For the past few days now, everyone at the lodge has been following the news about the troubles at the Nuclear power plant in Fukushima, North of Japan. Unfortunately all our fears have come true and the situation has progressively got worse instead of better. When Al and Lucie left we all felt it was just precautionary and not really neccessarry but as the news has unfolded we have all felt more concerned, as have family and friends back home.

With this in mind, the seasonaires at the lodge, with the advisement from both Sarah and Andy from Snow Season Japan have now decided to cut their season short and leave the country at the next opportunity, including myself.

Last night was a frantic attempt for everyone to change their flights to an earlier date. With my future flight to Australia planned at the begining of April, i was not really keen to fly to Sydney straight away with the prospect of having to find a job, so in a moment of spontaneous madness i decided to join fellow seasonaires Ray and G to….. Thailand!

This really was a last minute decision, upon calling my flight ticket company the good news was it would cost very little to re-route my flight, so once i finally decided, poor Ray had the horrible job of finding the cheapest flight for us to get to Bangkok at the earliest time. This proved to be a nightmare, with flight prices changing every few minutes, most likely because many people were doing the same as us. A couple of hours later Ray finally secured a flight for us and we also had a new member to our Thailand adventure, Joel who also decided to change his plans and come along with us for a while.

I haven’t quite decided how long i’ll stay in Thailand but i cannot wait to head over there. It will be really nice to spend a bit more time with the guys from the lodge before we go our seperate ways, and it will make the whole prospect of having to leave Japan early a bit more easier.

The past week has been very surreal. I have had such an amazing time here and i have enjoyed every minute of it. Seeing the amount of destruction the Tsunami has done to this country, along with the growing troubles at the Nuclear power plant it is very sad reading about how hard this has hit the country and its people.

Inevitably all our minds have been taken off our season and snowboarding, but i do hope we all get one last day’s riding together and have some fun before we all have to say goodbye.