It was November 2015 that I was looking at 2016 calendar to plan for my next annual trip, and I came to a conclusion that the Chinese New Year period was the best period to travel given the two-day holiday in Singapore. Then I thought about travelling on this period – however finding friends to travel with will be a challenge because most of them will go back to celebrate the new year. So I thought to myself, well, why don’t I just try to go solo? You always heard of a saying “You should travel solo at least once in your life,” thus I pulled the trigger. I searched for the fares and dates and I settled with ANA. I paid S$780 for the flight, which was decent for a Star Alliance airline on a holiday period. There was an option to get S$730 flight instead, however with the extra 50 dollars I had a Boeing 787 Dreamliner on the return flight. Another bucketlist checked! I could not help but wondering to myself… this is so YOLO.
Getting to Nozawa Onsen
Take the Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo to Iiyama (2 hours, ¥8630 one way, reserved). From Iiyama station Nozawa Onsen Liner bus departs every hour or so. Just go out from Iiyama station main exit and you should be able to see a blue bus with big “Nozawa Onsen Liner” text on its side. The bus ride costs ¥600 one-way and takes around 20 minutes to Nozawa Onsen bus terminal.
Stay
Nozawa Onsen is a small village and everything is within walking distance, so the location of your accomodation should not really matter much. Having said that, I managed to secure a single room in Chouchin-ya, a family-run ryokan that was rather cheap, and located centrally near the main O-yu road. The location was close to the Yu-road to Hikage base where I will have my ski lesson too, so it’s a plus.
Ski
There are 3 base ski area in Nozawa Onsen, namely Hikage, Nagasaka, and Karasawa. Hikage is the biggest one and is located at the top left side of the village (see map). Nagasaka was located on top middle, and Karasawa on top right. The English ski school was located on Hikage. Each base has their own ski routes, check the piste map above for details.
My ski instructor was Jaden, he’s a cool guy. For the basics they will teach you how to brake, how to turn, etc in the rather flat area on the base itself, without even going up to the lifts or gondola. I enrolled on a half day lesson, so after lunch I decided to have a go myself to the route 21 named the ‘Paradise’. It is a long, green run that goes downhill through the forests. To go up there you have to take the Hikage gondola – which was high – and at that time the gondola stopped for 1 minute when I was riding it. Talk about nervousness!
The Paradise route were indeed mostly flat, nice long run suited for beginners. However going downhill alone was quite nervy, I have to admit. My braking was not perfect and there were some areas that are quite steep and I was not confident at all whether I could survive. On top of that, on most of the areas, there were no safety nets at the edges of the trail, and it’s just trees or cliffs waiting for you. I stopped multiple times, fell down even more, and I think I took about one hour to finish the 8-km stretch. After safely arrived back at the base, my feet and my heart went on strike and I decided to finish the ski session.
Jigokudani Monkey Park
After that memorable skiing experience I went back to hotel and exploring a few places. I figured out that tomorrow my feet will not be in a good condition to ski, so I thought to go on some side trip. I registered for a tour to Jigokudani Monkey Park, which is famous for the monkey bathing in onsen scene. The second day in Nozawa was a clear and sunny day, which is perfect for exploration. Since the monkey park tour will only commence after lunch, so I spent the morning exploring the village, with map on one hand, camera at the other. Although it was sunny, it was cold and my hands were freezing especially after taking out my phone or camera to take photos! I stopped by one public onsen Kumanoteara-yu to take a dip and only after then it felt rather warm. Just realized that going to onsen in winter is actually really good!
The monkey park tour was fun, it was English all the way since the participants were all foreigners. In fact, the tour leader was a British guy named Jack! The bus ride to Jigokudani took about 45 minutes and the weather was perfect, the only thing you see on the way was blue skies and snow-covered fields. From the parking area, it was another 20-min hike to the actual monkey park. The hike was slippery, I thought sometimes we take walking for granted. You have to really pay attention to where you step otherwise you will fall down flat on your butt.
Photographing monkeys was a challenge. I am used to shot still objects, thus it is me who moved, not the object. However with animals, they will move around, and your moving around will not help anything. So you need to pick a spot, remain still and ready, and hope that luck will bless you that the monkey will come and look at your camera. To complicate matters, I brought my wide angle lens instead of my basic kit, so I can’t zoom to focus on the monkey. In the end I abandoned my DSLR and just used my awesome Nexus 6P.
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From the monkey park the tour took us to a nearby village called Shibu Onsen. This is a smaller village compared to Nozawa however they also have 10 public onsens in the village, and there was a custom to visit all 10. You will be given a towel and after bathing in each one, you mark your towel with a stamp outside the bath. After getting 10 stamps, put the towel on the main temple and it was said to bring you good luck! Also, they sold fried grasshoppers as souvenirs here. I sampled one big grasshopper. It’s actually quite good. (as long as it’s extra crispy)
Onsen
The village was named Nozawa Onsen for a reason. It has 14 public onsen scattered throughout the village. All public onsens are free except the Furusato-no-yu, the newest one in town that is modern style and just recently built. On the third day since I didn’t feel like skiing, I decided to try as much onsen as I can and understand what was the difference between each. I managed to cover 6 out of 14 onsen, and I smelled like egg at the end of the day. Here are the photographs of those onsens that I visited.
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On top of the 14 traditional onsen, there was one modern bath named Nozawa Onsen Sparena, located near Nagasaka base. This is a modern bathing house, there was onsen, swimming pool, and sauna inside. The only difference is that swimming suit is required here, which allows you to have mixed-gender bathing which normally are not allowed. So this place is rather popular for families because they can bath or swim together. They also have restaurants, lounges etc so this place is basically a place for you to relax in onsen and chill.
The snowfall was really heavy on this day, and I actually stayed in the Sparena for quite long waiting for the snowfall to stop (it is really not nice to walk in heavy snow). And I have to say that the sensation of going to outdoor onsen during heavy snowfall was really the best. I will recommend you to do that when you have the opportunity.
That pretty much covers my experience in Nozawa Onsen. The next post will be on Kawaguchiko where I spent my time hunting for Mount Fuji. Stay tuned!