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Slowly, gently, the new year is beginning. I like the new year. I like new beginnings, and fresh starts that hold the potential of great things to come. I like having a new calender with days and weeks and months crossing over the pages; squares to be filled with things to do, or squares to be left blank for lazy afternoons with cups of tea and magazines and a patch of sunshine to be curled up in.

The new year started well. After a brief trip back to Perth for a dear friend's wedding and a Christmas that was spent in fits of drunken hilarity with all my favourite cousins, I flew back earlier to Japan to spend a week up in the snow in Niseko and Sapporo, Hokkaido. Hokkaido ended up being focused more on drunken hilarity and less on the snowboarding, but it's gone down as one of my favourite holidays that I've had in the time that I've been in Japan (despite Niseko being essentially nothing but Australians anyway). Between snowboarding and drinking there was card games and hot tubs and cubs and New Year's and snow ball fights and atrocious movies and (ill-advised) towers of beer and a 22 hour ferry ride.


And now the last stretch of Japan starts. It's a mixture of feelings - I'm beginning to be excited about what comes next and moving towards it, I'm terrified to leave what has been the most stable, yet exciting part of my adult life, and I'm melancholic about leaving this place I've called home for almost three years and the people I've met, and the crazy lifestyle I've been lucky enough flit my way through.


The squares in my calender are filling up at an insane pace, and the afternoons spent in the sunshine are going to be rare indulgences. I'm excited though. I see big things for this year, bigger than they've ever been before and it's so good to be starting the new year feeling like this.

A wee bit excited!

Your estimated departure time for HOKKAIDO is in approximately 4 hours. Please try not to panic as you will surely have packed enough clothes by now. Sit back, relax and enjoy the fun that that freezing cold white stuff will provide.

Madam, your complimentary glass of champagne awaits you on board.

Thank you for flying ANA.

The Night Bus of Evil

The night bus is evil. It sucks you in with promises of luxurious reclining coach seats and the adventures of travel, but above all, a cheap ticket to somewhere far far away, all made possible while you rest and sleep.

They lie. Except for the cheap part. After the first time, you swear never, ever again, but something keeps bringing me back, like the glutton for punishment I am.

Night buses, let me state again, are evil. The whole premise that you fall asleep on departure and wake bright and refreshed is null and void. Instead, you contort into uncomfortable positions, try desperately not to encroach on your fellow passenger's minuscule personal space and have the pleasure of being woken, if you've been lucky enough to sleep in the first place, every 90 minutes for a wee and a cigarette and yet another omiyage store. To add to this whinging tale of woe, (because really, that's all this is - I got off the bus in Osaka at5.30 this morning, and I'm stuck at school AND I'M TIRED, GRUMPY AND SORE SORE SORE) encourage the majority of the night bus shenanigans during the winter months to far away snow fun that the powder monkeys clamour for.

But, should you persevere, you will be rewarded for your sacrifice. This weekend, Jeff and I headed up to Nozawaonsen, for a weekend of throwing ourselves carelessly off the side of mountains, onsens of sulphurous water that are barely cool enough to dip a toe in, Apple Kit Kats, and pigeons with wheels (if I ever find anything on the web about these, I promise promise to post a link).

When we arrived early Saturday morning, there had been 20 cms of fresh powder, and the same happened on Sunday night. There was a brilliant gully of powder between two runs that was fun to do again and again and again and as one who has never been boarding through powder, I am an instant convert. It's like falling in pillows, but it takes concentration and muscle (well, from me anyway) to turn through it and avoid the trees.

I may not be able to move my legs fully at this present moment, and anything that requires stomach muscles is a lesson in why sit-ups are good for you, and the night bus may well be the most hellish thing I have had this misfortune to have experienced of late, but the endorphins you get out of gunning down the powder on the side of a black run makes you forget all about 10 hour bus marathons.

Next weekend: Hokkaido. It's the third weekend of a potential 5 in a row of boarding and I fear it may be the point in which my body turns into nothing but a mass of highly sensitive pain receptors. Apparently whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.