Nagano, Host 1998

You heard it here first: Japan is going to be the hot new ski destination for the 21st Century.  My first perceptions of skiing in Japan probably were based upon stories from the height of the Japanese bubble economy of the 90’s.  I thought it would be extremely expensive and the slopes crowded with 30 minute lift lines,.. no wait that is the reality at Blue Mountain, Ontario. The truth is, skiing in Japan was just the opposite: negligible lift lines, lots of snow, great food and it wasn’t all that expensive.

I arrived in Narita early in the morning and Mike’s flight, arriving 8 hours later, was delayed by an hour meaning that we missed the last train to Nagano.  So we booked some tickets on the Haku bus.  In the end it is probably the best way to get from Narita to Nagano as you avoid having to navigate through Tokyo with your skis and we got service right to the hotel door. We stopped at a service centre on the way where there were cakes and random gift-wrapped confections of every description.

We arrived at the Yamano hotel late in the evening.  The hotel room was very spacious and we wisely opted for half board.  We were served Western breakfasts and the Japanese supper was always excellent.  Monaca San looked after us well; highly recommended.

The hotel was located right across the street from the Olympic ski jumping stadium and a 200m walk to Happo One ski resort.  Apparently I was incorrectly calling it Happo 1 for the majority of the trip until I was told it was pronounced Happo oh nay. It had recently rained when we arrived but there was still plenty of snow.

Shinkasen

We had a day trip on the train to Matsumoto which is a fairly large city and toured a Japanese castle.  Of course we didn’t travel all this way to avoid Tokyo so we took a Shinkasen for 2 hours and were in the centre of Tokyo, with our ski gear.  We found our hotel and explored this massive urban jungle. Tokyo is like the intensity and energy of New York with the quirkiness of London multiplied by 10.  The food in Japan is excellent, I don’t think we had a bad meal while we were there.  A reoccurring game on the trip was “surprise me” where we would buy a random beverage from the numerous 7-11s.  The ideal drink would be one where it could not be easily determined what the contents were inside the can due to lack of English (there were plenty of drinks that met this criteria).  If the challenger could not finish the drink, they had to pay for it.

Tokyo BBQ Alley

Skiing: Silver

The skiing here was quite good, the lift lines were non existent  and there was a variety of trails, but they weren't numerous.  The vertical was  1000m.  On Happo One there seemed to be numerous runs with moguls, not many wide open groomer trails.  At Hakuba 47 there was an excellent terrain park, and more wide open trails, well maintained trails good for carving. The border-cross course was a lot of fun too.  Both ski areas are quite large.  The conditions were okay, it was obvious this place gets a lot of snow but it was pretty icy when we were there.  The rain probably didn't help.  The food on the hills was great too, nothing beats a giant bowl of udon for lunch on the slopes.  In complete contrast to France, there were no opportunities for off-piste skiing.

Off-piste: Bronze

The jet lag had taken its toll on us but on the two occasions we ventured out in search of apres ski and we were unsuccessful.  We may have been totally ignorant and looking in the wrong places but we had no luck.  The base area around the lifts seemed to close when the lifts did.  We were told Echo Land is where it's at. Hakuba seemed quite spread out so we had to walk a fair bit (20 mins) to get to Echo Land, we could not find any bar that had anything significant going on, the place was deserted.  We went to the large Cherry Pub for a beer but were the only people in it.   It probably didn't help that we were there during the weekdays.  All is not lost though, the lack of nightlife in Hakuba is more than made up for by the nightlife in Tokyo.

Overall: Silver

Marc says: "It's Japan, what's not to like?  Very friendly people, insanely fast trains and just an overall unique experience.  The food was also amazing, you must find a hotel with half board and good food, we were lucky with the Yamano. It goes without saying; great sushi in Tokyo.    Skiing was good but I imagine it can be really good with fresh snow. The place get 4-10m of snowfall a year, too bad it didn't decide to fall while we were there."