Hokkaido 2013 13-20 Dec (Day 4)

Good morning Hokkaido. It's a beautiful morning and it has stopped snowing.

View from my room

Nice blanket of soft fluffy snow out on the slopes after a night of snowing

Today is free and easy day at Rusutsu ski resort. One of the activities of the day would be riding on a snowmobile. The snowmobile was located over at Rusutsu Tower wing. After breakfast, we headed to take the monorail over to Tower wing. 

Monorail

It was on the short ride over to Tower wing that I realised how big the whole resort is. And the view was beautiful.

Tower wing was smaller than North and South wing, and not as crowded. It had a different feel to it. More business-like atmosphere as compared to the family atmosphere over at N&S wing.

Good thing we made bookings for the snowmobiles on the day of arrival as advised by our tour agency, as some people were turned away because of the high demand. 

Riding the snowmobile was really fun. We got to drive our own and followed the instructor in front of us. He took us to wide open plains with trees lining the boundaries. Felt so sinful creating wrinkles of tracks on the soft virgin snow. After about 10 minutes of riding the guide brought us to a stop in the middle of nowhere to soak in the picturesque view that was straight out of a fairytale.

One of my favourite photo

The tracks we created on the virgin snow

On the snowmobile

Which fairytale am I in?

It was just us out in quiet expanse of snow. It was so silent, so surreal and so so so peaceful that I thought I could just sit out there forever. The feeling was indescribable. I thought if we could just stop ooh-ing and ah-ing in wonderment of this natural beauty we would be able to see the 7 dwarfs traipsing through the woods or see some leprechauns gathering pine cones in the distance. 

After about 10 minutes of soaking in the sights, we carried on our ride through the soft snow for another 10 minutes to reach the ending/starting point. This must surely be one of the highlights of my life. While the others went for more rides, I walked around wonderland soaking in more sights. Below are some of my favourite pictures.

After lunch, the children decided to return to the ski slopes to make snowmen. I took the opportunity to practise skiing. Instead of taking the ski lift all the way up, I decided to just stick to the practise area. I'm not young anymore, any fall would cause my brittle bones to splinter haha. As most people were still having lunch, the slopes were pretty quiet and I quickly took the opportunity to snap some beautiful pictures of the ski slope.

The ski slope

That's me trying to perfect my braking going down the slope

The children climbing up a pile of snow formed from excavation

View of the resort from the slope

After a fun day in the snow, I decided to visit the onsen at Tower wing, where they have an outdoor onsen. It was much better than the other one I went last night. This one had a nice round circular pool with pinkish water, I think it was red wine or something. After getting accustomed to the heat, I decided to venture out to the outdoor pool. The outdoor pool had an awesome view. It faced the ski slopes. It was just a lap pool with the wall facing the slopes raised up to chest level, so that when you stand up, your modesty is still protected from the skiers' view. Nevertheless, the view was breathtaking, and it was such an unforgettable experience to be soaking in the warm water out in the cold. How I wish I had the camera with me to capture the scene.

After soaking for about 30 minutes, went back to the room for a rest before dinner. We then went to return our skiing gear before heading for dinner. For tonight, we decided to try the French restaurant. The restaurant had a beautiful view of the slopes.

Beautiful night view of the slopes from the French restaurant

We of course took the set since we had the food vouchers. It was more French-Jap fusion food.

Appetizer-raw scallops

Appetizer-salad

Soup of the day

Mains-Fish

Mains-Steak

Dessert

As usual, dinner was not bad and we were stuffed, because we also had to finish the children's leftovers. Had a short walk around the resort to aid digestion. As I saw some shops outside the main entrance during the morning monorail ride, I decided to take a walk to enjoy the cold night air on our last night at the resort.

Although it was quiet out in the streets, there was a Japanese 24-hour convenience store and I decided to check it out. Their convenience store is similar to our 7-11 stores in Singapore, but they really had more interesting stuff. Their range of products and foodstuff is definitely much more. If I wasn't stuffed by the dinner, I would have bought some beautiful looking Japanese bento to try.

The quiet road outside the resort

All quiet and dark outside the resort

Returned to the room to pack as we're heading to Sapporo the next morning. While packing, I was having mixed feelings; feeling sad to be leaving this beautiful place where there were many firsts for me, yet excited to be going to another beautiful place in Hokkaido.

Good night and sayonara Rusutsu, I shall be back.