Hey all
I organised a group of 13 from Australia this year for a week in mid Jan.
We'd been to Niseko before (me twice) and were getting sick of the westernisation and were looking for a bit more authentic cultural experience as well as good snow.
Met up with most of our mob at Narita and got our JR vouchers, which must have been one of the more frustrating things we did! Took almost an hour to get 9 of us with tickets from voucher/printout supplied, even though I had printed out and we prefilled the forms that are usually done at the counter (you can get them off the JR website) Looks like the ticket agent was typing War & Peace into her (ancient) computer and she seemed very fond of stamping things.
So, a much later departure on Narita Express than we expected, but all went well from there.
Rang the Akakura hotel from the train and we got the message thru (Watashi wa Levins des - and so on with my poor Nihongo) and they were there to meet us at Myoko station.
There was a little confusion at the hotel as they weren't sure how many rooms were booked, but this worked out in our favour as we ended up with an extra room for one of our party!
Takano-san (one of the front desk people who was great) then told us that they would have to move us to a different hotel on the Thursday and we left that to deal with later.
He then exchanged our lift ticket voucher for 6 vouchers each (the country is voucher mad!) which we exchanged for day passes each day.
Rooms were fairly basic - mine was a twin with a couch hard up against the second bed - not sure what it was there for as you didn't have enough room to sit in it, but still, good room with great tea and hilarious TV. Bathroom was the standard cubicle with space toilet. I could turn off the heating which was a plus.
We had to put a label on our door to get rooms serviced and got yet another voucher for breakfast, which they took from us at breakfast and returned to the room each day.
We didn't have access to the normal ski room (too crowded) but they made another room available for us
Takanao-san took us on an extended tour of the hotel and the village and organised a place for dinner (Curry House) as, due to long weekend, all restaurants were booked!
Those that needed to hired gear from a mate of Takano-san who had good gear.
As an aside, Takano-san seemed to work about 20 hours a day. Perhaps there was a pair of twins?
We skied Akakura Onsen on Monday and went on to Kanko which had good runs above the big hotel there and on to Suginohara Tuesday. We were told that Suginohara was flat and beginnerish, but it's probably the pick I think. Good, fast gondola takes 15 mins to the top of the (approx 4k) run or you can go higher on a quad for the 8.5km run if you prefer.
No real blacks here (although two mogul runs at the top may qualify) but our group was happy with the red runs (and some of the greens)
Spent a couple days in knee deep powder which was nice and swapped between the 4 resorts supported by the lift tickets.
Very few people on the slopes when not weekend - I think we were the only people in the village Tuesday night! The gaijin-o-meter didn't read very high either - only saw a dozen or so aussies all week. Excellent.
Eating houses OK, but didn't find anything of the intimate or quirky style of Mina Mina or the Fridge Bar in Niseko for example. Approx ¥1500 each for dinner (about the same for beer!)
Thursday night they moved us to the main hotel and gave us suites (!) as they had a visiting school in Annex and main hotel. They didn't move us back the next day when the school left, but they did do this to another, smaller group.
Sat night went to Suginosawa village by cab to see the local end of New Year celebrations which were fun and hired a small coach to take us and our luggage to the Monkey onsen, wait for us and then take us to Nagano on Sunday morning.
Train to Tokyo, then I left the rest to go to Narita and back home.
Myoko = great Japanese experience and great snow for parties of our nature. (was interviewed for NHK when I was there - hope they could make some sense of my statements)
Some pix at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82922&l=b90e2&id=613422937Cheers
martin
