Day 1 Japan Trip

We started our trip to Japan on Tuesday March 23 2010. Cory Fredrick, Joe Garcia and myself met up at the airport in SLC at 630 am hoping to buy zed fare tickets in All Nippon Airways from Tokyo to Sapporo. The Delta ticket agent looked and said we were not eligible for those zed fare tickets. We knew we could so we decided to just have her check us in for our flight from SLC to SFO to NRT. I had already listed for both these flights but Cory and Joe didn’t so the ticket agent gave them a little grief for using the first class line to list and activate, even though there wasn’t anybody in line. Once we did get checked in we decided to go down to our SkyWest gates and see if our agents could get us our zed fare tickets. Sure enough they could and we decided that the delta agent didn’t know how to do them. We then went to out gate and got on our flight to SFO. Once we got to SFO we went and found the international terminal and checked in for our flight to Tokyo. Just after we got checked in on of the ticket agents said that she might be able to get us our seats and she took our seat request cards and got us our seats 3 hours early. When she came back she said that she had one of us in business and 2 in coach and went ahead and out us all in business. I figured that I had the business seat because I actually listed for the flight myself and Cory and Joe had the delta agent in SLC list them and she didn’t list them for business just coach. As soon as we put our carry-ons away and sat down the flight attendants brought us champagne and dinner menus as we waited for the rest of the flight to finish boarding. We pushed back on-time at 115 and were on our way to Japan!! Once airborne and at a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet the flight attendants brought us our first round of our meal. I had the salad with oriental dressing and Tomato Florentine soup. The main dish consisted of fillet of beef with sweet potato fries. For dessert I had an ice cream sundae with strawberry and chocolate sauce and crushed peanuts. This all happened in the first hour or so of the flight. I then proceeded to put my feet up and sit back and relax and watch a few movies. I started watching Inglorious Bastards but dosed off towards the middle of the movie but I did wake up to catch the last half hour of it. I fell asleep for an hour or two and then watched the Invention of Lying and Men Who Stare at Goats. During the last hour of the flight we were served breakfast, even though it wasn’t even close to morning in Japan or in the USA. I had granola with honey, fresh fruit and a croissant. Once we landed and got through customs Cory had left his tickets for or next flight to Sapporo in the bathroom at customs and had to have someone escort him back to get them, luckily no one had picked them up. We then found the All Nippon counter and got checked in for the flight to Sapporo. Trying to go through security my backpack and skiboards wouldn’t fit through the x-ray because the restriction on carryon size is smaller than we have in the US so I had to go back and check my backpack. In Tokyo when we boarded the flight to Sapporo they first put us on a bus that took us to the plane. We got boarded up and took off. Once we got into Sapporo and got our luggage we found the subway to downtown but trying to figure out the map was a challenge until someone that spoke English told us where to go. Once we finally got to our stop we decided to walk to our hotel instead of paying for the other subway going towards it. We walked for a good mile or better and finally found the Ramada and had luckily gone down the correct street. Once we got checked in we went to the room which had four beds, a toilet room with beday and a shower room that had a bathtub and a shower but the shower was outside of the tub. The shower was really different, you sat on what looked like an upside down 5 gallon bucket with a hole in the top and had a small bucket under a faucet at your feet. You used the shower part of the faucet to rinse off then you lather up with the soap and shampoo they provided and then you filled the small bucket with water and dumped it on yourself to wash off the soap. Once we checked out the room we decided to go find something to eat. We went to a Mos Burger which was pretty good. We than walked around for a little bit and then decided to go back to the hotel and get some sleep since we were getting up early the next morning to go skiing

Day 2 Japan Trip

On Thursday we got up and had the person at the front desk make us a reservation for the bus to Niseko Ski Resort. The bus ride was about 2.5 hours to Niseko and we seen snow all the way up and thought we were going to have a god ski day. When we finally got on the mountain, the snow was hard and icy. There was very little powder and we disappointed with the snow conditions. As the day went on the snow did soften up and got a little better. It was still fun and the fact that I can say I went skiing in Japan is still an awesome thought. After we got back into Sapporo and got our bags from the Ramada we attempted to find the Capsule Hotel. We walked around downtown for a good hour or so until an American living in Sapporo walked by and asked if we needed help. He helped us find our hotel which was only a block and a half north of our first hotel; it was just down a side street that we didn’t see.

Capsule Hotel
Staying at the Capsule Hotel was an experience in itself. When we first arrived at the Capsule Hotel after circling downtown Sapporo for a good hour or so, we were greeted by the front desk staff and were told to take off our shoes and put them in a small locker, we then gave them the keys to the shoe lockers and filled out the guest information card, once checked in they told us that our capsules were on the 3rd floor, lockers in the basement and bathroom up on the 7th floor. As we were going to the lockers Cory was told he had to leave his snowboard in the lobby because it was too big to fit in the lockers, once in the basement and found our lockers, they were right; the lockers were tiny, barely a foot wide and a little over 6 feet tall. I got all my stuff in the locker including my skiboards and boots but had to pull everything out every time I needed to get something or forget to grab something when I had it all out a few seconds earlier. We then went to the 3rd floor to check out or “capsules”. The capsules are about 3 feet tall by 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. It contained a pad, blanket pillow small TV, radio/clock, mirror, small shelf and a pull down curtain that closed the opening when you were inside. There are about 40 capsules in a room that also had a small area with a couch, chairs and TV and a small bathroom that contained some toilets and s a few sinks. We then went up to the public bathroom. Once there it was completely different that I had expected. The bathroom was an Onsen, it had a small room that had some lockers and a pair of sinks where you stripped down and put your clothes in the lockers, we then went into the Onsen itself, it contained 7 shower “stalls”, 3 on one side of the room and 4 on the other side, 1 large hot tub and a steam room. The showers were really different, you sat on what looked like an upside down 5 gallon bucket with a hole in the top and had a small bucket under a faucet at your feet. You use the shower part of the faucet to rinse off then you lather up with the soap and shampoo they provided and then you filled the small bucket with water and dumped it on yourself to wash off the soap. After doing that we got in the hot tub for 10 min or so and then decided to try out the steam room. That room was hot! We went in and Joe put some water on the coals as Cory and I sat down. The wood benches inside were so hot it nearly burned our asses and nuts as we sat down. I could only stand the heat for only a few minutes before I had to get out. Every time I would inhale my lungs would burn. The thermometer inside said 91 degrees Celsius, after converting that it was 196 degrees Fahrenheit! Sitting in the hot tub after the steam room the water felt cold because of the heat difference. After we were done with the public bath we went back to our tiny lockers and got out coats and went to find something to eat. We found this small restaurant and I ordered what looked like beef noodle soup. Since the whole menu was in Japanese we had to order by looking at the pictures. My soup was good but spicy, we decide it must have been made with a chili base because it had a serious kick to it and I couldn’t even finish it because it was too hot. We than went back to the hotel and were going to take a nap for about an hour before going out to the clubs but that didn’t happen, woke up at 4am and I figured we missed the partying so went back to sleep.

Day 3 Japan Trip

The next morning we decided to stay another night at the Capsule hotel and went out and just walked around Sapporo and did some shopping. We went into a “casino” and found that gambling is illegal and that they play for prizes at their slot machines instead of money like we are used to. Their slot machines were weird and had little steel balls that dropped into a tray where the money would fall. After walking around the casino or Gaia, we found a store and went inside. All the stores had about 6 to 8 floors. For lunch we found a restaurant that served deep fried food and it was delicious. Wish we would have found that place the night before. After lunch we went back to the hotel for a couple hours and took a nap then went shopping again for a few more hours before returning to the hotel and killed some time before we went out to try and find a club. We walked around for 2 hours in the snow and all we could find was gentleman’s clubs. There were about 5 on every block. We might have gone to one the first night when we still had money.

Day 4 Japan Trip

On Saturday we decided to go back to Tokyo a day earlier. We walked back to the train terminal and got on the train to Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport and found out that the only flight on All Nippon to Tokyo-Narita left at 730am and we got to the airport around 1130am. We tried to get an ID90 on Japan Airlines but they couldn’t do it so we decided to go to Tokyo-Haneda. After getting into Tokyo-Haneda we got tickets on a bus that took us to Tokyo-Narita airport. We were going to get a hotel by the airport but they either didn’t have any rooms or were going to be anywhere from $260 to $1040 a night so we decided to sleep in the airport. Around 11pm the police and customs guards came around the only area that we could sleep in and checked passports. There were about 15 other people also sleeping there as well.

Day 5 Japan Trip

After waking up on Sunday morning we eat breakfast aand walked around the souviner shops. We checked in and proceeded to security. When we were going through one of the security agents told me I had to check my skiboards, even though I carried them on all the flights from San Fransico to Tokyo to Sapporo and back to Tokyo. We got cleared for Business Class on the flight to San Fransico and sat back and relaxed. The captain made an announcment that we were ging to have a short 7 hour flight because of a 180 mph tailwind pushing us. We were already doing 510 mph and with the tailwind the tv monitor on the plane was showing up to 768 mph at times. We ended up arriving in SFO 1 hour and 19 minutes early. We then sat in the SFO airport until 530pm waiting to get on a flight back to SLC.

The trip was fun, the skiing sucked and we said the next time we go to Japan we are staying in Tokyo. The next trip we will have better planning and reserve our hotel rooms in advance and take extra ZED/ID90 tickets as backups. I am glad I went on this trip and am one of a few people at SkyWest that can say I have been skiing in Japan.