Twas the morning of the night before, the hang over was real. Climbing out of my hostel built timber capsule at 1am with a very sore head, I released we are in the North of Japan! Ricky and Del who were very spritely from the minimal amounts of shochu they drank, dragged us that afternoon to the Sapporo Beer Brewery for and afternoon of beer tasting, which the sore brain did enjoy. Up early and on a bus to Niseko, where our crazy english friend Duncan picked us up and took us to the hostel in East Hirafu the Popcorn lodge!. Ramen for lunch then night riding at Grand Hirafu. Head phones in, Major Laser blaring, Hard and fast. The new snow on the groomers was a little tracked out although it was fun to bomb the hills. There was however still 20 centimetres of fresh in the trees. The next 3 days we changed to our short boards for a bit more of a freestyle throw down, as the snow forecast wasn’t predicting the 50-70 cm’s a day we were getting in Myoko. There was only around 10-15 cm’s of new snow each day, that on the groomers did

A car to a train to 2 more trains to a plane and then a bus…. We have arrived in Sapporo,Hokkaido. Back in the city and we are eager to explore! Our stomachs lead the way to a restaurant called mamas, conveniently its underneath our hotel and came highly recommended by our host Shun. We are greeted by “mama” who does not stop bringing out food that she thinks we should eat! We haven’t even seen a menu and the table is full of deliciousness and of course biru. Then she places the Karaoke machine on our table and smiles. We are all a little tentative to start with but It turns out we are all naturals and at the end of the night “mama” is prying the mic away from Benny. Haha! Mamas parting gift is a bottle of Shoju a rice liquor which has some burn to it. The boy’s head out to paint the town red and do a hell of a job of it and sing karaoke into the night with the friendly locals of Sapporo cheering them on or yelling at the to be quiet! Either way it was a hell of a time. Next