Skiing in a blizzard

We went skiing on the weekend and got caught in the craziest blizzard I've ever seen. It was so cold, the light inside my camera froze, even though it was in a padded case, underneath two layers of clothing! Check out the video...

Chicken cartilage at 'Meat Alley'

Last night, I tried chicken cartilage at a cool collection of small restaurants called 'Meat Alley' in Shibuya, Tokyo. Unfortunately, it didn't bust my theory that if you can't eat it in every democratic, first world country, it isn't going to taste good (see: guinea pigs in Peru, chicken feet in China, kangaroo in Australia).

That said, the pig intestine soup was pretty good...

Skiing in Japan: Round Two

I just got back from an exhausting, but awesome long weekend skiing in Nagano, home of the 1998 Winter Olympics. The resort I stayed at was Nozawa Onsen. Here are the pictures!

Not a bad view from my room:

Is it fruit? No, it's a Japanese cake

I saw these in the office kitchen and thought there were fruit. Alas, they were traditional Japanese cakes, filled with a strange bean paste. This paste quite commonly pops up inside a variety of sweet and savoury foods (dumplings, bread, the fish biscuits you see below) and I can't say I'm a fan.

Skiing in Japan

On the weekend, I hit the slopes in Japan for the first time. I went to Ishiuchi Maruyama, which is 1 1/2 hours from Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train). Here are the pics:

The same night I got back from skiing, there was no snow in Tokyo. I got back to my apartment at 3am and there wasn't a snowflake to be seen. Fast-forward eight hours and this was the view from my window:

The mints have strange names in Japan...

Nikko

Nikko, just outside Tokyo, is like a mini-Kyoto, with temples and shrines aplenty. If, like me, you're wondering what the difference between a temple and a shrine is, temples are for Buddha and shrines are for praying to the Shinto Gods.

Jamie's Rocky moment:

To keep this temple in good nick, they built a gigantic warehouse around it. Only in Japan...