Sightseeing, bamboo skiing and deep powder turns

So we left Hakuba and headed south towards Takayama.
We didn't plan it, but we realized that it was quite a cool hanging around town and take picture in typical japanese style:

With a nice old town, we wandered around and got lost through some old winding streets.
On our visit of the Hida Folk village, I found what looks like a no-board, but made with bamboo skis!
A pair of it was only a bended slice of bamboo and the other was a few smaller pieces of bamboo tied together.

It was quite cool to try out and actually, I wasn't able to ski the bended slice of bamboo from the top of the hill all the way down since it was going too fast!!

We also made a day trip from Shirakawago to check out a village in which most houses actually have a straw roof. It is really impressive to see this construction still holding on and seeing how cold the houses are and we were really wondering (and still have not figured why), why the houses are not more insulated.

A really great proportion of the village actually have those houses and people are still using them as their main home!

We saw some big mountain around Shirakawago and we figured that there should certainly be some good skiing around!

We kept on driving south towards Gujo where my friend Yoshi, who I've met kayaking in Switzerland is living.

He let us stay at his cabin which is locating not that far from his home and just by the river.
During dinner with is family, Yoshi told me that he was actually skiing a day ago in the mountains near Shirakawago that we just scoped out!

After showing me photos of its day, a plan was made to make the 2 hours drive back there for a little tour!

Surprisingly, even if only one day have elapsed since its day out, the skintrack was covered!
As there wasn't anyone else there, we had to proceed to some really deep trailbreaking!
In some places, the snow was even mi-thigh deep!

Yoshi led me onto a nice ridge and we skied down in a really nice opening which was really deep and light!

I was totally amazed on how deep and light the snow was!
It was actually hard to take pictures on which Yoshi do not only look as a big snowball!

We didn't make it all the way up and lapped the trees as a second lap!
It was also really good in there!
It is really a nice area, but according to Yoshi, we kind of hit it at a perfect timing.
This area usually do not see snow as often as Hakuba and can get quickly spoiled by the sun and warm temperature.

With only 2 days left on our Japan journey, we left Yoshi's place to make it to Tokyo to check out this crazy big city.

On our first day there, we kicked ourselves early to head out to check the Tokyo's famous fish market.

This market is the busiest in the world regarding sea products. There is around 2000 tons of products that are sold each day in there. Everything is happening in quite an hectic way. I cannot say that I'm close to understand how everything is happening in there!

It is so crazy and have attracted so many tourists that we are not usually allowed in until 10h00Am when the action is almost done because we are getting in the way of the action. We sneaked in before, but we were quickly showed out by the security.

We went back there when everything calms down.
The is quite some craftsmen ship slicing and preparing those red tuna.


After this crazy show, we kept on exploring and wandering in various Tokyo neighbourhood (as well as trying the craziest massage chair I've ever seen!). Even Mario Kart since to be strolling around the city!

We repeated the metro hoping for another day.
I cannot say that I'm much a city guy, but Tokyo is certainly quite a crazy place to check out!

After checking my Dad to check out his luggage at the Haneda airport, I hoped on the train to make the 2 hours journey to Narita where I am taking a flight to head to Kazakhstan!

Interesting adventure awaits and as my grandma was alway saying:

Evans