Then There Was The Food

Some claim that they heard me say that I was only out skiing simply to fill in the time between meals. The food was spectacular and quite reasonably priced.

We enjoy traditional Japanese breakfast (without the raw egg) for the first week. Miso soup, steamed rice and roll your own sushi were served everyday along with a varying range of fish (usually dried), seaweed and fungus. We never quite worked out what the orange coloured juice was but suspect it was part carrot.

I endeavoured to eat Japanese food for every meal although disappointedly, some  places went out of their way to cook western food. I was told that the Japanese visitors enjoy getting away from traditional fare.
	What none of us knew before our arrival was that Hokkaido has a great diary industry and makes chocolate second only to Switzerland. Then there was the fantastic camembert and ice cream but it was the traditional Japanese fare that really took my fancy.

Along with the great chocolate you could get a really good hot chocolate at the Mountain Hut Cafe. Expensive at $8 but it was superb, unlike the tins of something hot from vending machines for $2.60.

Hot and cold drinks outside in the snow

Everywhere you went there were vending machines. Mostly for drinks but there were others as well.

Most drink vending machines had both hot and cold drinks. This was indicated by either a blue or red strip under the item displayed. This was quite amazing because the outside temperatures could drop way below zero even during the day and the hot drinks were always really hot and would almost burn your fingers when you grabbed the tin from the machine. And the cost of keeping these drinks hot 24 hours a day?

Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, beer, juice, whatever?

I tried several different beverages from these machines and even different brands but never worked out why the coffee, tea and hot choc drinks all tasted the same but never like coffee, tea or hot choc. May be it was the long-life milk or the tins themselves.