Japow 2025 - Day 3 - Akakura Kanko, Japan

Tanuki and I have gotten into a groove! We have our new routine down! This morning we woke up early again around 6 but lay in bed til 7 or so. Gear up and head out to town, stop at our convenience store where Tanuki gets his morning brew and I get my banana milk and ice cream :) living the dream baby! By the way, the word Tanuki translates to the raccoon dog in Japan. It is a real animal here but is also known in Japan to be a shapeshifter, like a sneaky fox that is a statue when you are looking at it but then goes and causes mischief when you are not looking. The best part is it has a huge nutsack, the scrotum, that apparently has magic stretching powers and brings the Japanese good look and financial fortune. I love it! Jesse has been nicknamed Tanuki for discovering the animal early in the trip. After our gas station food breakfast, we waited for the free shuttle to Akakura Kanko, the next resort in the valley. There are tons of ski resorts in the Myoko Valley at the foothills of Mt. Myoko and we are exploring all of them. Once we arrived to Akakura Kanko, we realized our first resort yesterday was a tiny family resort, this was much more legit and bigger scaled, huge hotel mid mountain, more food and lodging, a gondola, a lot more vert and trees to ski, so we were stoked again! We tried to figure out the whole mountain and found some untouched goods far skiers left, no one had skied these perfect pillows. We hopped off the lift and hit it! Found some great powder and some big drops, once we skied to the bottom there was two ski patrollers flagging us down. After 3 minutes of trying to understand their broken english and our lack of no Japanese language, they gave us a warning and put an "X" on our lift tickets saying if it happened again that we would be kicked out of the resort. Apparently you cannot ski under the lift in Japan and they talked to us all about ski boundary and closed areas. The sad thing is almost all the trees are closed, I understand but also it isn't marked that great, so now we know why all the untouched powder is untouched, even though there are plenty of poachers. We immediately found the highest elevation trees still filled with powder and had a blast lapping one lift in those trees. We hit a ton of snow pillows in trees and floated down the mountain. Then we did some exploring and touring all over the mountain, such a beautiful view and the coolest mid mountain hotel where people walk out naked from their rooms into their private onsen (hot mineral water baths), looking down at the ski runs. We went to get a kebab for lunch but they were sold out so we had lunch at the base. I couldn't resist the bakery items, delicious, had to get soft serve ice cream, and then the chefs special for the day, a delicious ramen with all sorts of goods. Tanuki got the mushroom pizza and fries. After we hit some more big drops and sent it through the trees! We came back home, and hit our nightly routine of some cold drinks and taking a long dip in the Onsen. Marvelous day!
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