how to handle cats :)

On my way to Hokkaido for a snowboarding trip with Arturo, I had 24H in Tokyo:

bye SFO

hello Tokyo

Once in Haneda, I checked in my snowboard for my trip to Sapporo the next day, which was a bit of a hassle but saved me from carrying the bulky bag across Tokyo.

missed out on a cheap haircut :)

I decided to base myself in Shinjuku for that short time, because fun things:

Did a quick hop to Harajuku:

Harajuku is known for a special kind of fashion

After that, I went to a language exchange café to chat with locals:

And went out for dinner:

hahaha, can't argue with that

yum

The next morning, went back to Harajuku and Meiji Jingu:

Quick Cat café on the way :)

Quick stop by Shibuya crossing, because why not :)

also lunch :)

had to pick up a custom japanese toy to bring back

And then it was time to go back to Haneda for my flight to Hokkaido to go snowboarding

met Arturo there to join us and drive to Niseko

food food as always

Arturo won wasabi roulette :)

Hokkaido and Niseko especially gets reliable snow, and it actually snowed every day we were thee, not huge amount like in tahoe, but enough that it was fun:

After 2 days in Annupuri, we moved to the main Niseko Village base and stayed at the wonderful Pension Island and with wonderful Kako-SAn:

she is adorable and took great care of us

The food trucks close to our Pension, were fun dinner options:

did I mention it snowed almost all the time? :)

we also did a sit down dinner at a somewhat expensie restaurant we actually had been to before

my own google maps review said it was overpriced and not that great last time we went, but we did enjoy it more this time around

After 8 days around Niseko, Rusutsu and ending in Kiroro, we drove to Chitose to be close to our plane back out the next day:

managed to use enough of my japanese to order food in a restaurant which spoke no english at all

last breakfast before heading out

We had great snow, here are the blog reports on snowboarding:

We had a great time, thanks to Arturo for making the trip happen.