In the evening of the last day of Janurary we headed to Shinjuku station to take a night bus to Togari Onsen, Nagano. We were quite an international group, we had a Brit, a Swede, a French, an Austrian and a Czech.
It wasn't a very long journey but wasn't very comfortable and the 30 mins stops every 2 hours made the journey a lot longer. Nevertheless we arrived in the early hours of the morning in a very snowy village in the Japanese Alps.
There was so much snow. In the village there was about 2m piled up at the sides of the roads. I saw a small shrine where only the top of the stone torii arch was visible. Incredible.
So we arrived early in the morning, left our bags in lockers in the hotel and went to get sorted out for our first day's skiing. First job: rent clothing, skis and boots. What made the price of the holiday so amazing was that the price of rental was included. We soon found out why. The skis had Indiana Jones hunting them down to be put in a museum. They weren't even carving skis.
When we stopped laughing we asked about upgrades to some technology that had been developed in the last 20 years and we were directed to another rental shop down the road. The shop looked like some bloke's garage, but we went in and asked. We then laughed even harder when the 'upgrade' boots were rear-entry and, whilst the skis were carving skis, they had certainly never been waxed or sharpened.
So we set off with our rental stuff to hit the slopes.
And it turned out the infrastructure was in the same state as the rental skis. Here is a two-man lift without the luxury of a safety bar (never mind the heated seats, plastic bubbles and foot rests to which I was accustomed in Austria).
The resort had clearly not had any investment in quite some years. At times it felt quite faded and it was sad that it had seen better days. Once we had gotten over the time warp that we had entered and began skiing the smiles spread across our faces. The snow was utterly perfect.
And the views were stunning.
We were really lucky with the weather, it was often clear skied and sunny. At the top of the resort views across the valley were stunning. In the above photo you can see the resort of Nozawa Onsen where I was supposed to have skied with my parents (and how cool does that piste which goes straight over the top of the several ridges look?).
After a hard day's skiing we returned to the hotel for a dip in the (public) onsen and then our dinner (après-ski wasn't an option; it doesn't seem to exist here).
The hotel's website seemed to focus mainly upon how they make their own soba noodles and serve them in the restaurant. There was even a large glass window to look in upon the chef making the noodles every afternoon. And they were pretty tasty.
The rest of the food was like a paired down version of what me and James were served in Hakone: lots of little dishes and one larger pot which is cooked at the table along with miso soup and rice.
It was good, tasty, wholesome food but we couldn't help but yearn for a germknodel.
We had four days skiing altogether and it was a great time with lots of rather memorable moments. We seemed to spend a lot of our lift-time moaning about everyone else on the slopes with us - they were dangerously idiotic. If you don't care about skiing then don't read on because it's a rant about skiing etiquette.
For the first three days our group (except Valentina) were almost the only skiers on the mountain. The ratio of snowboarders to skiers was easily 90:10. Now, snowboarders aren't generally renown for their awareness of other users of the slope. But in Togari it was on another level. They didn't spend much time actually snowboarding (because they were hopeless at it) so they spent long amounts of time just sitting and chilling out in the most dangerous places they could find.
We were in utter disbelief at the stupidity they showed, the complete lack of common sense. Their favourite place to sit was after a steep, sharp, almost blind corner in the middle of the track. The fact that we didn't see (or be involved in) any serious accidents was a miracle.
So after you dodged these large groups of snowboarders chilling on their bums, you then had to dodge the ones who had decided to give snowboarding a go. The slopes were really quite busy in places, but they would set off (without fail) without looking up the slope. And you couldn't get to close to a snowboarder who had any momentum because they would most likely just fall over in front of you (falling over was a preference to actually turning) or attempt a trick and not land it.
I'm pissed off just thinking about it!
The other affect the amount of snowboarders there were was upon the snow. There weren't many tracks in Togari and most of them were pisted. There were a few off piste tracks but they were no fun. I attempted one on the first day and it was so difficult, the snow was so soft and deep that when you fell over your poles didn't help you stand up. And, the amount of bad snowboarders (who preferred to slip down a track rather than turn) meant there wasn't a single mogul in the resort, so there wasn't much variety to the skiing.
Now that's off my chest back to some pretty photos.
And a lovely example of 80s architecture:
This was actually my favourite restaurant on the mountain, they had cake :)
On the final evening, as we had checked out, we went to a public onsen in the town. It's so nice to have a hot bath after a day's skiing but onsen are hot. At least 40 degrees. But in the public one they had an outside one which was perfect, if you got too hot you could sit with just your legs in it and balance out the cold air with the hot water. Yum. (if you don't mind being naked in front of your female friends and strangers, that is).
And then we caught our night bus home. Don't get me started on the palaver of seating arrangements on the coach (the coach was only half full but they had issues with people spreading out), but we got home in one piece!
Next stop England!
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