpse of Things to Come – Should be interesting. I’m hoping the new “Earth” mission is cool.

See the Main Street Electrical Parade Before it Ends Limited-Time Disneyland Park Run August 20 – I feel like I heard Jim Hill say the parade would make one more stop at WDW before it’s retired….(Or, maybe I was just hoping for it.)

All in the Details: Slinky Dog Dash Track Completed in Toy Story Land – Toy Story land “on track” for next year? (What? Where are you going…)

News: $75 Satu’li Sampler Platter Now Available on Satu’li Canteen Menu – Is this really more food than buying $75 worth of bowls?

Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar at Disney Springs Now Offers Late Night Happy Hour – Now I know where Elyssa and I will go after we’re finished at Homecomin’ for the night.

Begin to Dream with Retro-Inspired Merchandise for 35th Anniversary of Epcot This Fall – I kind of like the shirt, but I imagine it’ll cost a little more than I’m willing to pay for it.

That’s it for this edition of the News Nuggets. If you’re like me and unable to get in one last ride on the The Great Movie Ride before it closes, check out this video from WDW News today that features an actual “walk through” of the attraction. See you next time:

The post News Nuggets from Around Disney World appeared first on Rope Drop [dot] Net.

from News Nuggets from Around Disney World

[kaitlinmcandrews]

Hello again!

So, to continue where I left off, the next season I want to showcase is winter. Winter is a lot shorter here than in Canada and it starts a lot later as well. As you may have noticed, my last blog was talking about Fall and it went into December. Maybe my memory is terrible, but I’m fairly sure that there are no Autumn leaves in December, back in Canada.

Okay, side note: Let’s talk about Canada’s winter (well, like northern BC and Alberta since I haven’t lived in the rest of the gigantic country I’m from. It’s freaking huge! The weather in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are probably 20394848x better than it is where I’m from, but let me vent for a sec).

I swear that winter goes from October to May. By winter, I mean that there is a presence of snow. When I was a kid, it often snowed on my birthday. My birthday is at the end of September. Usually, it would melt right away, then it would warm up again and it would snowy again by the time Halloween rolled around. Also, I remember mid-November being the time of year when the ski hills open. So, that basically means that you can expect the snow to be there to stay from that point forward.

However, In the last couple of years, the snow comes and goes basically starting in November and we don’t get consistent snowy weather until Christmas or early January. The ski hills now seem to open in mid-December. So, uh, to all those that don’t think global warming is a thing, you are wrong. My Northern Canadian life is proof enough, in my opinion.

That being said, I don’t think the Autumn leaves stick around until December. That just seems absurd. Well… I also feel like the weather where I’m from is incredibly volatile and sporadic. I mean, it literally will go from 20C and sunny, to 10C and rainy, to -10C and snowy, and back to 20C within a 2 day span. I’m not kidding. So, if I was a leaf on a tree, I’d jump ship early on in the year, too.

Okay, okay, you aren’t here for crazy Canadian weather…

Back to Japan!

So, Japan is pretty diverse, just like Canada, surprisingly. I think I had a misconception about the size of Japan before coming here. So, because of that, remember that everything I say about weather is not really about the entire country. I can only speak about our experience in Kyoto, Kanagawa aaaaaand, Nagano!

Winter in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Kanagawa is pretty tame. I’d say it snows once or twice throughout the year and doesn’t stick. In the Kyoto area, it seemed to stay a little bit longer, especially in Northern Shiga (where me and Pat used to work).

Okay, the moment I’ve wanted to talk about since we went there.

Nagano Prefecture (長野県)

In mid-February, we headed Northwest to Nagano prefecture. It is not that far from Tokyo, yet it has quite a different climate. It is a pretty mountainous prefecture with many ski hills.

Okay, let’s get out the good old Google Maps screen shot!

As you can see, it is a pretty big prefecture. As you can probably also see, I have starred the area that we went to.

Since this area is pretty rural, for the most part, the options for getting out there are a bit limited. I think going to Nagano city first is the best option, depending on your destination I suppose. Basically, from Tokyo, you have 2 options (unless you can drive of course). You can take a shinkansen, which is the high speed bullet train, or a highway bus.

The Hokuriku-Shinkansen takes about 2 hours and costs about 8,000 yen. My coworker told me that this shinkansen line is fairly new, so not too long ago this wasn’t even an option. Interesting.

As for bus, this is where there is a lot of discrepancy with times and price. We went through a company called Willer Express. I used this website: http://japanbuslines.com/en/ to find all the buses that went from Tokyo to Nagano and picked the best option for us. It was significantly cheaper. I think it was like 3,000 yen or something. The downside was that it took twice as long. I believe it was about 4 hours.

For us, we took the Shinkansen to Nagano on our way there and took the bus from Nagano on our way back.

So, we decided to have a pretty late night when we left. We decided to make the most of a regular 2-day weekend. I sorta based the timing of going on the activities I wanted to do, rather than wait for a long weekend. I wanted to go skiing and I wanted to go to a monkey park. I had to figure out the best timing for both the ski season and if the monkeys would be out. If the weather was too warm, the monkeys wouldn’t be out in the onsen (I’ll get into this more, later) and if it was too cold, the skiing experience wouldn’t be as fun.

**Also, sorry for the lack of photos, I didn’t take as many as usual. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.**

We requested to leave work a bit early and we were able to take the shinkansen out to Nagano around 6pm or so. We had a bit of a hectic time at the shinkansen gates (which I have ranted about enough times on this blog…) and barely got onto the train we paid for. Since we didn’t book ahead, there wasn’t too many options for sitting together.

It was actually a bit frustrating because it seemed like many business men were taking this train (seems to be the norm from 5:00 -7:00), and they all book the window seat. So, basically, every pair of seats was taking by one business man. Like, c’mon man, by you single travellers wanting to sit alone, you make it incredibly irritating for anyone that is travelling with someone. It just seems selfish. If you are a single f’ing person, you shouldn’t have reserved seats. You should just be put with all the other business men. Ugh.

So, it wasn’t terrible, but a bit frustrating. The ride was only about 2 hours so it wasn’t too bad. When we left Tokyo, it was actually one of the warmer days that it had been in awhile. It was pretty crazy how different the weather was when we arrived in Nagano city. I found the temperature on the accuweather website. For reference, we left Tokyo on Friday, February 17th.

Tokyo:

Nagano:

So, not only was the temperature much colder, but it was also one of the nicest days in a long period of time in Tokyo.

Darn.

We arrived pretty late so it was even colder. Also, it was raining (well, like wet snowing) when we arrived so it was pretty chilly.

So, unfortunately for us, our final destination was not Nagano city. As soon as you get off the beaten path, transit becomes sooo difficult and confusing. I did a lot of research on ski resort websites to get as much information as I could. I found that there was a bus that went basically to our hotel. For some reason, the times for this bus were really bizarre. Luckily, I was able to get the following bus schedule, to confirm what I read online.

For whatever reason, the bus times out to where we needed to go ran every hour until 5pm and then nothing until 9pm, which is the last one of the night. It was a little bit stressful. Knowing that we had to get the one and only bus out there was not comforting. We had an hour and a bit to spare when we arrived in Nagano, but my first priority was to find out where on Earth the bus stop was. I was so stressed about missing this bus. I swear that the internet just said “go to East exit. finished”…. ugh, not helpful. I don’t think I can make it any more helpful, though, to be honest.

So, when you get out of the East exit, we went down a small escalator, and down the stairs. There was 2 bus stop areas. One looked like it was for city buses, and the other looked like it was for highway buses. I assumed we would need the highway bus, but I really had no idea. I gave up and asked the gift shop lady. The bus stop was basically right by the gift shop. So, I guess it was a city bus?

Don’t trust me… I think this is the stop, but my memory is not great and I didn’t take any photographs… That’s what I use to trigger my memory.

I think it was even more stressful since it was so dark and cold outside. Like, not only could we be stranded, but nobody is outside, things are starting to close and I still wasn’t 100% sure where to catch the bus. Thank goodness for the bus stop lady. Having this bus schedule helped as well because I could just show it to her and she knew what I wanted.

Once we knew the bus stop, we went to eat and get some starbucks. We took the bus without any problems. We had to tell the driver what stop we were going to and pay for our ticket before going on. Since it was so late, there were maybe 10 or less people on the bus. It was a pretty quiet busride. We were on the bus for a little over an hour.

When we got off, we then had to walk to our hotel. This particular hotel had a pickup service but I really didn’t want to bother them so late at night. (Actually, at this point I was emailing them back and forth letting them know our arrival time and such since it was such a late check in.

The bus stop seemed to be in the middle of a ski lodge town. The place we chose was pretty far away actually. We started walking. It really isn’t a long walk, but remember, it was like 10:30pm.  It was so rural that there were no street lights. It was also in the mountains so the roads were just like they are back home: icy and snowed over.  And, we were dragging our suitcases behind us.

Well, after about 5 minutes or so, a vehicle passed us, which was weird since it was so dead. Well, that vehicle turned around and it was the owner of the hotel! I don’t know if he was driving up and down this road, or if we had lucky timing since I was emailing him our ETA. So, he picked us up and drove us to the hotel.  He was so sweet.

We checked in and got ready for our big ski day the next morning.

  Shiga Kogen mount yakebitai Ski (志賀高原焼額山スキー場)

We woke up pretty early to make sure we would get to the mountain and have enough time to get our ski rentals. Since our ryokan provided breakfast we decided to grab some before we left. We had the choice of a Japanese style breakfast or an American/Western style one. We opted for the Japanese option just to take in the culture.

Well, to be fair, I don’t really like any western breakfast items. I hate bread, muffins,cereal, oatmeal and yoghurt with fruit in it. The only breakfeast food I like is bacon and eggs. We didn’t know what the western breakfast would include so not worth the risk for me, the picky eater. That being said, for most people, that is definitely the safest option haha. Who knows what will be in the Japanese breakfast!

It was quite nice to have a Japanese style breakfast. When we had a home-cooked breakfast in Korea, it was an experience that I think will always be with me (if you can’t remember, we had freaking bulgogi for breakfast and it was the best bulgogi I have ever had, ever).

So, to our relief, the one breakfast item that I definitely did NOT want (natto, ie, fermented soy beans) were not part of it. Lucky! We had a fish, miso soup, some tofu, some fruit, salad and rice. To drink, we had tea! Not exactly what we would eat for breakfast in North America. It was pretty good. It was really filling and really well-rounded.

After breakfast, we saw that many other guests were getting ready to head out. Since this ryokan is just ran by a couple, they would only be driving one vehicle out to the bus stop. Me and Pat were impatient, and a bit anti-social, so we just walked. It wasn’t a long walk. It was slightly uphill, but it wasn’t bad. We were wearing our jackets, and brought our toques and gloves. We were going to rent the rest of our gear so we didn’t need to carry much at all.

Since we arrived in the dark the night before, we really had no idea how much snow there was. It felt like we were back in Canada! It wasn’t too cold out and was actually a pretty nice walk to the bus.

The bus stop was pretty easy to find. The busses out to the ski hill was actually free since it was a shuttle bus. I was pretty surprised. You cooouuuld take a fancy highway bus, but it wasn’t free. It didn’t run too often, so we ended up leaving a lot later than we had expected. Using that bus timetable from before, everything under the pink was free.

We missed the first bus, but made the second one. As you can see, they don’t really run too often so we had to wait for a bit. Luckily, there was a little bus stop shack that was heated and had benches and a vending machine. So, it was not terrible.

Once the bus came, the lady that worked at the bus station let us know and we got on. Since we were only the third stop, the bus wasn’t full yet. It filled up really quickly. We were so lucky that we got to sit down the whole time (although, I felt kinda bad since we didn’t have any gear and we got to sit, yet some people had their skis, helmets, boots, etc. and had to stand…).

The first thing we did when we got to the ski hill was go to the rental shop. Since this ski hill has a fair amount of foreign guests, they carried a pretty good range in sizes. We were able to rent ski pants, board/ski and boots and jackets. We didn’t rent jackets since we had our own. I was hoping that they would have goggles, but they didn’t. I could have bought a pair, but they were soooo expensive. This was the first time in my life that I went skiing without goggles.

Now, back in Canada, I have my own gear. I haven’t had to rent anything in a loooong time. But! Every time that I have been to a rental shop has been a terrible and long process. This guy was super quick. There wasn’t a line at all, which is surprising since I can’t imagine many Japanese people have their own stuff. I mean, unless you live in Nagano, where are they going to go skiing?? Maybe we went early/late enough? Who knows.  I don’t remember how much the rentals cost… I wonder if I can find that out.

http://www.princehotels.com/en/ski/shigakogen/rentals.html

Found it! Looks like its about $30 for the board/ski and boot set. Since the only snow gear we rented was the snow pants, I don’t think he charged us $40… I really don’t think we paid that much. At that point in time, we were thinking of doing a night ski. This made it a bit complicated about returning out rentals. They shop closed basically at the time of the last chairlift, which was hours before the night ski started.

The rental guy was pretty understanding, and perhaps too nice/trusting. He said we could return them in the morning OR just leave the stuff outside the shop. What the heck? Just leave it there? That is way too trusting, Japan! We weren’t sure what we wanted to do, so told him we would return it in the morning (Even though this is the most inconvenient option for us, especially since our hotel is so far from the ski hill and now we would have to lug all of our stuff back to the hotel and back).

After we got all the stuff we needed, we bought some tickets.The full day pass costs $50. I wish we had arrived a bit earlier to make that cost worth it, but it wasn’t a terrible price. We also got our night ski tickets for about $20 at the same time. Our passes were really interesting. They were like hard plastic cards (they reminded me of our train cards) that were used to beep into the chairlifts/gondolas. Isn’t that cool?

I tried to take a photo, but the line was moving pretty quickly. So, I have a fancy ski pass holder in my jacket’s arm so it was really easy for me to beep in. Pat took the card out every time.

Y’know, sometimes Japan really is high tech. Usually it isn’t, but sometimes unnecessary technology pops up where you’d least expect it. We were given two cards that look the exact same so we had to put our night ski cards separately from our day lift cards. Finally, we were off to the slopes!

I didn’t take my fancy camera with me skiing, obviously, so I don’t have many photos. I took a few photos on my phone, so let’s go with what I got….

As you can see, they mountain isn’t really that big, but it has decent amount of runs with an okay variety. Me and Pat tried (and I thiiiiink we succeeded) to go down every single run.

The snow was nice and powdery at the top, but a bit icy near the bottom. There was a good mix of groomed runs and natural. The runs that weren’t groomed had some pretty fun naturally formed moguls. As a boarder, moguls are pretty difficult, but I personally think they are a lot of fun. The trees were different that I’m used to back home so that was kind of an interesting difference that I never even thought of.

We were pretty lucky with the weather. It wasn’t too cold, there wasn’t much wind chill and the sun came out quite a bit. I had a hard time without goggles, though. I could barely keep my eyes open because of the sun reflecting off the snow and having the wind go into my eyes. I decided to wear my glasses and that seemed to help a little bit. Sunglasses would have been much better. Oh well!

It wouldn’t be a Pat and Kaitlin adventure without a mishap…

So, it you are going to this mountain (yakebitai) be aware that it connects to another ski hill (OkuShiga).

Now, I was under the impression that the ShigaKogen ski hills were all covered by the day pass, so I actually wasn’t too concerned when we ended up over there. Well, I  must have read something wrong or misunderstood something…

When we arrived at the chairlift at the other ski hill, our cards wouldn’t beep in.

sigh….

Luckily, right by the chairlift was a small rest stop where you could by the ski pass for this hill. When I talked to the front desk lady, we were hit with dissapointing news. She said to get back to the other hill we had two options: take that bus that we took on the way up (but, remember, it runs like once an hour…) or buy a pass to go back up the chairlift. Before talking to her, I thought the only option was the full day pass, which would have been another $50, or a half-day pass, which was around $30…

That’s an expensive mistake!

I’m pretty glad that the lady at the front counter spoke English and understood our situation. We were able to get a one lift pass. She told up how to properly beep in and what to do with the card when we were done. Phew!

I can’t remember how much they cost, but they were significantly cheaper. It was kind of an interesting idea, especially if you were staying near the hill. I dunno, I kind of liked the idea of just paying for a few runs. Probably not worth the cost, but interesting…

It was one of those situations that really sucked at the time, but was easily rectified and didn’t really cause too many issues. It was a small blip in an otherwise nice ski day.

When we were at the chalet for lunch, I started looking at information on how to get back to the hotel. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that it might actually be in a bit of trouble. Let’s look at the bus timetable again:

Do you see the problem?

Well, just to remind you, we were planning on going night skiing. Night skiing started at 6:30.

…..

Lame.

So, the LAST bus back to our hotel leaves at 5:10. The last run is over at 4:30, so it actually doesn’t give you much time. It was kind of disappointing because we don’t really like taking the last bus because it is so risky, but the bus before left so early!So, I guess night skiing is only available to the people that are either staying at the Prince Hotel or driving. Oh well.

Luckily, we were able to return the passes and get our money back. I’m sure that we weren’t the only ones to make this mistake so it was a fairly easy process.

I feel like we did take the last bus since we wanted to stay as long as possible. We were able to return our rentals, so that saved us some trouble. We waited at the bus stop near the hotel and got back safely. We were pretty hungry at this point. For whatever reason, the restaurants at the ski hill ALL closed before the last run. Isn’t that strange? The ski hill and all the amenities turned into a ghost town as soon as 4pm hit.

Once we got back to the bus stop, we realized that were no places to eat. Seriously, there was nothing! It seems that every person out there ate at their hotel? There wasn’t even a convenient store (they are literally everywhere in Japan, so it was pretty strange).

We headed back to the hotel and hoped that we would be able to get something to eat there. As I mentioned before, these hotel owners were just a sweet old couple. We could have arranged for them to pick us up at the bus stop, but we just walked back. It wasn’t really a long walk.

They were really accommodating and it wasn’t a big deal.

I got a pasta and Pat got an udon (a Japanese noodle soup). Of course we had beer!~

After dinner, I really wanted to go into the onsen. I’m usually not allowed in one because I have tattoos. I thought that I booked a room with a private hot spring bath, but the website was a bit misleading. The Ryokan itself had a “private” onsen, but it was for the entire hotel… This wasn’t a very big hotel and didn’t seem to be full of people or anything.

I decided to risk it. Pat was not interested and stayed in the room. They were separated by gender so we couldn’t be in the bath together anyways. I was pretty lucky and nobody was in there and no one came the entire time. So, I guess I did have a private bath after all! If you didn’t know, you go into an onsen naked. If anyone came in, not only would I be embarrassed about my tattoo, but also that they would see me naked!

In this onsen, you put your clothes in the pink basket, shower yourself off (not shown) and finally you can relax in the natural hot spring. It felt really great after a ski day.

We had a pretty early night and didn’t really do too much. We didn’t have to wake up so early the next day, but we did so we could get the breakfast.

The breakfast was similar in some ways, but obviously had different types of food. The one kind shocking/strange things were the fish that you can see at the bottom. I initially took a bite from the stomach area and it was FILLED with fish eggs. I googled it to figure out what the heck I was eating. I found out we were to eat the whole thing, except the head and tail. I ripped of those parts and ate it. It was… ok… It definitely wasn’t my favourite dish. I would never order it.

We went back to our room and packed up all of our stuff. We only went skiing for the one day so we were off to a new adventure!

  Jigokudani Monkey Park (地獄谷野猿公)

The next day, we headed to a monkey park in Nagano. It was actually only 3 bus stops away from the hotel. I don’t want to show that freaking bus timetable again, so just trust me. The monkey park isn’t part of the free bus section so we had to pay at the bus stop before we left.

As soon as I found out about this place, I have wanted to go. When we lived in Kyoto, I was willing to travel all the way there. To put that in perspective, here’s another Google Map image!

Here’s a tip if you ever want to go somewhere sort of rural in Japan: Look at directions to the nearest train station and go from there. When I tried to find out how to get to this Monkey Park, I couldn’t find anything! To be fair, I couldn’t find directions to the park from Nagano using Google Maps either. There was a lot of extra Googling from there on and finding local bus stop timesheets that needs to be done

Japan: The Future….

Anyways, as you can see, the average trip from Kyoto would have been almost 4 hours just to get to Nagano. If our jobs weren’t so crappy and we actually had time of like real people, I may have made Pat make this trek with me.

Luckily for us, I suppose, we moved to Kanagawa and were able to make it there in a much shorter trip. Since we were already in the area to go skiing, it was a pretty quick trip to the monkey park.

We had already checked out of our hotel and had to bring our luggage to the monkey park. The bus stop had “Monkey Park” in the name so it was hard to miss. When we arrived, it seemed that everyone was going the same way. Not only that, but there were signs along the way. I think it took about 15 min or so to get to the entrance.

I looked up details beforehand so I knew that we were able to store our luggage at the office/gift shop area. It wasn’t too expensive to store our stuff so we were happy to do that instead of finding a locker or anything.

I really didn’t know what to expect going into this park. I was reading online that in order to see the monkeys, the temperature should be pretty cold. Before we left Kawasaki, the forecast was supposed to be super cold. I was sad that skiing would be terrible, I was excited that the monkeys would be awesome.

  Regardless of the forecast, we actually experienced the opposite. The weather was quite nice and skiing was definitely more pleasurable (especially since I didn’t have any goggles), but I was worried about not being able to see the monkeys.  From the entrance, we had to do a bit of a hike until we hit the park. I did not know that. I thought that the ‘entrance’ was the monkey park ‘entrance’….

hmm…

Seems like it was falsely advertised OR falsely assumed by me.

There were quite a few foreigners on the trail, which is always so surprising. I mean, we are in rural Japan. Foreigners are about 1% of the population, so to see another foreign person is always shocking. To be fair, the amount of foreign tourists that are in Japan is sooooo mush higher than the foreigners that actually live here. Sorry, that was a tangent.  What I wanted to mention was a small, blonde haired girl that was with her family, was talking about how disappointing she was. I remember saying to Patrick that I didn’t think we would see any monkeys…

It was a pretty nice hike so I wasn’t too disappointed at this point. The weather was nice and the scenery was actually really nice. I don’t think you can tell, but the sun was shining through the trees and gave such an amazing view. At this point, I was wishing I would have seen the monkeys, but I was enjoying the hike regardless.

Until….

… A freaking monkey walked by us!!!

I was so excited, but I was actually a bit scared. I didn’t think I would be, but, like, I have no idea what these guys are capable of! He didn’t seem to care. He walked on by like nothing.

I really didn’t know what to expect so I thought that THIS was the monkey park. I thought that we were already in the area to see the monkeys. I’m glad that I was wrong. There was a little office at the end of the hike where you could buy tickets into the monkey park and get souvenirs. The tickets weren’t too expensive. I believe they were under $10.

We actually hesitated about buying the tickets. That little girl that I eavesdropped on really faltered my confidence. Also, when I read about this place online, I heard that if the weather is warm, the monkeys won’t be in the hot spring. Since the weather was actually really nice, I really thought that buying those tickets could be a waste of time.

Man, I must have misunderstood what I read. I also think that poor little girl’s family didn’t pay to go in. Because, there were definitely monkeys! At first, we just saw some playing on the mountain. They were soooo cute!

Yaaaay~

I was pretty excited. They were actually playing around together like human children. It was really adorable. We ventured our way down to the hot spring (the main attraction) and continued to see monkeys scattered around.

There were a lot of ups and downs and quite icy. At one point, Pat almost wiped out really bad. He slipped down this huge hill and it was like a cartoon. Luckily he was able to gain his balance and a man at the bottom was ready to catch him if he was to wipe out. Point is: if you go here, wear boots.

Once we got to the hot spring area safely, we got to see so many monkeys!! Photo time ^^!

And finally, the main attraction~ The hot spring!

Like I said earlier, the weather was fairly warm so the monkeys weren’t really interested in hanging out in the hot springs. It was just the mama and her baby, but I was so happy to see ANY monkeys in there!

It was pretty amazing how close you could get to them. They weren’t scared or curious. They just walked around and didn’t mind the people at all. It was a pretty cool experience.

We headed back home after we finished at the monkey park. We had a really great weekend and were pretty happy to be able to experience a “true” Japanese winter. It was nice to see snow again, believe it or not.

The 4 seasons of Japan – Winter Hello again! So, to continue where I left off, the next season I want to showcase is winter.