Takino cross country ski and tube

Hello,

We tried out Takino Snow World.  It is a short hop, skip, and a jump south of Sapporo.  We took the subway and bus to get there.  Takino is a great park with lots of snow, family activities, and inexpensive entertainment.  This first photo is taken from the observation tower near the entrance.  Behind me is the parking lot (not scenic), and in front you can see the many skiers getting ready.  They have both downhill and cross country skiing.  The downhill course is on the right side of the photo.  It is a single beginner run with one chairlift.  The large lodge on the left of the photo houses the rental shop, locker rooms, a gift shop, restaurant, and a giant stuffed flying squirrel that may be one of the park's mascots.

On the left hand side of the photo you can see a covered walkway and a smaller building.  This houses the cafeteria that we went to for lunch.  In the distance there are mountains, though I don't know which ones.

We went with Adit, his wife Nina and daughter Raya, Olga and her son Valdis, Tanya and Jody.  Tanya spent most of the day cross country skiing.  Bre, Jody and I tried both tubing and cross country skiing.

Here is a photo of the staircase up to the viewing area.  It was quite a long spiral staircase.  When I went down it I went so fast that I started to get dizzy from the spinning motion.

Here is a view of the giant stuffed flying squirrel with Olga and Valdis.  According to the English brochure about the park the squirrels name is Kinotan.

Here is a photo of Adit and Prya with the same squirrel.

The tubing is free!  Here we are waiting in line to go down the S-shape course.  There were many other people waiting in line as well. The walls of the course have been built up very high so that you can do big banking turns around each corner.

I put together a 2 minute video of the tubing.  The clip includes a brief appearance by Jody and a final run down the straight tubing course.  I call it the chuckle run because most of the video is just me chuckling on my way down the hill, so be warned.

Prya discovered this awesome indoor playground.  She didn't want to leave it, even for lunch.  The netting is attached to the ceiling with large ropes and there is netting to keep the kids from getting anywhere they could fall.  I really liked this playground and wished I could play on it too.

There was light snow throughout the day.  Bre and I noticed that many of the snowflakes seemed to be perfectly symmetrical.  This one was photographed on my hat with the macro setting on the camera.

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre)