Ski lesson

A quick note before I fall asleep on Friday night.

We're having an easy, relaxing ski weekend at "Tangram Ski Circus." Lucinda had her first ski lesson today - and told me afterwards, "I love skiing!" Words to warm my heart. After the lesson was over, she insisted on trekking up the bunny hill several times to show us how she can ski down a mild slope and stop herself.

She will have lesson #2 tomorrow and, we were told, will go up on the lift! That astonishes. Her lesson was almost entirely in Japanese because we are the only "gai-jin" (foreigners) we've seen staying at the hotel - Lucinda told us that she couldn't understand much, but watched the other girls to figure it out. They didn't teach her the word "snowplow" but did teach her how to do it.

I'm very pleased about her willingness to risk failure/falling to try sthg new. Blaine says she likes the fact that I'm a better skier than he is, and I've tried mightily to keep a positive attitude at all times - that is, not to scold her, to repeat how fun I think skiing is, and to be gentle and patient as we trekked around renting skis, putting on her equipment and getting her ready for the lesson. I realize, along the lines of celebrating religious holidays, that the person who cares the most about that thing has to take responsibility for making it happen.

The resort is totally family-focused - it's the Tokyo Hotel Madarao and the mtn is Tangram Ski Circus on Mt. Madarao. We took the bullet train from Tokyo to Nagano (site of the 199-something Winter Olympics) and then a commuter train into the mtns to a hotel shuttle bus. Except for skiing, we never leave the building. Meals are mostly included and we and most families eat b'fast, lunch and dinner in the buffet/cafeteria, which has mostly traditional Japanese foods - sushi, marinated seafood like octopus and scallops, stir fried fish dishes, ramen and udon noodle soups, Japanese curry, lots of rice - plus pasta and french fries, which the kids favor. There's so much food that it feels like we are on a cruise ship: is it really time to eat again?

There's no town here, no nightlife of any kind. The slopes are mainly green (easy) and blue (intermediate) with springlike corn snow and soft packed powder, and one short black/expert run this early in the season. The size of the mtn is more like East Coast skiing, but the snow is much better. Blaine and I talk about our previous skiing experiences - he learned to ski at college at Mt. Spokane and later went to Switzerland during his Eastern Europe stay, and I lived in Aspen for 2 yrs after college - but these adventures were so long ago that it's pretty absurd to try to identify with them much anymore.

Anyway, along with skiing, there's a hill for sledding with a moving walkway to get you to the top, a relaxing public bath (called an "onsen", VERY traditional Japanese thing to do) with a hot spring bath and separate facilities for men and women bec you are naked, plus a swimming pool and childcare for Arno. He can take his first lesson at age 4.

Not a place you'd come to for a week, but fine for Thurs to Sun if the main goal is to get some rest, avoid daily life chores and get a 5 yr old girl on skis for the first time.