This was a bare bones train.  No compartments to sneak  off to. Very little boozing .. they had WAY too many chaperones, in our opinion. Parents always volunteered for these cherry trips.	A chaperone smoking one of many ciggies. I don't recall there ever being complaints from the non-smokers about second-hand smoke. Everyone just fired up and puffed away.	As the trip drones on and on, it gets dark and the cramped quarters get irritating.  If I hear, "Are we there yet?" one more time, someone is going to pay with a ski pole up their nostril.

A long trip is the perfect time to listen to your Walkman with headphones .. except they hadn't been invented yet!  It's a good thing .. because there wasn't any such thing as a music  cassette yet either!	American teenagers in Japan were born without the embarrassment gene.  Here they are dancing to rock n' roll (the portable player went everywhere) in the Japanese train station, to the great amusement of the locals.	Finally! The hotel, in all its isolated glory.  There is nothing else to do here, so you'd better like to ski. Ummm .. isn't that mountain a little .. bare??

 
 

Hey!  Where's the snow??	What's the deal?? We come all the way up here to freeze our buns off, so we can go shooshing in the MUD??	Any ordinary group of teenagers would've started a mutiny by now.  Military brats, however, have to watch our mouths .. somewhat.

Whoops!  Where did that snow come from??  We were here on this same road just a second ago .. with no snow.	Then, we just turn our backs to bitch about there being no snow .. und kommt hier der Schnee .. was ist das?  translate German/French/Italian	OK, let's all take a picture.  Wait a second!! No snow again!!

 
 

Is this some kinda tourist trick they play on us gaiijins?? As soon as we turn our backs, they have 50 mama-sans with brooms spreading or sweeping away snow?  Wow! Is THAT self-referential paranoia!	Oh, I see! Here's the secret. You take a train straight up the mountain .. THAT'S where the snow is!  And this is no short hop.  It keeps going up .. and up .. and up .. and up ..	Look at the angle of these steps. This gets us really dizzy.  And, thank you very much to the person who said, "Hey! What if he loses his brakes?"  We all spent the rest of the trip wondering about every scape of metal.

What was that sound in the back??  Oh, Engineer-san, has one of these trains ever gone flying to the bottom?  He just grins, showing off three silver front teeth, which can receive a country radio station from Nashville on a clear day.	The summit.  We've gone up several thousand feet and our ears are stopped up. Someone says to pinch your nose and blow hard. The guy next to me messed up his glove trying that.  Ugh!  Don't you dare wipe that on me!	Ahhh!  The slopes! What do you mean .. lessons?  We don't need no steenkin' lessons, mon!  We're fireproof, bulletproof teenagers.  Just hop on the skis and go!  We'll learn as we head down the mountain.

The chaperones quickly learn that it's no use trying to control us, once we get on the mountain.  They just hope they can get the same number going home as they had coming up.	This was the age before flashy skis and $1,000 ski outfits.  Three pairs of Levis over long johns and four sweaters and a big jacket were all you needed.  The skis and boots were rented on base at Special Services.	Three solid days of skiing!  What heaven this trip was!  Remember the old teenage  "it could never happen to me" adage?? David Taylor broke his leg! The only one to crash & burn.  Boy, did he endure our crap for that!

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