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At Momo Beach, we were unloaded from the ferry and asked to line up our hand luggage and then main luggage for the police to pass over their sniffer dog. He seemed much more interested in his ball but did eventually take a good sniff and then we were then allowed Read more…

To acclimatise we decided to spend a couple of days fairly close to the airport on Mactan Cebu Island, in a place known for independent travellers, called Maribago.  It was a busy place with locals mixed in with Fillipino tourists, many Koreans and an odd European.  We stayed a hotel Read more…

Just a quick update  !! The last post might have sounded a bit down on the Philippines???  Tired, heat shock etc. We’ve now got back into a more “Asia” backpacker mindset but, honestly, there hasn’t been much need to, people wise. Traffic wise definitely need to be in Asia mode Read more…

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone We hadn’t even left Japan and we were starting to lament about how lovely the Japanese people were. This was prompted from a 2 hour wait in a bag drop queue for a flight to Manila surrounded by Filipinos. Unlike Read more…

And as the kids say these days “and just like that”, or “how did that happen?” the instructing season was over for us both The last couple of weeks seemed to be on fast forward ! Maybe it was because in early February there had been 2 sets of Read more…

Last week, we had two consecutive days off, which coincided with the Snow Festival at Asahikawa (the nearest city to us only 1 hour 15 mins away by train).  We planned to head off in the morning, but fresh snowfall the night before led us to change our plan and Read more…

So in the small world that is ski instructing, 2 Japanese colleagues from last season at Club Med are in furano teaching for a different ski school !! We bumped into them on our 2nd day ! Not knowing they were in Furano…. Anyway, we’ve been threatening to meet up Read more…

So now we are in full swing of the season. We have had a few warm days, 2 days of really baltic weather (minus 34 with wind chill with winds up to 70kmph), and everything in between. My Aussie kids I was teaching in the two really baltic days really Read more…

We think we picked well when we chose FISS over the other 2 job offers we received. Our decision was mainly down to having been to the resort for 4 days last year (even though we always like to explore new places) and liked the look of the beginners’ slopes Read more…

The start of the season was blighted by a cold/flu that was going around all the instructors It made me (Pete) doubt if I did still really enjoy teaching…….. but then suddenly I felt more human again, energy levels rose and I was back to loving it We Read more…

So working for FISS has been great so far the 3 bosses are cool, all the instructors are a good laugh and the apartment they found us is great. The bosses put on a get to know each other social early in the season and paid for drinks and Read more…

We have arrived in Furano. 3 days on still getting a bit of jet lag. Hopefully tonight I won’t see between 1am and 3am again. We have been to the Town Hall to register, got our 7 different coloured bags for our rubbish, got a Japanese SIM each and checked Read more…

So it is once again time to pack the skis and snowboards and make our way to the slopes. We took the opportunity to meet my cousin and her family in London and, luckily, my other cousin from the Wirral was also in London with her family. How fab! Once Read more…

Sorry its been a while……. travelling Japan was so incredible that we’ve kinda forgotten to post since being home…. The Isle of Man isn’t that boring honest It does seem to centre around bikes ( of all shapes and sizes for Pete anyway ). Issac , pictured below, won Read more…

They say a picture says a 1,000 words, so this post is a lot of photos. Our staff-accommodation for four months set the bar pretty low. It reminded us of our backpacking years when we met 25 years ago! For our mid-season four-day holiday, we went to another ski resort Read more…

Back in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo we met up with two ski instructors we worked with in Club Med, Yuko and Charlie.  It was great to catch up and very easy having a Japanese guide to translate the menu.  Yuko took us to a great place where you Read more…

Tropical no less !!! We took a two hour flight South East from Fukuoka to one of the Okinawan Islands called Ishigaki.  Although not a tiny island we hoped it would give an opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle of cities and the possibility to travel to other islands. Read more…

Pete had heard about an amazing road , famous among bikers ( from one of his snowboard students who was a biker) but it happened to be on Kyushu – the third huge island making up Japan.  So we took another bullet train an hour and a half south to Read more…

Before we left Osaka, we went to a place for okonomiyaki – pancakes with cabbage and different fillings.  I chose scallops and Pete had bacon in his.  It was amazing watching them make them on a massive griddle in the middle of the restaurant, then they got delivered in front Read more…

It’s a bit of rarity for Pete to take control of the daily tourist planning but he was feeling “temple’d out” so another day around Kyoto wasn’t floating his boat. However another 30mins further on the train there was Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake. So Pete had found somewhere to Read more…

One of Pete’s ski students very kindly offered us his apartment in Osaka to stay in.  He also recommended a trip to Koyosan, of which we had never heard of.  Upon arrival at the train station, it seemed we were the only Western tourists who hadn’t – they were all Read more…

Domestic flights can be pretty cheap so we flew 1 hour to Kobe which is a huge city that in 1995 was struck with a huge earthquake followed by fire. At the great hanshin-awaji earthquake memorial we learned all about the devastation and how it rebuilt itself. This included negotiating Read more…