Shiga Kogen Ski Diary

Day1 – getting there

Having been skiing in the northern island of Hokkaido for the past two years – see Niseko Ski Diary – we decided this year to try the biggest island in Japan, Honshu, and the biggest Japanese ski resorts, Shiga Kogen and Hakuba. This is where the real Japanese ski, we were told, and we were worried about crowds but expected great facilities. On both counts we were partly right.

We booked through a travel agent, Steve Kelso of Niseko Ski Tours, and wanted to get into into it so we asked for a week at each resort. They both looked big enough to keep us busy and happy for that time.

We took off on JAL (rather than Qantas) a few minutes late at about 11 am. The plane was a “mature” jumbo. It was packed. You could not see a single empty seat. And what seats. They may not be the narrowest and most densely packed, but they felt it. Against this the staff and food were good,and the ability to see a camera facing forward and down were nice. The entertainment was the worst that I have seen on long haul for many a year. Each console allowed you to see the films, but there were only a few to choose from, and they could not be paused or started on demand. Also the earphones were pretty bad but we took our own noise cancelling – highly recommended – even if you just want to sleep.

Time was made up so that we landed on time, and luggage appeared eventually. One poor person was told by a large sign on the belt to contact the staff. Apparently some of their stuff was still in Sydney. Also there was a man whose job was to walk around with a sign saying that lots of luggage looks the same so please do not take the wrong one. Is that fulfilling or what??

From Narita to Shiga or Hakuba you have four choices.

Firstly you can get a train to Tokyo, a 500 metre walk up across and down with skis and stuff, a train and then a coach.

Secondly you can stay overnight at Narita, or Tokyo, finish the train and coach the next day in the morning.

Thirdly, and our choice was to get a private car transfer from Narita to Shiga. Cost an extra A$300 or so, and a bit longer than the first choice at about 5.5 to 6 hours, but it was easy after a hard flight and indeed was quite pleasant.

Fourthly, and unknown to us, was that there is apparently a taxi service (Chuo Taxis?) that will meet a small group and take you to Shiga for about 12000 yen each.

It all depends really on how you feel after the flight, how confident with Japan you are, but for us next time it will be a hotel in Tokyo. In any event we were fairly wiped out the next day and we only had a short ski, that could have been had in an afternoon.

To get to Shiga Kogen, we got car that drove from Tokyo's Narita airport. The journey took 5.5 hours, almost all along motorway. A lot of the motorways were tolled, and as we drove through the electronic toll-gates, a mechanical gate would open – but if you're diving at 50 kph, you have the sense that you're about to run into the gate, and it quickly pulls out of the way about half a second before you run into it.

On the drive into the national park in which Shiga Kogen is located, there was a thick fog with a visibility of a few metres, and so the drive started up the satellite navigation system, and drove along winding alpine roads at around 40 kph steering almost entirely using the satellite navigation. Thank goodness for accurate maps!

Our hotel was the St Moritz. Overall OK, with a very friendly and helpful owner/manager, but some drawbacks. It is three star, but located in a position which is only ski-out if you can defy gravity for some distance, and ski-in in you can ski over concrete. We had the normal smallish room, twin beds and the usual portaloo toilet module. The communal hot bath, a great feature after skiing, was there but basic, with just one bath, and no spring water input. As is often the case, the rooms were only done every other day, and each occupant had one tiny thin towel, as well as a handkerchief for modesty in the communal bath. There was also only one power point and two pin, 110 volt at that.

Typically though, the place had free Internet and wifi. Our laptop was soon buzzing. A loan DVD player was around as were several DVDs in Japanese but English could be found through adjusting the player. Forget TV unless you like Sumo wrestling. So take a good book, but as you will be tired and relaxed after the hot bath, it doesn't take long to get to sleep. This is the only place where I have ever felt that the air is "thin". Perhaps it is me or it could be the altitude.

We elected for bed and breakfast, which may have been a mistake as dining options are really only in hotels, with a couple of exceptions, and dinner was Y3150 extra per night, or Y1500 more for special food, which we had on our last night. The dinners were Japanese and eclectic, things like Shabu-Shabu, and buffets, nice but not fantastic. Lots of varied beverages were available including beer (reasonably priced for a holiday location), local wine (not too expensive but reportedly sweet) and juices such as raspberry and various currants. Sake and similar were also in the cabinet.

day 2 – first day's skiing at Shiga Kogen

diamond dust

We skied Ichinose Family, a large area in the centre of the resort. In total Shiga ski area is 16 kms long, although there are some big breaks in it. The bus takes about an hour from one end to the other, but in a very circuitous route around many hotels and stops. The Ichinose area is near the middle and divided by the road into Ichinose Family and Ichinose Diamond.

The former is the place to start, although it often has big groups of school kids during holiday times. The size of the place means that they can be absorbed, though, and this is the big centre for schools, hiring and so on. As an aside we heard nothing but complaints about hired equipment, possibly because it is based on the schools trade. So take you own if you can.

Back to day 2, we explored Ichinose Family, up through the green slopes towards the top of the mountain, where conditions and slopes quickly became more difficult.

day 3 – full day's lesson at Shiag Kogen

For dinner we went to a good Himalayan/Indian place last night. For about 2500 yen we had kebabs, some vegetable and meat curries, and a pile of the freshest nicest naans ever, with a couple of big beers. Super. It was in the Hotel Japan, on the main Ichinose road, which isn't saying much.

day 4 – skiing at Shiga Kogen

Absolutely exhausted from a day's gr8 skiing. Body aches, & feel like I am still moving! , 2night is sashimi!

The owners opened the bar one night, but mostly they had whisky. What I think would have been nice to have at the bar would be some schnapps (either butterscotch or peach), and a choice of some other types of Japanese beers (additional to the Sapporo beer and Asahai super-dry beer that were available from the vending machines). Probably also the pricing of the pool table was wrong (at Y2000 per hour, or A$20 per hour – should really be a few dollars for a game of pool). However a selection of cheeses and chocolates were served with the drinks, which was a very nice touch.

bus 45 minutes there, 55 minutes back. The resort was great, but the bus was exceedingly slow (turning off for stops and then backtracking all the time, and this was the fast bus), so you'd probably only do it once if you were here for a week.

Ate lunch at the bakery at the top of the mountain, next to the military-looking installation (radar perhaps?). At the bakery, everything was buns, with a choice of various fillings inside, including meat, chocolate, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, apple and custard, bacon, and a sweet Japanese filling. Quite good, definitely worth trying for lunch.

Estimate total resort size maybe 60% larger than Niseko. The resort is approximately 16 km long from end-to-end, although there is a gap in the middle that you need to get a bus for (I.e. you cannot ski from end-to-end).

Saw monkeys at the bottom of “Giant Ski Piste”.

insert some photos!

Shortness of breath due to the altitude.

Upset stomachs from

The weather here today was pretty bad - blizzarding, and a near white out at the top of the mountain. In the covered bits between the trees and in the valleys wasn't bad though. Overall it wasn't great, and were heading back a little down, as we had wanted to end our last day of skiing at Shiga Kogen on a high note. It was all made up for at the end of the day though when some Aussie friends we had made here suggested we try a run they had enjoyed the day before, and it was covered a foot and half of beautiful light fluffy dry powder snow - bliss!!! It's like flying, and if you fall it doesn't hurt, and I've seen it only in Australia (maybe because it's not cold enough to make the right type of light continuous dry snowfall that's needed to make it). After 4 runs of that felt fantastic and happy to end the day on a high.

Anyway, it was good, and tomorrow we are off to Hakuba, via private car transfer in the morning. May or may not ski tomorrow arvo at Hakuba, depending on how we go. I'm hoping that they'll have wireless Internet at Hakuba,

Dinner was fantastic – for Y1500 extra, we got an additional large plate of sashimi, The meal was sensational, for Y4600 we had

Some of the signage of some of the runs is very bad, especially in a blizzard. Also some of the

The ropeway is also quite bizarre: It's 250 metres from the nearest point where you can ski to in Sun Valley, and then you have to walk across a road and bridge, and when you get there you can't tell that's it's the ropeway building, because the ropeway is on the other side, and it looks like every other Japanese hotel, and there are no signs in English! It is the oddest place to put a ropeway. However once you get in into the ropeway, you have a magnificent trip and view over the Giant Ski Piste and the valley below. But then, the only thing you can get onto after the ropeway is a single chairlift, in which you have to take you skis off and hold then. Who builds a huge ropeway, and then at the end places a single chair lift? There were 8 people working on the ropeway and the single chairlift, and only 4 people using it. And then at the end you have to trudge through the waist-deep powder snow to the nearest chairlift. As far as we could see, we were the first people to do this, at 3 in the afternoon! And then the entrance to the next chairlift is on the opposite side, so you have to go onto the road and walk around. The whole thing just is not well-integrated. This is probably because it was originally 21 separate resorts, who later consolidated. But from a skier's perspective, you want one large well-integrated resort that has lifts in the places you want and need them (so that you don't have to ski), with the right capacity so that there aren't queues.

We lunched at the Hotel Alpenburg, where the royal princess sometimes stays when skiing. The lunch was ordinary, although there were more

The economics of Shiga Kogen are frankly baffling. They have so few customers, that you have to wonder: How do some of the restaurants and hotels stay in business? Japan economy: rebounding. This place: moderately priced. And yet the whole resort is only at 25% of cap

Not picking up.

Sashimi, a great bug plate, Tempura prawn and this beautiful raw beef that we barbecued in butter. The beef in the menu was described as being from a cow that been fed only apples, so “the meat is sweet and healthy”. And it was sensational, just melting in the mouth, equal to or better then the best steak I have had in Australia.

We had sake with dinner, which was poured into a glass inside a wooden box, and the sake was poured until the glass overflowed, and the wooden box was half full. The sake was very smooth and easy to drink.

We tried playing Pacinko, Don't

There was so much food, and it was great and very filling.

Himalayan restaurant. Very good, highly recommend, and great value.

The snow here is so fine and dry, that it forms a hexagonal crystal, and glitters in the light, and in Japanese is called “Diamond Dust”, which is exactly what it looks like.

Found the batteries in cameras and phones would not last very long in the cold weather – the low temperature must inhibit the chemical reactions that batteries depend on. The coldest days were -13C (with still air), and -25C with wind chill, which is what it was at the top of the mountain, which is rather cold.

There are large groups of school children on the mountain.

In Shiga Kogen, the layout of the town is dominated by hotels, each of which includes a restaurant and often a bar. The result is that there are no independent restaurants.

Summary

Summary of Shiga Kogen: Good for intermediate skiers. There are some very good slope for beginning skiers, however there are school children on them, and the lessons are very good value, but because of the language issues, they are not as good as Australian lessons for learning skiing technique (but they are great if you want to see the mountain, and improve your technique a little). Food was good, quite interesting, and worth paying a little bit more because you'll be rewarded with more interesting fare. Condition of the snow is in general good, occasionally icy, and we did come across one or two runs that hadn't been groomed and which were actively dangerous, but that's probably to be expected in such a large resort. The snow was very dry, and there was sometimes powder, although you had to search to find deeper and untracked powder, although it was there. The snow was infinitely better than Australian snow. The weather was quite varied, from one perfect cloudless day, through to two days that were almost a white-out, and three days that were in-between, with on-and-off light snow. The size of the resort was a large plus, providing about 4 days or 5 days skiing without having to repeat a run.

Overall impression: Recommended.