I was picked up at Sapporo airport by a ski school employee along with another international instructor, we drove the two hour trip to Niseko and my new home for the season; Niseko Sanso:
The instructor industry is a small world especially if you do southern hemisphere seasons and it turned out that Jules, a friend from New Zealand, was going to be working with me and would also be me room mate...
Our ski school was part linked to and based at the Niseko Village Hilton Hotel:
so in our staff accommodation were all the international instructor and lots of Hilton staff.
Our first two weeks consisted of getting to know the area and training as we all had to pass our SAJ badge 2 exam to instruct in Japan. We saw lots of this...
did lots of this...
and went to Kiroro to listen to this guy...
give us a seminar, completely in Japanese, about how to be a ski instructor!
After we had all attended the seminar and passed our ski exams our ski school looked like this:
Although I now had my CSIA 1 and 2, NZSIA Adaptive 1 and 2, and SAJ 2 qualifications I was still a complete rookie when it came to instructing and my first lesson couldn't come soon enough!
A day in the life of a NVSS instructor started like this...
before we went up the gondola...
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to do some training....
Sometimes we even got to go up the Wonderland chair:
where, if you were lucky, you might see this:
It snowed almost everyday and the snow was up to our knees:
Teaching was so much fun especially with customers like this family of awesome skiers:
After a tough day on the mountain I could relax in the Japanese onsen:
a hot bath, around 42 degrees, from natural hot springs.
- Get undressed in changing area
- Rinse clean in shower area
4. Wash in shower area
5. Dry and dress in changing area
Yes they are communal, and yes it did take a while to get used to, no we didn't have any other washing facilities at home or work, but luckily, yes there are separate onsens for men and women.
If we wanted to cool off after our onsen we could always go to the Ice Lounge:
Soon it was Christmas 2012, which looked like this:
and New Year 2012 was like this:
Finally, in January it became a little quieter and I enjoyed my first days off, guess what I did...... I went skiing of course. Six of us got together and went on a road trip to Rusutsu:
When we got there we found this...
and did loads of this...
The skiing was amazing! The resort is a theme park in summer so after skiing we went to check out the hotel...
More days off were to be had so we ventured to the resort of Moiwa:
Back to work.... every time I got in the gondola I hoped I would find the equivalent of Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket! Each day 10 tickets would be placed in random Gondola cars and the winners would receive a free bar of Royce chocolate, made in Hokkaido, Japan. Eventually my day arrived and I finally found a ticket:
Although I did have to share the chocolate with the six and eight year olds I was teaching at the time.
I really wanted to immerse myself in the Japanese culture but apparently the Japanese wanted to find out about the English culture too, so I took part in.....
Whenever a school came on their ski trip we would go along and have a meal with them. Sounds simple, but when I say school ski trip i'm talking about 300 17 year old girls and boys. They would be seated at tables set for between 8 and 14 people in a huge hall. We; the international English speaking staff, would arrive and walk in to music and applause, go to the stage and individually introduce ourselves before filling our plates at the buffet and finding a table to sit at. The rest of the night consisted of me asking questions like 'do you have brothers and sisters?', 'can you ski or snowboard?' etc etc, and the students discussing between themselves what on earth I was saying and how they should reply. Inevitably there were lots of long silences and I found the coffee dispenser over at the buffet very useful! We did have fun though:
I might not have got my 'Japanese experience' at English Fun Night but I did manage to check out some traditions such as Japanese Drumming 'Taiko'...
a ninja show...
a traditional soba restaurant where they make and cook the soba noodles in front of you and there are only twelve seats, which at along the serving bar...
and a hibachi restaurant where you cook your food on the fire pit in the middle of your table...
I also got to check out the real power in Misuno no Sawa...
This is the avalanche control are in Niseko. First you must go to an avalanche seminar with ski patrol so that you understand the risks and the buddy system, then you receive your bib and you and your buddy can ride the untouched waist deep snow for the rest of the day.... as long as you avoid the trees and the huge cracks in the snow! It was awesome!
In February the annual Sapporo Ice Festival was on so I escaped my Niseko bubble for two days and went to check it out....
The sculptures were even bigger than I'd imagined:
There was an ice rink and a ski and snowboard show:
I stayed in a traditional Japanese style room at Hotel Hashimoto...
One amazing thing about Japan is the sheer number of vending machines they have, I was told there is one for every twenty people. They are solar powered, serve hot and cold cans from the same machine and you find them in the strangest places...
I even saw a row of five machines next to each other in Sapporo, most of the drinks were the same in each one!
By March the snow was like this....
and this was the view from some windows...
and when I didn't have much energy, we went for coffee...
...and crepes!
Soon it was the end of another fantastic season and I celebrated by enjoying some traditional Japanese food, including... chicken cartilage!
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