Shiga-Kogen on Nanikore

Quick trip to Shiga Kogen

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 13:10:00 +0000

I’ve had a few updates here over the years from the Shiga Kogen ski area, so no real need to go into too much detail I suspect! It’s a great and simple place to go if you just want to get out and do some snowboarding for a few days, and not have to put in a lot of preparation - and so that’s the ‘quick trip’ part - we had a time window for ski and boarding with not much prep time, so we went with what we knew. That’s worth a lot more in these COVID days where you go where you can, when you can.

Given it was the end of February we weren’t sure what kind of snow level or quality to expect, but were really pleased, surprised and impressed by the level for the snow and by just how much powder there was - notably a lot more than earlier in February 2021. The weather was great for three of the four days, with only one being relatively closed out after lunch when the snow was coming down hard, the wind picked up and the cloud dropped, causing the resort to gradually close the lifts, starting at the top and working down.

We spent time over much of the Ichinose diamond as well as Okushiga - great powder and a good variety of runs too. We even spent a few hours in a fairly empty snow park - no big jumps or excitement for me, but still a good laugh and the rest of the group liked it.

GOPR2655_01.jpg" alt=“Shiga Snow Park” caption=“Shiga Snow Park”

One unfortunate thing did happen though; one of our group had a fall on a flat traverse, and hit their head with some force, which, despite their helmet led to a suspected light concussion. We were able to get the ski patrol to take them down off the mountain, and get some rest and fluids at one of the cafes. It’s one of those odd things about snowsports - the falls at low speeds on the flat can be just as risky as anything high speed just due to the distance and angle of that strike. Stay safe out there.

The other thing I was trying on the trip was to extend the lifespan of my GoPro 7 batteries since they seem to give up much quicker now than they did when I had a GoPro HERO 2. I tried using a cheap diving case I bought, wondering if like the 2, that housing would hold in some heat to help, but it really didn’t seem to make any difference. I also tried a wind ‘sponge’, but that didn’t seem to make a difference either. They’re all GoPro official OEM batteries as well - my experience with 3rd party ones has been really mixed.

One evening we were looking for somewhere to eat, and due again to COVID, a lot of places weren’t open, there just wasn’t even people to justify opening, so we headed into Ichinose village, and tried a place called the ‘Junk Food Cafe’. Inside it looked like a cross between a cheap cafe, a retail shop and a hostess club, giving it a very odd vibe. However, the staff were friendly and it did indeed do what it promised - served up some solid junk food around burgers, and large ice-creams. After a solid day on the mountain it just about did the job.

As you can see from the photos, the place is beautiful during the snow season, and when there’s not many people around it’s great to have the run of the place, but you hope that people will return after the pandemic, and these places don’t go under. As for us, we need a little more variety in our locations, but you can’t really go wrong with hitting the Shiga Kogen area. Slide on!

The Road To Shiga 2012

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:47:49 +0000

Last month, the family once more hit the road to go up to Shiga in Nagano Prefecture to get a few days skiing and snowboarding in.

Compared to last year, a few things on the technical side had changed - this time we were in a Toyota Ractis since our beloved Vitz was written off by someone who just didn’t seem to understand traffic lights. The Ractis is slightly bigger, so was a bit more comfortable for all the hours on the road, but because of that, we had to buy some new snow chains. I’m not completely sure, but I think Carmate, who make the Biathlon car chains we used last year, have changed their product mix a little, since the most easily available model in their lineup was the ’ Quick n Easy'.

One other change was that our son had outgrown his 0-12 month baby seat, so was now in a 12month - 11 year combination seat which we were a little unfamiliar with as we’d only installed it a few days prior, but it worked out very well, and he seems to love it. It’s the Aprica ’ Euro Impact Junior 01’, and no, I don’t know who comes up with the names for these things; the ‘Euro’ part though I suspect comes from the fact that it supports ECE R44.0 4, a European originating safety standard that all child seats now have to, or want to support.

Armed with all this, we set off from Kanagawa-ken, managing to be on the roads early, with ETC set up, a route in the navi, the kids well occupied (or asleep), and the usual rampaging DJs on FM Yokohama, we were away.

We kept to a stop every 90 mins or so, mainly for toilet breaks and such, to let the kids get out, and for additional tea breaks for the drivers - I’m apparently lucky that my wife doesn’t mind driving, so she took on the first third of the journey. Of course, as you get further up to the mountains, you eventually get to the snow line, and all the ice and fun which comes with it. We actually had to stop a few kilometres earlier than we did last year to put the chains on, and true to form and the couple of practice goes I’d had, the chains went on no problems at all - in fact, I think they were easier than the Biathlons we had last year. If you’ve never driven with chains, especially on real mountain roads with a decent amount of snow, it is a very fun experience, providing you keep the speed down. I should say that going up a mountain always feels safer than coming down.

The hotel we chose was right at the end of the road we were on so at least we knew we couldn’t miss it. We got the booking sorted out through Snow Japan, a bit like we did last year, but for reasons I’ll explain later, I don’t actually think that route is really worth it. The hotel was the Okushiga-Kougen hotel, and we got a decent price on a family sized room, with breakfast included, and I’d read the breakfast was pretty good. So, to do the hotel review first: it *is* a good hotel - the staff were relatively efficient, the wi-fi (only in the lobby area) worked as advertised and got a decent throughput, and the carpark is right in front and fairly well sheltered and maintained, so I had less snow digging to do each morning. The breakfast was very good for a Japanese ski hotel, a decent western and Japanese buffet, with good sausages, bacon and scrambled eggs which weren’t swimming for a change. The down side is that all other meals are horrifically expensive - the dinners start at 2,500 for a child’s set meal, go to a basic adult meal for 4,500en, and top out at 12,500en for a deluxe course. These prices are out of our range. What we learned are that for lunches and dinner it’s much better for quality and cost to either pop around to the Prince Hotel Shiga West, or over the road to the Hotel Grand Phenix, which oddly is an expensive place to stay, but reasonable to eat. The Italian restaurant there does a fantastic rabbit dish.

All of the Okushiga hotels are at the bottom of the slope, but let’s get something out of the way - the area is skier only - no snowboards are allowed. We chose the place though because our eldest is learning to ski, and the ski school there is excellent, reasonably priced, and even will sell you digital copies of some on piste photos of the kids for a small amount. When we were there, there were no other students. The ’no boarder’ attitude, combined with some of the pricing means it’s pretty quiet, and the average age of people there is over 60 as far as I could tell. We simply put the eldest in ski schools in the mornings, which she loved, and then drove to Yakibitaiyama around the corner, where our youngest could play in the creche, and we could get some boarding done. I should also point out Okushiga does have a creche, but only on Saturday and Sunday, which was a minor fact they didn’t mention when we called in advance to confirm facilities.

The Okushiga Kougen hotel then worked out very well once we sorted the food sourcing out, and the onsen was clean, and the TV, though an aging CRT with a digital converter literally bolted to it, did allow us to use the audio/visual cable for the iPod so my daughter could watch her shows, which is invaluable when you’re a little bit confined for space. The in-room bath was also a little bigger than many other hotels, though still technically a unit bath/toilet room.

A notable experience for me on the snow side of things that was the first time I got to ski with my daughter, going up on the chair lift together and coming down and I have to say I was very impressed, though I think she was irritated with the grip I had on her on the chair lift, given she was quite relaxed.

When not on the slopes, we could play with the kids safely at Okushiga, though the snow is so powdery, it was difficult to make a snowman.

Coming back was as simple as going, but again, going downhill always makes me think a little bit, and we passed one person coming up who was sliding all over who apparently thought that normal road tyres on an SUV would be enough - it’s not.

As usually, we sent all of our boards and skis via Takkyubin, which is always the simplest way to do it. Perhaps next year we’ll try a roof gear holder for them.

Booking via SnowJapan used to get some decent discounts, but now I really don’t know since the prices we were quoted on the phone with hotels was the same as via their site, so aside from driving some traffic I’m not sure where the value is any more (and the SnowJapan make-over with Silverlight hotel finder was perhaps ill advised).

In all then, a massively successful trip for the whole family, and we managed to make use of all the lessons we learned last year, and learned a few for next year, as we wont be able to make another this year due to a stream of other commitments. I also got a nice ‘yuki 雪’ sticker for my old Macbook.

Family road trip to Shiga Kogen

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:47:52 +0000

We just got back last week from our first snow trip of 2011. It also marked some other landmarks: at 644Km in 3 days, our longest trip as a family in a car, our first multi-day trip with offspring #2, our first long run with the ETC, and of course, our first with the the (non metal) snowchains! Yup, all part of a family road trip to Shiga Kogen!

For background, we have an old Toyota Vitz (that’s a Yaris in a few other places), which is fine, but we knew we couldn’t get all the snowboards in the car, so we takkyubin’d them a few days before departure. Takkyubin is a wonderful thing - for 2 snowboards and our boots etc. as two bags, it cost 2,500yen all together, and even though I carried them a few hundred yards to the local Family Mart, they would have picked them up for not much more.

A rental car any bigger than the Vitz, for the time would’ve cost ~~¥30,000, and then would cost more in fuel, so we decided to stick with the Vitz as a trial and spend that rental money on an ETC unit for it (~~¥14,500 fitted at Autobacs) and some CarMate Biathlon Athlete ’non-metal’ snowchains (~¥16,500 from 8&7 Wholesale @ Amazon).

The ETC unit would be a bit of a universal benefit - it’s the electronic toll road payment system unit so you don’t have to fiddle with change at toll booths, and gives you some discounts, so this was a nice to have anyway.

We got most of the car ready the night before, and followed some of the tips from flying - made sure the elder offspring had plenty of entertainment on the iPhone, a couple of books, toys, and drawing utensils for the stops. It’s also trips like this where buying that cheap car stereo which takes iPod/USB input pays off - we could have our whole music collection plus podcasts and audio books to listen to en route.

Some other things I like to have in the car anyway, and especially for this trip: jump cables (booster cables here), a tow cable, some bungee cords, a couple of flasks of hot water and a hand crank torch/flashlight and radio. Also, I had the tip of never letting your tank get below half full, which might sound overly paranoid had a lot of people not got stuck in their cars for over 24hours last month in Japan on a major road, and with a 3 month old offspring in the vehicle, I didn’t want to take any chances.

The drive up took a long time - we weren’t pushing hard, but stopped for a couple of lengthy breaks to allow offspring #2 to be fed and changed and relax, though to be fair he, like his elder sibling - is a great traveller it seems. It’s fairly picturesque ride too, at least once you’re out of Tokyo and on the Kanetsu and then Joetsu expressways.

About 20Km before the hotel we got to the tyre/chains changing point. We chose this one because it has a large roofed area where a lot of the buses put their huge metal chains on - it’s impressive to watch. It only took us about 5 minutes per wheel, barely needing the tutorial video (which I’d ripped to my phone), and the only difficulty really being yanking the rubber around the wet wheels, which is to be expected. I’d actually practiced this a couple of times in front of the house a week before we set off, and it was pretty much the same. Just colder. And wetter. And colder, meaning your fingers need some better gloves than the free ones to pull effectively.

This was the first time for me driving on snow in the mountains in an automatic car and with chains, and to be frank it was fine. The rubber chains make the car shake a little bit more, but we made good, safe time using the ‘2’ and ‘L’ settings on the ‘gearbox’ and getting the benefits of their effective engine breaking (which is what was my main concern). After I while I was actually enjoying it, stereo up, no one on the road and hitting crazy the speeds of 35Kmh. Not quite rally speeds, but given the noise in the 998cc car it felt like it at times.

First things, the Prince Hotels were almost empty. Ours had almost empty car parks and as we were to find the place was about a quarter full, and three quarters of those were Australians - a main fixture of most Japanese resorts now - and the rest mainly being Japanese retirees. I wonder how long it is until the operators wake up to this demographic. More things are in English, things are more flexible and food quality has increased, but prices are moving away from what most Japanese families could afford (we only managed to get a deal by booking early). Anyway, that’s a much longer post going back years. I am glad I brought my spade though; I usually do in case there’s ramp building opportunities on the mountain, but on the Friday morning I had to dig the car our from under almost 30cm of powder snow. It was so light it wasn’t an issue, but moving the snow in front of the car the hotel snow plough had moved took a little more time.

The room was fairly large by Prince standards - they claim to be a premium hotel chain but are basically the room stay equivalent of Denny’s. It’s not bad then, and really is ideal for a boarding trip - you’re not in the room most of the time, aside to sleep or relax and read anyway.

The restaurant however did have a more premium approach to it’s pricing which would make some Tokyo places think again. A child’s meal (the only child’s meal) was 2,000yen. The cheapest adult meal was 1,800 yen. My tip: everyone order the children’s meal, you get much more and it tasted better. One odd situation, a waiter wouldn’t bring me my okawari bread, as I hadn’t received my first one. After some pleading the more senior waiter brought me one. [ okawari means you get unlimited replenishment, such as on coffee refills]. There was a single person shabushabu set for 6,800yen. That’s a huge amount of money for what you got. I wonder if it’s to fleece wealthy Aussies.

One bonus - free wifi in the lobby area, and power if you just plug in to hidden wall sockets. Finally the internet comes to the mountains. How long did that take?

Finally getting down to business, the snow was excellent - great powder runs and a good selection of slopes - everything I’ve always liked about Shiga Kogen. We managed to get offspring #1 into a ski school both mornings for about 4,000yen for 2 hours and since she got 1-1 tuition and could work with English and Japanese instructors, I think she got a lot out of it. We hadn’t planned the second session but she was raving about it after the first. The only disappointment with the snow was that there was no nighter in our area except on Saturday nights - just after we left. I only mention this as I asked during booking if there was a nighter and was told there was.

That aside, the slopes were empty pretty much, meaning fast direct runs down some pretty decent slopes, waist deep powder on the fringes of the courses, and no moguls outside of the snow park.

We put offspring #2 into a creche for one morning, and he seemed to like it enough apparently to not wake up, which is usually a good thing. That was the first time in a couple of years to board together, which prior to the children was something we were doing a lot every winter. Still, a worthwhile trade-off.

All in all then the whole trip went much better than we hoped. One situation we weren’t expecting: we put the eco tag out saying we didn’t need towels every day, which should qualify us for a few thousand yen in vouchers. Great. So, we didn’t receive towels or bed making, and when we asked if we could have our vouchers the front desk claimed the was no eco tag, so no, we wouldn’t get vouchers.

After a few exchanges with my wife, they reluctantly gave us them, but it left us wondering what the training was like if they were encouraged to argue with guests in the lobby in front of other guests over a thousand yen. To anyone who’s spent time in ski hotels in Japan, chances are that doesn’t shock you.

On Saturday evening we started heading back, taking it slowly, stopping at some fairly unimpressive rest stops, and just plodding along, with me listening to podcasts whilst the tribe slept away, which is relaxing in itself. The size of the car didn’t seem to be a problem at all, just a question of travelling light, which we generally do, and sparing the space for things the kids ‘might’ need.

We’re thinking of doing another trip next month if we can get a deal on a room, so we’ll be looking to repeat most of the things that worked, and fix some things that didn’t.

On the latter list was the mistake of not having drinks in the car on the way back (they were in the suitcase), which meant some people being thirsty for an hour as we hunted for somewhere to stop. The second was the familiar issue of packing too many nappies, but then, always better to be 10 over than 1 under for those.

Shiga Kogen Trip

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:01:38 +0000

We’ve just got back from three great days snowboarding at Shiga Kogen in Nagano Prefecture. We were getting a bit concerned that there wouldn’t be enough snow given yet another late starting season, but when we arrived we saw there was easily enough snow over much of the mountain. Not perfect to be sure, a few patches of ice, and the odd twig poking through the snow cover, but generally conditions were fine. I’ve posted a few pics in the misc section of the brightblack gallery for 2004.

It was good to get back on the board, and even though the body ached a little bit at night, it was great to spend some time outside doing some great, fast runs down the mountain. It wasn’t very busy at all, which I suspect was a result of people having pretty much given up on the December ski and snowboard in Honshu. Sad really, but it does have to be said that it seems to be getting later and later.

Now that I’m back in boarding mode, I need to organize more trips!

Currently playing in iTunes: Rain Man by Eminem

Shiga sunset by Keitai

Sat, 21 Feb 2004 05:10:43 +0000

I just found an image I took with my mobile phone’s camera (keitai camera - Sony Ericsson A5402S) at sunset when I went to Shiga earlier this year. Click below for the full image. It’s not that bad quality!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

neal — 2004-02-24

love the fotos! well done. will get my stuff up on a website soon….eh how many year now have i said that…?

Shiga kogen

Tue, 03 Feb 2004 01:58:32 +0000

Yes, another report of snowboarding. We spent the last weekend at Minamikan Prince Hotel in Shiga Kogen, Nagano-ken. It’s a bit of a favourite resort actually - not too challenging, but a variety of slopes which never get too busy and are good for a variety of abilities. (Needed more steep slopes though).

For the first time ever, I takkyubin’d my snowboard back to Tokyo (it’s like a parcel courier service here in Japan). Usually I get paranoid about my board and carry it back, but I thought for a change I’d try it for 1300yen, and lo and behold, it turned up at my apartment here at 8pm. Not bad!

What was good about this trip was that I got more time in riding ‘goofy’, that is, right leg forward - instead of left leg, which is my more natural stance. This is an important skill if I want to do half-pipe, jumps, or whatever so I can get out of a situation on either leg. I won’t deny though that I fell over a few times - like being a beginner again!

Also, there’s nothing wrong with sliding down the slope for 30 meters on your stomach like a penguin - it was on purpose.

More snowboarding

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 03:40:35 +0000

Very belated update that I was snowboarding in Shiga Kogen last weekend, staying in the Villa Ichinose hotel in Ichinose village. For once, the roads were clear both ways (the Kanetsu).

The weather was great, the snow was good, and best of all, as it was the weekend between a national holiday and pay day so the slopes were pretty empty. We all got a lot of good runs in, and because it was empty, there was no waiting for lifts. I got to try out some runs goofy (having the right leg forward - I usually go regular - left leg forward) for practice, and some 360 spins on the snow - but I quickly discovered that if you do 4 you tend to get a bit dizzy.

Shiga is a great place for people who like a variey of runs, but nothing too steep. It’s a pretty family oriented place too, which is a good thing.