After multiple trips to Japan during the spring/summer, it was time to go to Japan during the winter to see the winter festivals, and do some snowboarding in its legendary dry snow. So, Arturo and I made plans for this trip, and our friend Regis joined us.
This started with a longish trip: SFO to Narita, skyliner to Ueno, shinkansen to Nagano, and bus to Hakuba:
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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 :)
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Atarashiya Ryokan was walking distance from Happo One lifts, which is good for the 2 days we went there:
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>>> 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
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Our rooms at Ryokan Hakura were half western, half Japanese, which was a nice mix
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We got to enjoy a very yummy dinner in our Ryokan after our first day of skiing
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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:
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the 2nd night after skiing, we had dinner in a local restaurant
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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):
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Onozawa-San giving us a farewell
Next, was a trip to Hokkaido's Niseko.