Snowboarding in Japan!

My friend Garrett heading off-piste down some great powder. The area we were in is known as the Japanese Alps, and there are some towering mountains behind the ski area. It was really beautiful.

Hot sake outside a Japanese convenience store. It was freezing so this was just the remedy for a cold night.

Looking down a run at the town of Hakuba.

I found this guy back at my house after returning from Japan. He seems to think this is his house because he keeps coming back to the same spot in my kitchen. He's bigger than my hand!

Area in Tokyo similar to Times Square. Being in Tokyo at first I wondered where all the people were for a city of 20+ million, but after coming here I realized that about 3 million of them were in the area of a few city blocks!

Al-Qaeda in Japan? Close - Gabe.

Getting ready to hit the slopes!

Nice boots!

The line to the gondola.

The boys outside a Japanese pagoda.

This statue you were supposed to rub the elbow and head for good luck.

This is a luck game where you pull out a numbered chopstick and then find the corresponding drawer on a huge wall of cabinets. Inside your numbered drawer will be your fortune. Whether good or bad you tie it up around these little strings here.

People come here to breath in the incense to "cleanse" the soul or mind.

Cool-looking tree outside the temple.

A little two-seater taxi that is pulled by a man wearing Ninja Turtle shoes...sweet.

Outside the front gate of a major temple in Tokyo.

After entering the front gate there is a long corridor full of shops before entering the main temple grounds. This day it was packed with people.

A buddy that went on the trip thought he was buying tea but ended up getting hot sake.

A little side street of of the main road leading to the temples.

Three PCV friends and I recently took a short trip to Japan to do some skiing/snowboarding, and we had an amazing time. We spent one day in Tokyo and the other four in Nagano Prefecture in a town called Hakuba. The mountain we rode was Happo One, which was the site of the 98' Winter Olympics. We found a really great Japanese package deal with the help of a friend in Tokyo, so we were put up in a hotel with traditional Japanese sleeping mats and a bath house. We also spent each breakfast and dinner eating Japanese style in a small cafeteria in the hotel. It snowed four out of the five days we were there so there was soooo much powder. There were parts on the mountain where the powder came all the way up to my thighs. I found the snow in Japan to be a bit wetter and heavier than I'm used to from Colorado, which made it somewhat hard to make turns. But, after you got used to it, it was some of the best snow I've ever been in.

The other pictures are from a temple we visited while in Tokyo. It was a big temple complex with four or five large buildings. The day we were there a ton of people had come to pray and make offerings. Also while in Tokyo we went to the "times square" area, ate some awesome sushi and took a boat ride along the main river in the city.