2008 year of the mouse! (Hokkaido pt 1)

Happy new year everyone!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and new year, no doubt everyone is now cursing their increased waist sizes and getting back to the boring reality of work.

My Christmas/New year period has been hectic (and expensive) to say the least. We went up to Hokkaido on the 26th to see the other volunteers and to generally have a great time!
we met up with them in Niseko, a popular Hokkaido ski resort, which meant one thing, Skiing and lots of it. This appealed to me as I haven`t skied since I was about 12 or something so it was nice to get back out onto the slopes, and to my surprise I could still ski, just like riding a bike you can never forget how to ski, which is useful seeing as I would be doing another 3 days of it!

I really enjoyed all the skiing we did (well for the rest Ben, Tom and Craig snowboarding) but it really does take it out of you! Luckily we are in Japan, so we had the power of the onsen (hot spring) to soothe our aches and pains, and it does a bloody good job at that as well!

After our Niseko trip we returned with Tom and Craig to Toya, where they are currently living, which is a tiny yet beautiful town which I will mention more about in my next post.

Well that's it for the first half of Hokkaido I will try to post more tomorrow, if I have time.

Much love,
Mike!


P.S a big THANK YOU to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, I had a great day and now am enjoying the aged wisdom that 19 gives :P

EDIT : MAKE SURE TO CHECK MY PHOTOS PAGE TO SEE ALL MY PHOTOS FROM HOKKAIDO AND MORE CLICK HERE