Jump Ahead:
Day 1 | Matsumoto Castle, Arrive in Hakuba
Day 2 | Ski
Day 3 | Ski
Final Day 4 | Shinkansen home
Seeing as how it’s so expensive to fly out of the country during the holiday break, we opted to take the train to Nagano for a short ski trip at Hakuba Happo-One Ski Resort. This was actually our second time going to Hakuba… our first trip was one year ago (for exactly the same reasons) but I was too lazy to make a post hehe. Hakuba actually has many different ski resorts in the area and you can even get a Hakuba Valley pass which will work on all of them depending on your schedule. We got this the first time since it seemed easier and made for a better souvenir but this time we just stuck to an individual lift ticket for Happo-One. I would say Happo-One is probably the most popular in the valley but we haven’t tried any other yet. Best to see the website below for any online deals or whichever pass works best for your needs.
As for the town of Hakuba, it has a really Western feel to it and indeed it seems like there are more foreigners here than Japanese people… even in the shops. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing but it is a different feel from other places like say, Nozawa Onsen. It’s definitely best to stay as close to the middle of town for convenience sake (we learned the difficult way during our first trip) and there’s a lot of shops here to keep you busy even if you don’t ski all day.
Here’s the English website link to the ski resort:
https://www.happo-one.jp/en/
Day 1
On our first day, we decided to stop in Matsumoto via shinkansen since that was a transfer station to Hakuba anyway. We heard of the castle being famous and since neither of us would find an excuse to come this way again just for that we decided to just stop for a couple hours and take a peek. We got off at Matsumoto station and walked to the castle from there. Overall it was a bit underwhelming and much smaller than I had imagined. We didn’t stay at the actual castle very long but at least now we know what it’s all about.
After eating lunch in Matsumoto, we caught the train the rest of the way to Hakuba station, walked up to the resort area, checked-in to our hotel and then found dinner nearby in town.
The first time we went to Hakuba we stayed at Hotel Nire no Ki as kind of a last resort option. The price was cheap but the rooms were cold and the location wasn’t the best (imagine walking along icy roads in the dark at night). This time we were able to find a room at the Hotel Hana-no-sato, located right in the main part of town and within walking distance from the slopes. We stayed for 3 nights, paying a total of ¥57273 for the two of us with breakfast included (https://www.h-hananosato.com/).
Day 2
Day 2 we had breakfast at our hotel before walking to the ski rental shop (Central Snowsports). They delivered our shoes from the store back to our hotels dry room so we could just ski out of the shop. Very convenient service here. For the rest of the day we just skied at Happo-One, same slopes as before. For some reason I had different runs in my mind but turns out that was actually from a different place (Nozawa Onsen). I had trouble deciding which place I liked better before but after this little mental fart I decided that I must’ve liked Nozawa Onsen more. Anyway, that aside, of course we still enjoyed our time here.
Neither of us own skis so we ended up renting from Central Snowsports (https://hakuba.centralsnowsports.com.au/), an Australian based company (lot of them here) that we used the first time as well. Their price is about average compared to the others in the area, maybe a little cheaper, but their services are great. They can return your own shoes to your hotel so you can ski right out of the shop, they’ll pick up your skis from your hotel on the last rental day, and they have occasional shuttle services too.
We spent most of the first day on the skyline route and then in the Kokusai and Nakiyama areas where the green runs were… occasionally I’d do a red or black where it meets up with the greens again. Greens are the longest runs so I don’t mind taking it slow.
Here’s a link for the trail map:
https://www.happo-one.jp/wp2019/wp-content/themes/happo-one/img/info/pamphlet/eng2019-2020/trail_map.pdf
Lunch was just at one of the easy cafes near the Kokusai area.
Day 3
Day 3 was our second and last full day of skiing. The weather wasn’t as nice but still a full day. Our lunch was just at the cafe on the slopes again and then for dinner we got to eat ramen at one of the crowded restaurants that was too busy the night before. A very satisfying day overall and at the end of it all we could just leave our rental equipment in our hotel dry room for the store to pick up later.
For dinner we were able to get into the ramen shop that was completely booked the night before. As I mentioned earlier, there’s surprisingly not a whole lot of Japanese restaurants in this town, especially ramen, which makes this a popular spot I guess… even more so with all the foreigners here too.
Final Day 4
Our last day was an easy one. Just walking back towards Hakuba Station while shopping along the main road. We also stopped at a really good katsu restaurant along the way as well as one of our favorite Patagonia stores. I don’t remember the train being so crowded this time though during the season it can sometimes be standing room only. We even had a chance encounter with Jan Heine and Natsuko Hirose of Bicycle Quarterly! Such a random surprise on the train ride home hehe. Overall a nice return to Hakuba!
