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Its time to think about skiing in Japan next season! Here are some great specials available for the coming season. If you have questions or wish to make an enquiry about any of these, please fill in the form at the bottom of the page.

Nozawa Onsen, snow monkeys and fire festival package

Experience the best of Nagano with this package. Staying at Resort Inn Toemu in Nozawa Onsen, the package includes;

• 7 nights accommodation at Resort Inn Toemu
• Breakfast included daily
• 5 day non-consecutive lift pass for Nozawa Onsen Ski Resort
• Sukiyaki dinner during your stay
• Trip to see the world famous Jigokudani snow monkeys

This package is available for any 7 night stay taking in the Fire festival (held on January 15). It will be hard to find better accommodation for a lower price than this. The fire festival is a busy time in Nozawa so make sure you book early to avoid missing out.

This package is available in a range of accommodation options:

Bunkroom/Share Accommodation – ¥51500
Standard double or triple Japanese style room – ¥58500
Ensuite – ¥71500

Children (up to 14 years old) – ¥33600

Masazo Midweek Special

Staying midweek is the smartest way to ski in Japan. The hardworking Japanese concentrate their time on the slopes to weekends with most only able to manage day trips and overnight stays. Weekday lift queues at Nozawa Onsen are pretty much non-existent.

Masazo is a fantastic place to stay for anyone wanting a Japanese experience. The rooms are Japanese style, the hosts are super friendly, and the food is sublime. This package is available after January 15, 2011.

The Masazo midweek package includes:

• 5 nights accommodation at Masazo (cannot include Saturday night)
• Breakfast included daily
• Welcome dinner
• 4 day non-consecutive lift pass at Nozawa Onsen Ski Resort

Double or triple accommodation

Adults – ¥42000
Kids (up to 14 years old) –  ¥31250

Extend to a 6 night stay with a 5 day lift pass for an extra ¥8500/adult and ¥6500/child

Haro Apartments One week stay

Haro Apartments Family Special with Monkey Park visit

This package is suitable for families with small children who require self contained accommodation.

Japan is viewed as a place of the high tech and modern. When imagining daily life in Japan, bullet trains, robots, and skyscrapers spring to mind. Visiting Sakaemura, next to Nozawa, was like taking a step back in time to the Japan of a hundred years or so ago. Being spread out over such a huge area of moutains and valleys, things like convenience stores, vending machines and cell phone reception are but dreams of the future for the children of Sakaemura.

Sakaemura is stunningly beautiful. Whereas most of rural Japan is blighted by hillsides blasted away to protect from landslips, power lines and concrete, Sakaemura is relatively untouched. Their really are not all that many people living in Sakaemura, and the ‘town’ area is nothing more than a few shops. In the mountains you can find the odd restaurant and souvenir shop, as Sakaemura gets a few tourists, especially in Autumn when the leaves change.

Sakaemura gets an incredible amount of snow in winter. Morimiyanohara station holds the Japan record for highest snow levels at a whopping 7.85 metres. Due to the high levels of snow, houses are built tall and thin so that they don’t get buried. There is even a part of Sakaemura where so much snow falls that the roads are unable to be cleared during the winter. People living in that area are evacuated to apartments in a different part of the village for winter.

Sakaemura has plenty of onsens, perhaps the most unique is Kiriake Onsen. Once you arrive in the carpark of Kiriake Onsen grab a spade (you can borrow one for free) and head down to the river. an onsen trickles out from the riverside into the river, so you can dig your own hole in the river bed and take a bath when it fills up with hot water. This place is really spectacular.

Sakaemura is a long way out of the way and you definitely need a car to make your visit worthwhile. It’s a great place to go for a drive and just explore in the mountains. Please note that a lot of roads are closed in winter and driving conditions are difficult on the ones that stay open.

Over the years sushi has grown in popularity in the west. Healthy and delicious, the high level of fish in the Japanese diet is said to be the reason why Japanese life expectancy is the highest in the world. The roll sushi that you see in shopping mall and city centre sushi bars is not actually what springs to mind when most Japanese people think sushi, this is known as maki-zushi (and by the way sushi rolls with teriyaki chicken in them are unheard of here). The most popular kind of sushi is “nigiri-sushi”, a small ball of sushi rice with a slice of raw fish on top.

A few favourites from Sushiro in Osaka

If you are ever in the suburbs of a city in Japan, keep an eye out for a big sushi train chain store. A few of the most common places are Kappasushi (they have a store in Iiyama, nearby Nozawa Onsen), Sushiro, and Kurazushi. Due to the high volume of customers and quick turnover, as well as state of the art computerised sushi train mechanisms, these stores are able to sell excellent sushi at incredibly cheap prices. Apart from special order dishes, any sushi which comes around on the conveyor belt will set you back only around 100yen.

Due to the high rent in urban centres in Japan, unfortunately you are unlikely to find a decent 100yen sushi train near a big station. City sushi trains generally have a system of differentiating price of sushi by the colour of the plate.

Better late than never. Here is a look at last season in Nozawa Onsen.

I arrived in Nozawa Onsen on November 21st last season with grand plans to ride a lot of powder before anyone else got there. Unfortunately it turned out to be an unseasonably late start to the season with hardly anything falling for almost a month. About a week before Christmas an amazing month long deluge of snow started. In the space of just a few days snow depths jumped from just a few cm at the top of the resort to a metre from top to bottom. The resort did a great job getting all areas open as soon as possible.

A collection of photos from last season.

The snowless days were few and far between, and each system that rolled through seemed to be even bigger than the last. I want to pick out a day that I can say was the best, but there were just so many days spent making a pig of myself in the powder down the likes of Schneider, Challenge and Utopia that I couldn’t narrow it down to just one.

The month-long snow culminated with a superdump for three days leading up to the fire festival. During the fire festival blizzard conditions were extreme and the shrine became so heavy with snow that the actual fire attacks were rendered redundant. There was no way that was going to burn. The actual kerosene assisted ritual burning at the end of the festival was delayed by quite some time and it didn’t really go up with much gusto when it did finally catch. Despite the somewhat disappointing fire festival, everyone went home that night duly impressed with Mother Nature’s ability to turn on a show.

After the fire festival Nozawa went through a dry spell with very little snow (and more rain than we would have liked). There were a few small falls up top and then another pretty big dump at the start of February, but for the most part it seemed like the skies had been snowed out.

My time in Nozawa came to an end in the middle of February, and unfortunately I didn’t get the powdery sendoff I had been hoping for. In fact it was quite dry for most of February, until once again it started snowing hard at the end of March. You would definitely not want to plan a trip to Nozawa in March with your hopes held high for powder, but for the last four seasons late March has produced some exceptional powder days. Thanks to the powder gods for this, but for 2010/2011 we must all have our fingers crossed for a more timely start to the season and plain old consistent powder days in January and February.

Location: Yamanashi Prefecture – near Mt Fuji.
Access: around 2 hours from Tokyo by train or bus - FujiQ access guide
Cost: ¥4800 (tickets can be purchased from convenience stores around Japan for ¥4400)
Famous Rides: Dodompa, Fujiyama, Eejanaika?!
Website: http://www.fujiq.jp/english/

The ski season in Japan is still a long way away but with plenty of people getting into the planning I thought it would be a good time to post a few side trip travel recommendations, starting with FujiQ highlands, an amusement park right next to Mount Fuji in Yamanashi prefecture, located 2 hours by bus from Tokyo.

Starting the day with a bath looking out at Mt Fuji.

Japan would have to have one of the highest rates of amusement park per capita in the world – according to roller coaster database Japan has 167 theme parks. Whilst many of these are nearly abandoned relics from the bubble (and unfortunately the several “New Zealand Villages” dotted around the country come to mind when i say that), Fujikyu Highlands is an amazing place to visit for adrenaline junkies with some jaw dropping rides and attractions. There are so many rides at FujiQ that it probably wouldn’t be possible to ride all of them in just one day. The big ones are extremely popular and it is not uncommon to face queues of up to 3 hours just to ride one roller coaster. Fortunately when I visited the biggest queues were just an hour, and here is my review of the day.

Upside down, backwards and unhinged - it would be hard to find a crazier experience than Eejanaika?!

Eejanaika?!

I started the day at Eejanaika?!, the newest roller coaster at FujiQ. Eejanaika?! is a 4th dimension roller coaster with seats which spin around backwards and forwards. Walking up to the ride I actually couldn’t believe that I was going to go on it. With all the twists, turns and drops, and hanging chairs that spin around, it really just looks too ridiculous to be true. It starts with a backwards climb, small drop (still backwards) and just as you go off the edge of the first big drop you are flipped over to face the full terror of the drop face first. In all you are inverted 14 times, which gives Eejanaika the world record for most spins.

Fujiyama

Next up was Fujiyama. Fujiyama is a classic roller coaster which briefly held the world record for tallest roller coaster in the world (79m). The climb really gets you up over the park, and after the climb there is a small straight which directly faces Mount Fuji providing great views on a fine day. The roller coaster itself is best described as fun rather than terrifying. It is long ride taking over three and a half minutes with lots of up and downs. Japanese roller coaster veterans even hold the safety bar to prevent it locking too tight, thus leaving room to move around and make the turns that much more exciting.

Dodompa - 0 to 172kmh in 1.8 seconds

Dodompa

Probably my favourite ride at Fujikyu, Dodompa sets off on an aircraft style hydraulic launch system which fires the roller coaster to a speed of 172kmh in just 1.8 seconds. Dodompa shoots out of a tunnel and time seems to bend (think star trek warp-speed style) as you approach the first corner. A rather short coaster, the other main scare is a 55m vertical climb and then straight drop over the other side of a loop. The day I went there was a wait of around an hour and 15 minutes for the ride (apparently not much of a queue compared to really busy days), but 30 seconds of pure terror and excitement really made it worth it.

Looks terrifying from below, the actual ride doesn't quite cut it.

Tekotsu bancho

Tekotsu bancho is a new attraction opened just a few weeks ago. It is basically an extreme merry-go round where you are strapped into swings and raised high above the park, before you are spun around going up and down for a couple of minutes. There was a lot of hype for Tekotsu Bancho being the newest ride at FujiQ, however the highlight of the ride is the view from up so high and the actual ride was rather dissapointing.

Red Tower

Red tower

Tower of terror ride where you are strapped in and lifted to the top of a very high pole and then dropped for a second or so of freefall. Perhaps this type of ride is old hat for the Japanese (and with rides like Dodompa and Eejanaika that may be justified), but there was no queue for the Red tower all day long.

Haunted Hospital - gauranteed nightmares for the kids for weeks

Senritsu meikyu (haunted hospital)

No one does horror like the Japanese, and surely the haunted hospital at FujiQ would be unmatched anywhere in the world. The premise of the attraction is a hospital which has been taken over by zombies (although strangely there are also plenty of non zombie hospital staff playing their part who seem to be blissfully unaware of all the zombies). At the start of the ride we were ushered into the waiting room and shown a video of the hospitals history. The video was a collection of disturbing horror scenes (think “The Ring” or “The Grudge”) which which made little sense but was scary all the same.

The attraction is a 50 minute/ 900m walk through an abandoned hospital. The decorations are gruesome and the zombies – actual human actors with great make up and excellent zombie growls/croaks – are well versed in extracting the biggest screams. Despite being skeptical I have to admit jumping out of my skin several times and wanting it to be over well before we were chased out of the hospital by the last zombie.

Impressions

FujiQ is right at the top of the scale for extreme theme parks. Japans other big theme parks, Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan (in Osaka) concentrate on creating a magical atmosphere, and the rides are actually rather tame. FujiQ does its best to make you lose your lunch in as many ways as possible. For roughly the same cost as a one day lift park, FujiQ is pretty good value and well worth the visit if you are any kind of thrill seeker.

We are working on updating the website at the moment. Things could be a little out of place for a little while, if you have any questions please email us on nozawa@naganogo.com.

In the meantime here are some nice shots from the last season in Nozawa: