Earlier this March, we made a fun group ski trip to Hakuba, the site of '98 WInter Olympics. Traveling as a group of eight, six of us ELSI researchers, we made our ways by Shinkansen and Bus from Tokyo to Nagano prefecture. Everybody was relieved once we arrived because the weather conditions turned out much better than expected. The forecast had been oscillating between 'sunny' and 'rainy' the week before, and it felt much more like spring than like winter when we left Tokyo.


These worrisome weather memories were entirely forgotten, however, as we were looking down the beautiful slopes and immersing ourselves in the nice views under blue skies early next day. Coming from Europe or the US, we were surprised at how casual the rental of skis was. After adjusting some of the bindings ourselves and figuring out which ski belongs to what pair, we were ready to enjoy the slopes!

We decided to start with an easy 'green' course to warm up, which turned out to be red! There was no better way to finish waking up, and after figuring out the correct orientation of the map, we felt ready for the 'real' start! Soon thereafter, we split into small groups and went our ways to explore the ski arena. In Japanese, ski arena is ゲレンデ (Gelände), as many other expressions in Japanese ski speak borrowed from german (e.g., Riesenslalom, Hüttenzauber). One ELSI researcher (hint: one of the authors of this blog) managed to lose his ¥8,800 2-day ski pass right before the first lunch! However, since everybody in Japan is considerate and honest, there were no issues to get a replacement. The staff would never think that you would try to cheat the system. Welcome to Japan!

Of course, we also had a lot of activities beyond skiing. A semi-professional snowball-fight tournament was among the touristic attractions, as was visiting the olympic ski-jumping towers. We used the beautiful outdoor 'onsen' in the hotel as much as we could: it's a perfect way to relax by soaking in the hot spring baths after a day's worth of skiiing. As a group, we went to a local 'izakaya' every night, although some of us were so hungry after skiing that a pre-dinner service at a nearby Ramen shop was required beforehand! On the last night, we enjoyed some rigorous Sake testing, and of course the food was delicious, too.

The second day of skiing was not quite as good in terms of weather and snow conditions but our skills had improved compared to the first day and thus was still a lot of fun. We skied all the way til the end (the last bus to the hotel is at 4pm!!!) One ELSI member (hint: the other author of this blog) even broke his skis at the last minute. After extreme 'onsen-ation' and another trip to the Izakaya, the ski trip ended with a fun card game in the hotel lobby.


Lesson for next year's ski trip: we probably don't need to go that far to enjoy beautiful views from an Onsen after a full day out! We hope more people will join us next year!