Trying to catch up…. another back post

Wow, what a cool experience for our kids, skiing in the mountains of Japan with your school friends. International schools ROCK!! The kids got to take a 4 day ski trip with their school.  They stayed in a hotel and the school had 3 entire floors full of kids from their school.  Caleb and I took advantage of the kids being gone and took our own ski trip.  It was a great opportunity to get away together, something we have not been able to do much of since moving here.

We stayed in an awesome Japanese style room and had our own private onsen (Hotspring hot tub) on our patio, and had an awesome mountain view!  We also ate a traditional 10 course Japanese dinner.  I have to say I was also nervous  about this.  When we arrived at our hotel we noticed people walking around the hotel in their Yukata (traditional Japanese robes made of cotton)  With the help of google we found information on how and when to wear a yukata. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2029_dress.html  Caleb convinced me that we should wear our Yukata to dinner.  So we did.  As we sat down the table was carefully set and the server quickly began bringing out our food.  I have to say I have never eaten out of so many dishes in one setting and eaten so many mysterious foods.  Overall the foods were okay and the experience was cool.  Caleb once described Japanese foods as having a “flavor range of 0-3 and a texture range of -10 to +10”  To our western palate it is challenging to have so many textures.  I think the most surprising thing was the Awabi (abalone).   Here is more information from this site

 Awabi (abalone)

Images: Wikipedia, Wikipedia

“Although it looks like a clam, an abalone is actually a sea snail and is considered a delicacy in Japan for its chewy texture and crisp taste. Abalones are eaten raw as sashimi but are also grilled. A popular way to prepare abalones is to grill it live, right out of the water”

Here is a video of our Abalone cooking:

I think we have a long way to go before we can say we love Japanese food, but it was a cool experience.

Pictures of our dinner experience:

We also got to do some more skiing.  We were staying in a great little town with 3 resorts the all joined!  The weather conditions varied drastically from day to day, we did some skiing with sunny beautiful skies, heavy wind and snow whiteout conditions and pouring rain.  We tried to make the best of the cards we were given and continued to practice.  When we weren’t skiing we drank sake (rice wine) from vending machines,  went to  a cork gun “shooting range” and enjoyed our time alone.

Here are some more pictures:  (with less crazy food)

In reality the cards we dealt sucked and we BOTH ended up also getting injured. On day 2 I fell and landed on my thumb.  After a trip to the first aid office they told me they believed it was not broken.  They gave me a bag to put ice in and we took a rest for about an hour.  One of the ski shops had medical tape and we looked up on google how to tape a sprained thumb.  I managed to ski at least a couple more rounds and we headed back to the hotel and out for dinner.  We opted out of the fancy hotel dinner and ate somewhere else.  On day 3 Caleb fell and twisted his knee.   He was able to get up and ski a little more but this injury ended up being the real reason why he needed  knee surgery on July 27th.  More info on this coming soon.