We took the high speed train to the Mt Naeba & Kagura resort area a little up north. High speed train takes 77 minutes. We were staying at the Mt. Naeba area so had to take the bus from the train station about 40 mins. All in all literally door to door was about 3 hours. Such great snowbarding so close to Tokyo!! It snowed the days we were there. We rode on powder and it was really great riding. The mountains are huge, there are tons of trails and tons of lifts. A ridiculous amount of lifts actually. I don't know if it was a slow weekend but there was virtualy no waiting. We rode almost a different trail every single time! We took the longest Gondola ride in the world (they call it the 'Dragonola') to the Kagura mountain side on Saturday. It was so powdery that it was almost too difficult to ride in the flat areas and I kept getting stuck. The temperature wasn't too cold either. They even sell 2 hour or 4 hour lift tickets so we rode on Sunday for a few hours too. Prices are so much cheaper than lift tickets in the Northeast US - equivalent to $45 for all access to all mountains. And the conditions were so much better, it really was a fantastic trip!
We stayed on the Naeba side because we wanted to go to this bar called Snodeck. A very international bar at the base of the snowboard park. Cool people, good pizza and fun, chill place. The rest of the town is pretty dead and that was pretty much the only happening place in town, some weekends they have live djs. The owner/manager also runs a small ryokan-type accomodation. Dirt cheap but it really was the just basics if that. It's about $25 per person per night and you get a room with futons
a space heater
on tatami mats
(I'll post actual pics soon)
There was a small tv (all japanese channels), clean sheets and towels but shared bathrooms. Let's just say we roughed it for a few nights. It was convenient because it's right across the street from the Snodeck bar. But it was absolutely freezing in the room, the only heat is from the space heaters so needless to say we will not be staying there again. We went traditional this one time but it's not like we can't afford a regular hotel so think we will treat ourselves from now on. ;)
It was a great weekend and now that we've learned a lot about how to get there, the mountain, accomodations and everything, we wonder if we should go back or try a whole new mountain... Guess we'll see, there's plenty of snow in Japan to explore!
2 comments:
sounds like a fun weekend! and very jealous of the snow. no seven springs for me - it rained ALL long weekend in pittsburgh. was really depressing - how did you go to school there? :)
Without your description, I would have thought Kenn was brushing his teeth- not having a bowl of noodles!
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