General 4 — Our Travel Era

Hakuba, Japan

Why we loved it:

Location, location, location! This bed and breakfast is located just a five minute walk from the Happo One Gondola (talk about ski in ski out!) If you’re also skiing at other resorts, there’s a shuttle stop right at the gondola as well. The shuttle will take you to all 10 resorts around Hakuba, Japan.
Free breakfast! The free breakfast was delicious! It was slightly different every morning but they always had toast, yogurt, cereal, some form of eggs, meat, salad, and of course coffee and orange juice.
Amazing staff! The staff was super amazing – they were so accommodating and friendly and they even helped us call one of the ski resorts after Max left his brand new goggles and helmet there in our frenzy to get a shuttle back after night skiing.
They offer Apres! Every afternoon they offer charcuterie boards and wine (starting at 2:00pm). It’s perfect if you’re skiing at Happo-One and want a quick wine and cheese break.
The dinner is delicious! They have a restaurant in the
A mix of modern & traditional! They have rooms with traditional tatami floors and Japanese futons as beds and they also have rooms with Western (regular) beds.

If you love tree runs and you score some fresh powder (or arrive in a blizzard like we did), Cortina is your mountain! Max spent the whole day
And don’t worry, there’s a couple beginner runs as well!
Getting there: Know that it’s about a 40 minute shuttle ride to get to Cortina from the Happo One or Echoland areas. It’s the farthest resort from town, but if it’s a japow day, it’s definitely worth it. Ask your hotel staff to help you find the most updated shuttle schedule.

Where we went: Goryu Resort.

The night skiing at Goryu was some of the best night skiing we have ever done. Typically the conditions aren’t great during the night – hello ice… but the conditions at Goryu were so great! They freshly groomed the run right before they opened for night skiing.
The Ramen in the dining hall is actually so amazing. It’s perfect to grab a bowl between the time day skiing ends and night skiing begins to refuel.

Notes:

Keep an eye on the shuttle times or arrange for a taxi ahead of time to pick you up from wherever you’re night skiing. Not many shuttles run past 6:00pm so getting home can be a hassle if you aren’t prepared.

One thing we didn’t know is that you need to make dinner reservations way ahead of time in Hakuba. There definitely aren’t as many restaurants as their are visitors and all of the restaurants are pretty small.
We were lucky that we were able to get in at our hotel’s restaurant or we would have been pretty out of luck for any sit down restaurants.

Happo One is world renowned for skiers, however, if you’re a snowboarder, you might be disappointed in the amount of runs that have moguls.
The resort is huge with tons of runs so you will find some good groomers for snowboarding, but go early and be sure to take a look at the map and scope out the mountain on your way up the gondola.
Happo One is the most central resort to the lodge and there’s chairs scattered all along the main road.

Oof, transportation from the train station to our accommodation was kind of a nightmare.
We were coming from Kyoto so we had a pretty long travel day with four trains to make it to Hakuba Train Station. When we arrived it was about 4:00pm… bad timing with the close of the ski resorts for the day. All of the shuttles that came by the train station were full of snowboarders and skiers and the taxi companies don’t allow you to call them from the train station (for some reason!?). It took us 40 minutes to get a shuttle to take us to the bus terminal.
Once we got to the terminal we waited another 30 minutes until we figured out what bus we had to get on to get to the shuttle stop closest to our hotel.
Just call your hotel and arrange for them to pick you up the day prior to your arrival – most will! If they don’t you can schedule a taxi if you do so before you arrive – and I HIGHLY recommend it!