Slow Made

I think that somebody lied to me today. I'm not entirely sure, but I am reasonably certain they were telling porky pies. The line they were trying to sell me? That this robot in a restaurant was the original C3PO from the original Star Wars movie. I don't think so. Wouldn't that be at the Skywalker Ranch or something? Not sitting in some museum/restaurant type thing on the side of a ski hill with a town of 26000 people? I don't think so. Still, I can't be too sure.

The restaurant had all these pop culture artefacts, specifically Star Wars and Coca Cola ones. It was a pretty interesting place. The dude who ran the joint didn't speak too much English tonight, but when we were in there the other day his English seemed a whole lot better. I dunno. I just got a weird vibe from him. And his memorabilia. In addition to C3PO there was an R2-D2, a storm trooper, Darth Vader, Bert, Ernie, Woody from Toy Story and The Colonel. There was another character there, I think that he may have been the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Then again he may not have been.

So yeah, this was an interesting place to eat. Did I say that Snoopy was there? No? Well, he was. Tony and I ordered our meals, which were pretty expensive by Japanese standards, and then we waited. And waited. Then some other people came in. And we waited Then the other people's entree arrived at their table. And we waited. Then the other people's main course arrived. And we waited. In the end it was over an hour. For two plates of noodles. It was ridiculous. I think that the owner was having his revenge on us because we didn't order of his beers. We didn't order any beers because they were twice the price of any other beer in town. The reason that he gave us was that the other people had reserved their table earlier in the day, and thus their food was prepared first. It didn't add up to me.

So today's riding wasn't the greatest. Although I did see the most sunshine I've seen since I've been here. The sun was out all day, it was nice. From Kamui we were able to see the entire valley before us. Pretty spectacular. Unfortunately the riding over there wasn't as good as we were expecting. I guess it's because it didn't snow last night, and there was quite a few people over there. We've been spoiled a little bit on this trip. If we had had these conditions at a mountain in Australia it would have been the best day ever. Since I've been here, it's simply, meh.

The fact that we've been riding hard the last couple of days probably didn't help. As much as I love snowboarding, I've probably done enough of it in the last 11 days. I know that in a couple of weeks time I would just about kill for another day of boarding, but when it's just about all you've done for a while, then everything starts to become a little hard. Your gloves are never dry. Your muscles are always sore. Your bones always ache. Tomorrow we're going to have a bit of a sleep in and take it easy for the day. We've got a back country tour lined up for Monday, so we'll take it easy til then I think.

Apparently it's a long weekend in Japan this weekend. I'm not sure what the holiday is for. There sure are a whole lot more people on the mountain though. Still, I've only got another three days, I should live it up while I can, it's going to be a while before I can hit it again.