After arriving back from the beaches of Thailand, we repacked our bags and headed to the mountains of Nagano, Japan for a ski weekend with friends. Erik and I actually never made it up there before so we were excited to check that box before we leave Japan.
We stopped off on Friday evening for a fire festival. Pure craziness. Every year on Jan 15, the village of Nozawa Onsen holds the Dosojin Fire Festival. The 42 year old males of the village construct a wooden shrine and sit on top and drink all evening in the snow. The 25 year old men protect the shrine at the base while other villages light torches and rush forward to try to burn the whole thing down. Lots of free sake flows around for all. One of the craziest things I've seen in Japan.
The actual fall of the shrine is a bit more controlled; they first let the 45 year old men get down first. In this video, one of the ceremonial sake stands is being fed to the fire. Don't worry - they extract the vat of sake first and continue handing that out - no alcohol was injured in the making of this video. You can also see how fast the snow was coming down - probably about 6 inches in 3 hours.
As for the ski weekend itself, I surprisingly had a good time. I'd never been skiing before and hadn't so much enjoyed earlier attempts with snowboarding over 10 years ago. But Erik was a great teacher and very very patient. After a couple hours, I finally made it down some beginner slopes, fall free. After lunch, though, I quit while I was ahead and Erik went to join friends on the more advanced slopes.
Also, a shout-out ("hey oh!") to Atsugi base's Outdoor Recreation department - we rented all of our skis and snow gear for 3 days for about a $120. I will miss these little MWR perks!
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