By: Sweiled

DAY 1:

I arrived at the meeting point close to Tokyo station on time and arrived there at 11am. It wasn't hard to find my way. The other Dears were easy to spot and I just followed them. Since I didn't know my bus number I had to wait in line for a while, but I didn't really mind that.

The buses finally left close to 12 and we got to hear a message from Gackt on our way to the freeway which was a little bit hyper and crazy and very funny. :) They had told us that it might take 5 hours to get to our resort, but in the end it took only 3 or so. We stopped for lunch on the way and I got some yummy curry at the rest station.

The first three buses stayed at the same hotel which was a pretty big building with 10 floors and indoor/outdoor onsen bath which made me very, very happy. We got our rented ski wear on the way to our rooms and had an hour and a half to get set and dressed. I shared a room with 5 other Dears who were pretty nice. :) No complaints at all.

At 5pm we met at the bus and headed for the ski resort. We ate dinner there which was craptastic and cold to boot and then we got our rented skis and snowboards and had the whole evening to do some sport.

After some time Gackt appeared with his friends and they joined us on the slope. :) I was trying to help my friend down a steep part when he suddenly slid down next to us and asked if she's o.k. :) He wore the face covering outfit from the snowboarding pictures he showed on some recent program. Still it was great to hear him talk without a microphone or something. He has a really, really nice voice. He gave my friend a tip and then headed off.

I went down the slope a few times and Gackt would usually go up and wait till a ton of Dears made it up too and they would go down the slope a little, wait again and then continue on. Some people were telling the on-lookers to stay back and to not stop in the middle of the slope, but it didn't help much. :)

Later in the evening when my friends had made it down safely, I saw some snow mobiles standing near the lift. One of Gackt's friends had an accident and had to be brought down. Nothing serious but still. Afterwards the whole group was just standing there and smoking when suddenly one of the guys ran up a hill and made a salto backwards down. He did another one and then people were shouting for Gackt to do one too. :) He said no at first, but in the end he did both a salto forward and a backward flip in the snow :) Kakkoii yo! After that the snow mobiles brought them further up to a private slope. Since it was getting cold (wonderful weather and no wind made it pretty nice during the evening), I went down one last time. My last Gackt sighting was when he came down with his friends on the snow mobile just before our bus left.

I met up with my friends in the outdoor onsen of our hotel and we joked around a little and had some fun. After a while the bath started filling up and the others left. I stayed till someone shouted over from the men's side that they were starting to do Karaoke downstairs, so I got out and headed down.

The Karaoke was probably the best thing on the whole trip. Some of the guys imitated Gackt's voice so well that when my friend passed by in the lobby she thought that Gackt himself was singing :) Everyone was so completely into it, doing the dances and everything. My favourites were the Vanilla performance by one of the male fans where two other guys made the according fanservice, hehe. We did U+K twice, including the dance and the "nami ga kuru" at the end :) It was incredibly entertaining. In the end on of the guys sang Saikai Story and he was amazingly good. If I had closed my eyes, I would have believed that Gackt was singing next to me. Everyone looked close to tears when he ended. It was really a wonderful experience and a very warm welcome for me :) There's going to be pictures at some point. I hope they reach me.

So after an eventful day I went to sleep close to 2am in the morning. The next day would start at 6am with breakfast!

DAY 2

I finished the last entry saying that we'd have to get up at 6am for breakfast... well, I thought I could sleep at least till 6 since that would leave an hour for eating, cleaning up and getting dressed. Plenty of time, right? Well my roommates didn't think that way. Some got up at 5am!! I gave up at 5:30 and sat around zombiefied till it was time for breakfast. I was the first one of my room to leave even though I was the last one to get up :)

The hotel had a wonderful and delicious breakfast buffet, but I was still tired so my appetite was pretty much non-existent. I found a place at the far end of the dining hall and sat together with the other foreigners who had even less sleep than me. We ate our food and then left to get dressed in our ski wear again. We met up at our respective buses at 7am and left for the ski resort.

On the bus we got our numbers for the event. Seems like they were chosen randomly because our guide had a list with numbers and people's names. When we arrived at the ski resort, we went outside to the open space at the end of the ski slope and split up in groups of fifty and four colors. I was Red 102.

After a while Gackt and his friends came out and he introduced them to us. Each of them would become one of the team leaders. They drew different colored balls with numbers from 1-4 for each of the groups. My group got Ju-ken :) I was quite happy with that till I saw a friend of mine get You as team leader O_O She's so lucky!! Some lucky group got Gackt, but none of us foreigners were in that one, sigh.

Gackt announced that the winners would get the Korean version of his Sixth Day CD plus a sign with YOUR NAME on it! We definitely weren't thrilled by the CD but the sign with our name in it sure made us want to win :)

The first game was tug-o-war. Really long ropes for two teams to grab on to on opposite sides, and the team that pulled the other over a red line would win. Ju-ken told us that our battle cry would be GA-KU-TO and that we'd pull at the TO. So far so good. I dug myself a foothold in the snow and got ready. It was over in no time. We were the first team to lose, that's how fast it went. I didn't hear a single Ga-ku-to and there wasn't any team work. Everyone was just randomly pulling...

We were asked to leave the center square and sit outside watching the other teams go at it. We shook hands with Ju-ken since we had plenty of time and he told us that we could still win if we were good enough at the other competitions. He's really cool. :)

In the end You's team bet Gackt's team and went to the finals. Gackt said something along the lines of You better not embarrassing him and that he should win this. Even during the actual fight, Gackt was cheering on You's team. We were too far away to hear or see much of it. You's team won in the end and his team tackled the poor guy and threw him to the floor. :) It looked really dangerous for a moment but he got back up again and looked o.k.

The next competition was a three-legged relay race but with 5 people not two. First the team leaders would run around a cone and when they reached the start line again the first team would start. The team leaders would run again after the last group. Ju-ken made a pretty good start but we sucked badly. Some groups were pretty good but most of us were pretty terrible. You was walking beside each group and trying to make them keep the rhythm. Gackt was also cheering his team on or as he later admitted, cursing it when it didn't do well enough. :) Ju-ken was just standing there... he obviously didn't really care about winning much. :)

We ended up not being last. You's team was. :) They started announcing the times from the last one and at first I thought we were pretty good since You's team had to have been good and we were named after his team... but we were the second last one... ahem... still there was much cheering since we didn't really mind and we HAD beat You's team so that's something :)

Sometimes Chachamaru would pass by and talk to Ju-ken... he's amazingly beautiful. I never really was that much of a fan of Chachamaru, but he's a really funny, gentle and beautiful person. :) Must have been fun to be on his team! You undressed sometime during the first competition and only wore a short-sleeved shirt most of the time. He gave such a relaxed feeling, even though he was surrounded by 700 fangirls. Gackt always ran to the stage for the breaks but the others stayed with their teams most of the time.

The last event was something like basketball. They had a tiny basket really high up in the air with red and white balls that had to be thrown into the basket. Each basket got surrounded by two teams and one team has red balls and the other white balls. This was the last competition and each ball was worth 2 points if it ended up inside the basket. So it would be possible for the last team to catch up and actually win.

I think I got in four or even five balls. I had chosen a spot with the sun in my back and was able to actually aim. I got hit by a lot of balls on their way down... one ball got mine while it was heading inside the basket and knocked it in of course! Well... not like we really had a chance of winning though. :) It took only two minutes, but I was breathing hard by the end.

After that last competition, we headed for lunch. I met up with the others again and had a terrible curry. The others had chosen wisely and decided to ask for something else. The curry tasted burned and was pretty much uneatable. I ate my salad and some rice. We still had time till 1pm when the results would be announced. I got dressed in my normal clothes again and decided to walk up the slope while the others were building snow sculptures.

They played Gackt on the speakers so I went up to a small closed restaurant with a large veranda, took a chair and enjoyed the scenery and the music while waiting. And I got really bad sunburn. :) I really should have known better but the weather was so nice and it felt so good to sit there and enjoy the warm sun on my face. Oh well... I guess it was worth it.

The prize ceremony wasn't that great. In the end we didn't end up last so that was reason enough for some cheering. We thanked Ju-ken and watched as the others got their prices. The third place ended up getting a chibi-keychain from the last tour. I was surprised to see my friend on that team! The second place got the keychain and something else and the first place, which was of course Gackt's team, got the CDs which he had signed during the break and handed out one at a time by calling everyone forward by their name and shaking their hands. Oh, jealousy is an ugly beast...

His team had won the second competition by one second and the last one by one ball. Gackt wasn't pleased by their performance but he was obviously still happy that they had won, heh. Every team leader said something about his group. Most of them mentioned good team work. Ju-ken said that there hadn't been an ounce of team work in our team... ahem... well, he could have tried a little bit harder too but it's not like any of us were angry. He was nice to be around with, so no complaints there.

Chachamaru was really funny. He said that his group consisted of very gentle people, so a competition really wasn't for them. But still they had tried. He told them to live gently :) He seems like a really, really nice and funny guy :)

After that Gackt asked if we liked it and we replied yes of course. He told us that the sun had done us good and that we looked even more beautiful now... I felt like he was mocking me since I already knew that I was badly sunburned at that time :) Still, it's really not possible to be mad at him :) He told us that they'd like to continue this and try again next year and introduced the owner of this place. He said that he got the idea for this trip in January and thought it would be impossible to manage but they got this resort here. He asked us to visit here in our free time ... ahem... not likely :) If you want to visit it though it's the Ca et La resort in Oze, Gunma. (More information can be found in our Places of Interest: Japan Section)

That was the end of it. Everyone left the stage and I had a last chance to look at Gackt in all his wonderful glory when he walked by. Ah... the prettiness!

After that I got my stuff and got on the first bus. I filled the last spot and ended up with the other three foreigners again :) I was so tired that I slept through most of the trip though, while listening to Love Letter till the batteries ran out. In the end we got to listen to Gackt's farewell message but they only played it once, unlike the welcome message. I tried to record it but forgot to take out my headphones and so it got all messy and incomprehensible... sigh. He played Love Letter in Korean in the end which he had just recorded. It was a bittersweet ending to that trip.

At Tokyo station we all said good-bye and went off to our respective homes. It was a really fun but also very exhausting weekend. If I get the chance I would probably go again... I wanna be on Gackt's or Chachamaru's team though :) Well, there's no chance in hell that will happen, but I can still hope. :)

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