Zao snowboarding

Zao in the afternoon

Zao in the morning

Here we are somewhere halfway up the mountain, about to get some lunch

It was a good snowboarding trip!  Our hotel was nice too, dinner and breakfast were included and were actually really good, and the hotel had an onsen which was awesome after coming back from snowboarding.  There was an indoor bath and and outdoor one, but the outdoor bath didn't have much of a view sadly.
Some of the slopes were icy and as we got higher up the wind got stronger, but mostly it was good.  I spent the first day traipsing all over the mountain with my friends (who are both advanced snowboarders) but the second day I stuck to the lower slopes so I could practice in better conditions.  I think this was probably my last trip of the season, but I'll definitely try to do it again next season!  Maybe I can even go to a different mountain, haha.

Disney Sea!

On the monorail to Disney!

Cute straps!

Just inside the entrance to the park

Ariel's castle!

Inside Ariel's castle

The spinning teacups are in Little Mermaid world at Disney Sea

My favorite of the themes, I think!

We took a gondola ride

It was really nice, it was dusk and the view was amazing

The Temple of Doom?  I don't know, it was near Indiana Jones

Right before we fast passed it into the Indiana Jones ride!

A couple more pictures

Here we all are with  the Sapporo bear!

In our lovely beer garden aprons

Not from Sapporo;  took this purikura today after a buffet pizza lunch in Ikebukuro

After we had eaten all the meat

Sapporo

Mongolian barbeque at Sapporo Beer Garden, all you can eat and all you can drink

Sapporo Beer Museum beer tasting!

This is the apron they gave us to eat in

Snow aquarium!

Snow palace with some sort of pop performance going on in front!

This was a giant ice organ

Indian palace made of snow!  Check my earmuffs that I found on sale for 100 yen

Japanese snow castle!  

Karaoke Sapporo style, naturally!

Here's the woman in her bubble playing the ice organ

Sapporo bear!

Sapporo snow festival sign.  I look so cold!

Snowboard jump!

Ice organ again. 

A few more pictures

At Meiji Shrine on Jan. 1.  It's completely dark but it was only like 5pm

Still Meiji shrine

Mt Zao

Night snowboarding

The videos are out the window of the bus going from Yamagata to Zao, and at the bottom of the slope at Zao.

Snowboarding pics!

Me and David at the top of the slope

Me!

Me again!  This is after a successful run with no falls, haha

One of the ski slopes

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope you all will have a wonderful Christmas day.  I talked with my parents on skype this morning (although it's still christmas eve in America!) and opened some presents, it was very nice!  Now I'm getting ready to start the day, I'm having a Christmas dinner party later tonight and I still have some last minute preparations to do.  My parents got me some nice soft pajamas and I don't feel like doing much besides lazing around my room in them, but I have to get going!  They also got me a nice makeup kit though, so that will be fun to experiment with after my shower.

Tomorrow I'm going to head up to Harajuku to look for cheap snowboarding gear, and to Shinjuku to go ahead and get my bus ticket and figure out where the night bus departs from.  Looking forward to snowboarding and going to hot springs in Yamagata when my vacation finally starts!  I have to go into work on Tuesday, but there are no classes that day.  We'll just be cleaning, I think.  I have to get all packed and ready tomorrow though, because I'm going to be leaving directly from work to go to Shinjuku and catch the night bus up to Yamagata.