This started with a longish trip: SFO to Narita, skyliner to Ueno, shinkansen to Nagano, and bus to Hakuba:

In Hakuba, I found Atarashiya Ryokan a short distance from the main bus stop. It was a nice traditional ryokan with breakfast and dinner onsite, and where it was good that I was able to speak some Japanese, because their English was close to non existent :)

Atarashiya Ryokan was walking distance from Happo One lifts, which is good for the 2 days we went there:

>>> Go here for my snowboarding report of Hakuba's Happo-One and Hakuba 47 <<<

After 3 days in Hakuba, we took a bus to a subway/train to Yudanaka, and we stayed at Ryokan Hakura which was excellent and where Onozawa-San took good care of us, and thankfully also spoke better English than I spoke Japanese, making things a bit easier for us :)
The first 2 days we took an early bus from the station to Shiga Kogen to go snowboarding (report here)

the train to Yudanaka was a bit slower and less luxurious than the other trains we took, but it got us there

Our rooms at Ryokan Hakura were half western, half Japanese, which was a nice mix

We got to enjoy a very yummy dinner in our Ryokan after our first day of skiing

the road to shiga kogen's remote bigger resorts was time consuming, nice curved bridge here

At end of the 2nd day, we went to a walk from Yudanaka to Shibu Onsen around sunset, which was a bit of a trek, but a nice city to visit:

the 2nd night after skiing, we had dinner in a local restaurant

Our last day, we didn't have to leave so early for the ski bus, and were able to have breakfast in our ryokan, which was quite good and Onozawa-San very nicely drove us to Jigokudani Yaen-Koen (Monkey Park) and then to the train station (which was welcome considering that my luggage was not fun to take uphill in snowy streets):

Onozawa-San giving us a farewell

Next, was a trip to Hokkaido's Niseko.