Japan certainly lives up to it reputation of deep pow pow, and in addition, what a tripped out country! The land of machines and lots of weird ass raw fish.

We travelled to HAKUBA and rode the local mountains in this area. The Japanese are the most friendly and polite people in the world, added to that they are also some of the coolest and chilled out people I've ever met. The Hakuba area is also where the 1998 Olympics were held. The mountain is awesome and Happo, one of the local areas, is never packed except on weekends, but you will find this wherever you go. Happo has sick powder lines you can ride all day long and get new tracks from start to finish. Goryu is also fun although a bit flat and you can snowboard across from Hakuba 47. 47 is where you will find the park which has a sick pipe that is groomed every day and is only open for about three to four hours so it stays in perfect shape. The rest of the park, then jumps and rails, are open all day. When the pipe starts to get trashed they shut it down and groom it. I mean, who are these people? I've never seen such good park maintenance. There are also two big kickers around 45 - 50 feet and a 30 footer as well as a bunch of smaller ones.

The rails are basic boxes and there is one nice flat bar, but if you go to Japan to ride rails you are a "bleeping" idiot. We rode powder for an entire morning on a blue bird day and then hit the park for a few hour from around 10.30am, which is when the pipe opens, and then rode fresh pow until the lifts shut. Although a heads up, especially at 47, because they have cameras and the ski patrol are hardcore, they will take your pass if they see you going out of bounds. The other mountains are not so bad and you only lose your pass for that day (the lift tickets are like a memory card and you get a new one every day paying a returnable AU$10 deposit). So just keep an eye out for both cameras and ski patrol if you decide to ride off piste.

Surprisingly it was very cheap to eat out and honestly we ate out all the time and drank more than our combined weight in beer. You're looking at roughly AU$15 - $25 per person for a meal plus drinks. You can buy your booze from the 7/11 for $1.20 a can and a Jim Bean 750ml will cost you about AU$13. Going out you would pay around AU$5 a drink for beer or spirits so this is pretty good value. The service can be great but like anywhere can also be really bad. Some of the food made me nearly throw up and I suggest that unless you are really brave don't try anything you don't understand or aren't familiar with. Apart from this you can get some fantastic dishes and as far as we were concerned the bbq joints are the way to go. I'd suggest ordering two serves of each dish as most of the food comes in quite small servings. We also ordered what could easily equate to sh#tloads of beer and never paid more the AU$25 which as far as I'm concerned has got to be some of the best value around.

902 Garage is the local snowboarding store and they have all the hardwear you need, but be warned, it's not cheap. So if you need to buy gear (snowboard gear) do it in Tokyo.

On the way to Hakuba from Tokyo we stopped at a food marketplace and we tried Octopus (with eye balls) that was extremely squishy and I can now tell you, sickening. I'm not sure what this dish is exactly, but if you ever come across it my advice is - don't eat it - ever! Even for a dare.