[GoNative]

One of the things with living up this way is that we have a great community of expats living and working at the ski resort year round. They are from the US, Canada, Australia, NZ, UK and various other European countries and all of us have a love of skiing and the outdoors. Most are here for the layed back rural lifestyle surrounded by beautiful mountains, forests, rivers, lakes and coastline. We also have a great Japanese community, many of whom speak fluent english, who are here for the same reasons. Many of them have spent time overseas and live and work up here to further their english and because they prefer working for foreign owned companies. It's a very tight community and we do many things together throughout the year. All this has meant that it really hasn't been that much of culture shock to live here and it's certainly not difficult to fit in. We don't have to fully lose ourselves in Japanese culture to fit in. We can just be ourselves and enjoy the amazing lifestyle this region has to offer.