The riddle of the accommodation ....

So we have arrived in Niseko ...

there seems to be heaps of snow and this is the view of Mt Yotei taken by Lucy from her bedroom.

But before we start on that a couple of things: first Paddy did eat the mystery food. One guess was a sea creature - wrong. Then Cam has heavily dissed my spelling and use of the word gorgeous. So it was a Cameron's "insistence" that we ate the mystery food - and I am happy to use a different word to gorgeous. In my defence, I was sitting on a tatami mat with a hot water bottle and my parka on as it was sooo cold. So I didn't do a whole lot of editing.

So to the Kamakura accommodation. The last couple f days have been public holidays - and accommodation was really tight . So I picked the little guest house called kamejikan which has one of the cutest websites and a very nice fellow to speak to on the phone and a 1 star michelin restaurant around the corner (closed - of course). So when he rang and said that he could only take 5 of us but that his friend would take the other 3 I took it up. Kamejikan was pretty good - but for the fact that when we arrived the room that was supposed to sleep 5 already had a Korean girl in it. So Rob and the boys were in a very small room with an unknown girl who Rob said they only saw once - they think she was a bit put off. Lucy, liv and I were at the other place - which was a lot more doss house - albeit v Japanese. There were just lots of bodies everywhere. We had a lovely freezing room with rice paper walls. And behind every rice paper wall was a giggling chatting person!!

As we arrived in Kamakura I kept stepping over these signs on the footpath:

 and then lots of telephone posts recording seal levels

So given I was there with Robert, and thankgod Ron wasn't there, Rob and I did talk about how much time you would have, what you would grab so you didn't freeze to death, etc. I felt I couldn't post til we had successfully left! Pretty sobering though. The girls were at 4.8m and the boys at 3.5m.

Liv sleeping on the tatami mats - in her onesie and her new toe socks ...

Outside Minimichi (aka Japanese Doss house) - PS - when we asked about the showers we were told that in Japanese guest houses they don't supply towels. Lucy and I had a hilarious visit to a 711 working out what we could use as a towel. Very funny really. Rob hired towels but had no hot water. The little boys were freezing after their ice bath. The captions were hell, liquid ice, ...

Waiting for the bus at Kamejikan ...

At Minimichi when we woke up our room was landlocked with the bodies that had been having noisy fun and keeping us awake - so we didn't get too much sleep as the train trip shows ...

PS - for those wanting to know who Totaro is - here it is ....

and the promised kingfisher

We have hired gear and we are ready to go - there is heaps of snow. Tomorrow will be all white snow, blue sky and smiling faces (we hope).