Dear Vancouver,

We found your snow. It was in Hokkaido. Evidentally, it had been drinking heavily; it certainly kept falling down the entire time we were there.

Ha ha. Ha.

But seriously, folks. We left the comfort of the Dormy Inn and caught a bus to Hotel Piano at Kiroro resort. We arrived mid-morning, too early for check-in. Instead we stuffed our bags in lockers, rented snow equipment, and went skiing. My wife is a wicked awesome ski demon. Zoom zoom! Away she went. I ran into a sign.

It was a good thing, really. The sign was the only thing I could find to prevent me from entering the speed mogul ramp. That would have ended very, very badly. Jenn did the moguls later, just to prove she is more awesome than me.

After a few runs, they closed down the course we had been skiing and opened up the night runs. We decided we'd had our fun and went back to the hotel.

Remember when I said food was cheap in Japan? If you don't, you should go back and read the old blog posts. You obviously weren't paying attention the first time. It turns out, you can find an expensive restaurant if you look really, really hard at the top of a remote mountain. And it's french cuisine.

Our table was on a balcony that overlooked the hotel lobby. Below us a grand piano had been retro-fitted into a player piano and we dined to the sound of jazz piano classics. The meals themselves were a set course: you could chose big, bigger, or biggest, and you could choose your drink. (We opted for gin and tonics).

The amuse bouche was a light carrot mousse. This was followed by seven courses, each artfully arranged upon our plates. Each course was small, and very delicious. The entire meal was choreographed over 90 minutes, and involved a supporting cast of 11 different utensils, and equal number of plates, one very attentive waiter and two very satisfied Canadians.

And, yeah. We forgot our cameras in the room so no pictures.