“It is in his pleasure that a man really
Agnes Repplier
lives; it is from his leisure that he
constructs the true fabric of self.”
We took a break from taking a break today and wandered up the hill to the Nozawa ski museum which was superb.
An incredible collection of ski art and memorabilia from 2500BC, Japan’s ski history and the story of Nozawa from its origins in 1912.
Every winter Olympics year had the costumes, skis and medals of the Japanese Olympic teams and really interesting stuff on the Austrian, Schneider who came over to teach the Japanese the “Arlberg” method. Some of the old ski fashion magazine covers were beautiful too.
We found a little place, “The Green Cafe” at the bottom of the Hikage chairlift and lunched on cheese on inch thick toast (Di) and rice with egg and cheese (Jeff). Oddly enough, they were all out of blackberry jam on toast, must’ve been a “rush” on that. We wandered back down the snow road to Nagasaka gondola and on, down into the village.
After kicking back by the fire Di headed to the post office to dispatch some mail and I exposed myself once more to the sulfurous heat of the local onsen. No one there this afternoon so I could add cold water to my hearts content – bliss.
This afternoon we chatted with some fellow countrymen at Tanuki transitioning from Hong Kong back to Victoria. The husband in anti-fraud work for major banks the wife an artist who rendered the little shop in the old town in water colours (below), pretty cool.
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This evening we strolled down to a traditional Japanese Mexican place, Juntos, and enjoyed their soft tacos and traditional margaritas. Very nice.
We added our congratulations to a young man celebrating his sixteenth there before heading back to the main drag. For reasons unbeknownst to us, the local bottle shop was going off so we wandered amidst the throng to find out why. Craft beers, craft sake, whiskeys, gins and wines at pretty good prices. Pete you’ll be happy to know they had 4L plastic bottles of saki for about ¥2000!
A night cap apple sour at our Tanuki bar and we called it quits for the day.
Some random photos of the day…..
Love the skiing dog. Great if you got lost in the trees on way!
Looks a pretty cool day for a day off! Still enjoying the apres dinner bar I see!
It was a lovely day, thanks and the dog was very cool. The local barman’s apple sour is worth coming back for!