Disgraced

Last night started off with the best of intentions. We weren't going to do anything silly, we were just going to have an onsen (spa) with two guys that we had met cat skiing.

The cat skiing was great. Not as great as I thought that it was going to be, as the snow was a little wet, but still pretty good. It was blowing a gale at the top, but that stopped about 30 seconds down the hill. There were these two people up there with boogie boards or something like that. Anyways.

So the cat skiing was good. I managed to hurt myself a little bit when I took some fairly big air of this roller type thing and then fell into a gully. Well, I actually smashed into the opposite wall of this gully, and it hurt a little bit. It took a while to dig myself out, but I was okay.

We did the cat skiing with a 4 other people and our guide, Liz. Liz actually brought us down to the wrong part of the mountain on the first run so we had to hike back out for a little while. The other 4 were Christof and his girlfriend/wife thingy Jacqui and 2 other guys, Jim and Scott. Everyone was fun and we got along pretty well with the two other blokes. So we decided to have an onsen with them when we got back to Niseko.

The onsen was great. Getting nude wasn't a problem at all and it was very relaxing for the muscles. Having a beer in the outdoors was lovely and there was a good atmosphere. Quite a lot of old guys though and old guy's penis, but I guess that's what you get when you go to an onsen.

After the onsen the other two guys were heading into Kutchan which is the bigger town about 15 minutes away. Tony and I went with them. In Kutchan we were looking for this ski shop, and on the way we found this really weird casino type thing. In the casino there was a deafening noise from the games that the people were playing. They were playing a sort of pokie machine, but instead of money you seemed to play for these shiny metal ball things. The noise was made by all of these balls dropping through the machines. It was really loud. Anyway, we left there pretty quick after getting into trouble for taking a photo and then made our way to a little izukaya off the main road.

In the izukaya we had some noodles and a fair bit of sake. The proprietors of the restaurant didn't speak mch english, so we just got them to make up whatever they liked. We ended up having noodles. They were okay. Afterwards they gave us this stuff that I think may have been raw prawn legs and prawn guts. I'm pretty sure that's what they said they were. The other guys didn't like them too much but I ate a few, they had a nice sauce on them.

After dinner we came back to Niseko on the free bus and headed back to Hank's bar. Scott played the guitar there for a while and he was really good. Hank brought out some other instruments for us so I was banging away on a toy tambourine for a while and clacking out a beat on some maracas. It was a good time. Tony played a couple of tunes as well and was great. It was clean wholesome fun. By this time we were having beers and everyone was getting on famously.

Oh, hang on a minute. We had a cheeky beer at a bar called Blo Blo after getting off the bus. Blo Blo had all this Japanese porn up on the walls, the animated kind. It was a cosy kind of joint and pretty neat, but we didn't stay there long, we wanted to get to Hank's.

After Hank closed down for the night we moved onto Fatty's which is a bar in the back of two trucks that are parked together. The thing to do at Fatty's was a ski with 4 shots along it. Seeing as there was 4 of us it made sense to do one. So we did. 4 shots of Jagermeister came to 1000 yen and we got a photo up on the wall. The first one was so much fun that we did it again. Good times!

By this stage everyone was feeling pretty good about themselves and Jim and Scott decided to call it a night. This was a wise move on their part and I guess that's where experience comes into play. Jim was 29 and Scott was 33. They were cool guys and a lot of fun. In advertising down in Melbourne and Sydney.

After they left Fatty's closed up too, as there was only really us and the bar staff. So we moved on to another bar. I'd forgotten about it, but Tony reminded me this morning. I think that it was called Jack's or something like that. We were there for a little while, but not too long. Long enough for some dude to try and kiss me though. I told him that I wasn't interested, but he persisted. I guess that's what some guys resort to in a ski town. A little bit like prison really.

Next thing I know it's morning and there's some Japanese people in our room. They were replacing our towels. I didn't feel so hot, and neither did Tony. In all it was a big night, and a good time. I'm glad that it happened last night and not tonight as we would probably have missed the bus.