Next stop: ski town. Recall the 1998 Winter Olympics.

From Matsumoto I caught a really cheap train ($10) to the ski town of Hakuba. This area, which features about a dozen different ski resorts, was home to many of the alpine events during the 1998 winter Olympics.

I soon realized why the train had been so cheap. It was quite possibly the slowest train I have ever been on. For the first hour or so, it crawled along the tracks, stopping constantly. To add insult to injury, it was packed with people and I had to stand. I had a seat for the second hour, so it wasn't quite so painful.

It had begun to snow as I was leaving Matsumoto, and by the time I got to Hakuba it was really coming down. This was welcome as snow had been scarce up to that point. I had reserved a hostel prior to leaving Nagoya, so the manager came to pick me up and take me there. The place was called K's House, and it was probably the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at (have a look at the pictures and you'll see why). I had a nice room with an en suite bathroom, there was a fully equipped kitchen, and common room with a big screen TV, PS2 and Internet. The place was also home to a lot of cool travellers and vacationers.

The first day of snowboarding was, shall we say, interesting. I got a late start after having some bank machine difficulties, but the first few runs with some friends I met up with were really good. We had taken the gondola to the top of the mountain because that's where the best snow was. It turned out to be the best place for blizzards as well. As we were riding up the chairlift, we were hit with a white out.  The winds were tossing the chairs around so much that it was impossible to unload anyone at the top, so we were pretty much sitting ducks. It is rather frustrating to be on a ski lift, being tossed around and frozen by the wind, when you can see the offload area 20 metres in front of you. Eventually we got off and began the trek down the mountain (remember that picture of the train of gold-miners hiking up that mountain in the Yukon?...well that was pretty much us, except hiking down, in a white out). The conditions were better at the bottom, so that's where we stayed for the rest of the day.

The second day of snowboarding has much better--100% visibility and new snow*. This was also the day I met a really cool guy from California who I ended up travelling with for the next three days. More on him later.

*Refer to photos