Ho Ho Ho Hokkaido

We start December with Ben winding up the flag football season.  His team did well for the most part, some games better than others.  Most importantly he played well and enjoyed his teammates.  Jim and I certainly enjoyed watching him improve his level of play.   

    

    

He also had some advancement in his scouting.  The troop went down to Tama Hills for a cold weather campout coupled with a Court of Honor.  He was officially promoted to Star Scout. 

        

While the boys were off doing the Scout trip, the girls did some decorating for Christmas!  My awesome mom sent us a Santa "Car Buddy" and so we set him up in the back seat where he will remain for the month!  I didn't realize he lit up at first - added festive bonus!!   

    

        

Even the pets are getting into the spirit of the holidays - 😜

    

After a year of not having any Christmas functions to participate in, this year we finally get to indulge!  We had a few to choose from too!  All in all we went to two concerts, a work party and a few private ones as well!  Almost felt normal.

    

The kid's passports expire soon, so we decided to make appointments at the US Embassy in Tokyo for the Monday after school ended to renew them.  It gave us an excuse to stay downtown at the New Sanno again and check out some nearby illuminations. 

            

The next day, we did a bit more shopping before heading back to Yokota and found some really cool Christmas decorations and lights to use as backdrops for these blurry photos.  It was hard to get a good pic with the million other people also trying to take a picture. 

    

    

       

Last year we decided to go "all-in" on the Japanese tradition of KFC on Christmas  and this year I was able to reserve our meal far enough in advance to order the Christmas Party Bucket which also comes with a Christmas plate.  Lucky us!  

Usually by Christmas Eve-Eve we have already made our batch of Christmas cookies, but this year with so many other things going on we are behind schedule.  I struck a deal with the kids and told them if I made the cookies they could decorate them.  It was a deal they were more than happy to make.  After seeing the results, I think I made the right call.

As the years go by, the wait for Christmas gets shorter and shorter.  Seems like just a few days ago it was Halloween!  How is it already Christmas morning?  Well Santa found us - like he always does.  Not sure how he manages to do it every year.  We sure don't make it easy for him.  With the +14 hour difference between us and the family on the East coast, it makes it hard to share the traditional Christmas morning festivities but we did our best.

    

       

Jim's favorite Christmas present might be this Daruma coffee mug whose eyes blink closed when you add hot beverages!

    

We ended up having a really fun impromptu Christmas Eve party at our house, so we decided (last minute) to see if we could get a table at the O Club for their Christmas Brunch and thankfully they had availability!  Otherwise our Christmas dinner was probably going to be something that involved either Indian or Ramen takeout 😳.

    

The big Christmas present for us was a ski trip to Hokkaido.  So of course Wesley started limping around on the day before we were due to leave.  We were able to get an appointment at a vet off base and good news, it was just his grass allergy acting up, bad news he is going to be in the cone of shame the whole time we are gone.  Poor Wesley!

    

It's going to be a long week for Wesley

The next morning we began our travels up to the Hokkaido area.  Not knowing just how long it would take us to get to the airport, we were at the train station at 6 AM.  The train ride  to the airport ended up taking a little over an hour and it was pretty crowded until we got past the downtown stations.  

        

Once we arrived at Haneda airport, it was fairly easy to navigate since Jim has flown in and out of there a few times and was able to keep us going in the right direction.  Once we found our gate, everyone settled down and got comfortable.  Some got a little too comfortable in the massage chairs but that isn't really a surprise. 

        

Since we were going to be utilizing trains, planes and buses to get from Yokota to Niseko, we decided to ship our ski equipment via Yamato aka "Black Cat" to our accommodation in Hokkaido.  "Black Cat" is yet another cool thing about living in Japan -- it's a company that will send anything you have, anytime, to any other location in Japan for a modest price.  The application process is a little confusing, however, and one of our Japanese friends helped us fill out the form and made some phone calls for us to ensure we were doing it right.  So on the day of traveling, we only had to worry about our suitcases.  Our friends who we were joining chose a different method and we decided to see which method was better.  They chose to check their bags (for free) at the airport and so when we landed in Hokkaido they had their skis and suitcases, where we had only to keep up with our suitcases and pray that our ski equipment would meet us at our ski house.  

Once we arrived at the Hokkaido airport, we found the shuttle and settled in for the 2 hour bus ride to Niseko where we would be skiing.   When the driver picked us up at the welcome center to drive us to our rental house, he informed us that our ski equipment had arrived earlier in the day and was waiting in the drying room at the house.  So we decided that each family scored one point.  Our process was easier but theirs was free. We will use Black Cat again ....

     

Jim and the kids skied here in January of 2020 with our friends from Okinawa before the great Covid storm arrived, and they had raved about the place.  Boy, if anything they undersold it!  The resort is great!  The location was great and since they had just had a real dumping of powder the skiing/snow conditions were AWESOME!  The area is overlooked by Mount Yōtei which is sometimes referred to as Hokkaido's Mt Fuji. One thing it definitely had in common with Mt Fuji is it is sometimes hard to see due to the cloud coverage.  We never got a great look at it but it was still spectacular.  Yes that thermometer reads -10 C which is a balmy 14 F.  I skied by that thing for 3 days straight and never saw it move so it is probably just for show, but it was pretty cold.  

 

    

We travelled up to Niseko with one family but before getting there, found out several other families were at the same resort. The kids had a blast hanging out and skiing with their friends.  Of course that means that we didn't see much of them on the slopes and therefore don't have much footage of their skiing.  Having the extra friends around was great because otherwise Jim and I would have been skiing alone the whole time.  We basically only saw the kids when they were hungry. I won't give you a blow by blow of our trip.  But here are some pictures to give you an idea.

        

      

    

We were able to cobble together a few videos of the kids.  Ben is continuing to improve his snowboarding skills.  This resort didn't have much of a terrain park, but the kids did find several areas that had some "jumps" and other areas that entertained them the entire time we were there.

    

I am thankful that my friend was able to catch up with the kids at some point one day and shared this clip of Lucy.  Otherwise, we would have nothing.  Which isn't to say the kids weren't taking videos/pictures.  They just aren't sharing them with us.

Our last day we decided to do something crazy.  We decided to give snowboarding a try.  We have talked about trying for years now, but we never seemed to be anywhere long enough to sacrifice a day falling to give it a go.  The girls (especially Lilly) were really excited to try it and so Jim and I decided that with all the fluffy powder, there might not ever be a better time to try it.  And besides, we could always switch back to skis if we truly could not get the hang of it.  What could go wrong?

   

    

Ben graciously (and that is said with a TON of sarcasm) gave us about a 30 minute lesson and then he left us to our fate.  The three of us started out on the family hill and after lunch Lilly and Jim decided to venture further up the mountain.  I, on the other hand, stayed on the family runs and although I fell a ton I kept my humor and more importantly, didn't get hurt or hurt anyone else. It didn't go quite so well for Jim, but he survived and at least we didn't have to take him to the ER. 

Before the end of the day, I was able to get this video of Lilly.  At this point she had been snowboarding for about 5 hours.  She looks pretty comfortable if you ask me.

 

Our last night I was able to corral everyone to walk up the street for a family picture.  It took about 30 minutes of tough negotiations for about 5 minutes of actual picture-taking.  Not sure it was worth it.  

    

The next day was New Year's Eve.  We headed back to Yokota and arrived in time to ring in 2022 with our neighbors who invited us to an incredible dinner. How did we get so lucky?!  

    

Jim and I even made it to see the "ball drop" even though we were too busy arguing about the best version of Auld Lang Syne to kiss exactly at midnight.  

The year of the Tiger could be the best one yet!