· Snow everywhere!Nozawa Onsen, Japan · 6th Feb 2008 · Posted by Annie
While in Tokyo, Chris and I decided we just had to go and stay in a beautiful little Japanese mountain town covered in snow. There were posters of snow covered outdoor onsens (natural hot spas) everywhere but since we can't read Japanese, we were left reading through our trusty Lonely Planet to find the perfect place for us. After plenty of research we found Nozawa Onsen, a small mountain town near Nagano (Nagano is where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held!).
The trip to Nozawa Onsen from Tokyo took us on our first 'Shinkansen' or 'bullet train' trip! Chris nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw our train pull into the station. Admittedly, the trains do look awesome, more like space rockets than trains. Unfortunately when we booked our tickets, we didn't think to ask for a window seat so we ended up sitting in the aisle and middle seat of a row. Dumb! I guess it didn't really matter though as Chris managed to sleep during the whole journey, with his head on the shoulder of the random Japanese business man sitting next to him heheheheh (Chris: OMG I did not!). It's not like you can see much detail as you zoom past at 300kph anyway!!!! We did get some awesome views of Mt Fuji during the trip though which was quite surreal.
We switched from the Shinkansen to a local train at Nagano. The local train ride up through the mountains was amazing. There had been a little bit of snow down at Nagano but further up the line, it was just covered. Cars in parking lots had what looked like a meter of snow on their roofs. The train followed a river which made for absolutely fantastic scenery. Local trains don't go very fast which made the trip very smooth and relaxing. At a small town called Togari Nozawa Onsen, we switched from train to bus. The bus was crammed full of people and all we knew was that we had to get off at stop '6'. The driver kept yelling out stops in Japanese which really didn't mean anything to us. At one point I thought I heard him say the word for 6 in Japanese so I jumped up and asked if this was our stop. He had no idea what I was saying and I had no idea what he was saying. After some pointing and mentioning of names such as 'Villa Nozawa' (the lodge we were staying at), he finally said 'yes!' and let Chris and I off the bus. Omg. How embarrassing.
Eventually we managed to find our lodge and were very very pleasantly surprised. Our room had views of the village and mountains across the other side of the valley. It was so beautiful, snow everywhere. The lodge had a chill-out room with a stereo, a breakfast room set up in a traditional Japanese style, a large industrial sized kitchen, a room with a large flat screen TV, DVD player and plenty of DVDs. Basically it had everything we might need. The lodge is run by a very friendly Australian guy called Rob, his lovely wife and two very cute daughters. The lodge almost had a homely feel to it which made it a really nice place for us to stay.
After dropping our bags off, Chris and I explored the town. Nozawa Onsen only has a population of 5000 so it's really quite small but very well known as a ski resort. It's also called Nozawa 'Onsen' because there are 13 major public onsens in this small town! There was snow everywhere, huge amounts of it. We saw several people standing on the roofs of their houses shovelling snow off onto the road. Foreign tourism isn't huge in Nozawa Onsen so there was basically no English anywhere. We had to look quite hard to find places with some English in their menus because as much as we'd love to be able to read Japanese, we just haven't quite mastered that skill yet. We decided to make use of the good weather and jumped on a gondola (called Nagasaka) up to the top of the mountain. It took ages to get to the top of the mountain, not because the gondola was slow but because the mountain was so high! At the top, we sat in a cafe and drank hot chocolate while watching skiers zooming down massively steep slopes. It was a very relaxing afternoon. :)
Later that night, Chris and I tried our very first onsen. Rob at our lodge gave us a run down of onsen etiquette. Although Chris was petrified at the idea of taking all his clothes off infront of who knows how many men, I think his experience was actually better than mine. The water in the women's onsen was so ridiculously hot, I just couldn't sit in it for more than about 2.5 seconds at a time. It felt like my blood was going to boil. There were two old Japanese ladies already in the onsen when I walked in and when one of them noticed the trouble I was having getting in, she tried to help me... in Japanese. Hand motions ended up being a lot more useful. She was convinced that if I sat on the edge of the pool, threw some water on myself then rubbed my skin hard, it would make the heat more bearable. I don't think so. It still burned. I did manage to get in... for about 30 seconds at a time. If I moved any of my limbs while sitting in the water, it would burn. Getting out hurt. I just wasn't enjoying my experience very much so eventually I just got out. Chris on the other hand didn't find the water unbearably hot so he just sat in his for 15 minutes and eventually joined me back at the lodge. Glad we tried it but I need to find an onsen several degrees colder than that!
This is when our trip to Nozawa Onsen gets interesting. After some noodles for dinner, Chris and I sat down to watch a DVD. About an hour later, Chris starts complaining about pain in his side and lower back. I told him to take some panadol and just relax. That didn't help. It got worse, much worse. About half an hour later Chris is lying on his bed in our room rolling around in pain. I tell him to stop moving. He can't, it hurts too much. Right, that's it I say - we're going to the hospital. At this point it was about 9:30pm and I had to get Rob and his family out of bed to explain the situation. After a few phone calls, we discover that the emergency room at a hospital a couple of towns away is open and a van arrives from our Villa Nozawa's sister lodge up the road. Andy, a Kiwi guy who runs the other lodge and speaks great Japanese, Rob, Chris and I pile into this van and zoom down to the hospital. Although it only took about 15 minutes to get there (because Rob was driving at twice the speed limit, on snow and ice covered roads, running the red lights, etc etc), Chris was moaning and groaning in the back seat and asking how much longer it was gonna be. He'd gone all white and looked like he was about to faint. I had no idea what was wrong!! Rob and Andy speculated that it might be kidney stones.
We ended up waiting at the hospital for about 2 hours during which time Chris had his blood pressure taken, a blood test, x-ray and pee test done. Rob and Andy waited with us and being a dad, Rob felt he had to cheer us all up by being a comedian the whole time. Get a tired ozzie, a kiwi with a broken hand, a guy with potential kidney stones and you get quite a funny group of people. There were endless jokes about how much it would hurt to pass a kidney stone and lots of references to Chopper Reid and his 'Harden the f*** up' lines. To everyone but Chris, it was worth laughing at. Still it was good to have someone there trying to make light of the situation.
Eventually the doctor called Chris into the examination room and sat him on the edge of a bed. The doctor proceeded to draw a picture of a kidney, with a small tube coming out of it and then drew a dot in the middle of that tube, with an arrow passing down through the tube. It was fairly clear what he was trying to communicate, but he followed up by speaking quickly to us in Japanese. At this point, after hours of joking around about the pain of kidney stones, Rob, Andy, the nurses and myself burst into laughter (Chris: she's not kidding - even the nurses were p***ing themselves!). I'm not really sure why but the situation just got to be so ridiculous (kidney stones in Japan??) that we all just laughed. Chris didn't. I guess it really wasn't very funny from his perspective. Chris, who was still looking rather pained, had to turn to Andy and say 'please translate!'. The doctor was basically saying that Chris had kidney stones, maybe just one, and that it was already passing down the tubes so at this point the only thing to do was take a strong painkiller, drink lots of water and try to pass it quickly. It wasn't really what we wanted to hear but it was much better than it could've been. Chris was given ONE pain killer (one?!) to take away with him and some advice - no skiing or snowboarding for at least a couple of weeks! Well that kinda threw our plans to go skiing / boarding the next day but oh well, gotta follow the doctors orders!
The following day, Chris was feeling a bit better. The pain killer was working and he was drinking all the water he was instructed to. All in all we had a very relaxing day at the lodge, watched a couple of DVDs, did some reading, and generally lazed around. It snowed all day long so we gazed out the window and marvelled at the weather. Chris was feeling well enough that night to go out for dinner - where I got to have my favourite... chicken gristle!! Yum.
The day after, we got up and decided to go for a bit of a walk up to the ski slopes. It was an amazingly clear day, sunny and even kind of warm. Standing at the bottom of the ski slopes was a bad idea though. It made us feel like we really come all the way to Nozawa Onsen and not go skiing (me) / boarding (Chris). At this point, Chris put aside all pain and said, screw it, let's go boarding. We'd already bought a day pass (as part of our accommodation package) so all we had to do was hire some gear and get going. I urged Chris to be reasonable but he just couldn't hold back. $60 later we were fully kitted out in ski / boarding gear, clothing, goggles, gloves, skis, poles, boards, etc. Very reasonable pricing! We had an amazing day of skiing and boarding up and down a real variety of runs. There were dozens of runs and dozens of lifts and there was no-one else around! The runs were so clear, you really didn't have to worry about anyone smacking into your side like you do in NZ. It was just amazing skiing down narrow tracks lined with trees covered in snow. There was so much powder because of the endless dumps the previous day, there was no ice... it was perfect. Check this out - it's Annie!
One word of advice though: interpret the names of the runs LITERALLY. We tried most of the green (easy) slopes because I'm really not that great on skis but thought we'd go all out and try a red slope (next level up) called 'Challenge'. Turns out it's the steepest slope on the mountain (39 degrees!!!!!!!!). I felt like such a noob going down at 1mm per minute while other experts zoomed past me. Doh. Lesson learned, read the signs.
Chris: There really isn't a lot to add about the boarding in Nozawa Onsen other than to say that if you get a chance you have to try it yourself. It's easy to understand why people come back from boarding overseas and say they're never going to board in NZ again. Don't get me wrong, NZ is awesome but the skifields just don't compare. :)
Annie here again now!! Damn Chris, taking over my laptop ... yeesh!! Tomorrow we're heading to Kyoto via our new favourite transport - the Shinkansen! Speeeeeeeeeed ohhh yeah!
The trip to Nozawa Onsen from Tokyo took us on our first 'Shinkansen' or 'bullet train' trip! Chris nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw our train pull into the station. Admittedly, the trains do look awesome, more like space rockets than trains. Unfortunately when we booked our tickets, we didn't think to ask for a window seat so we ended up sitting in the aisle and middle seat of a row. Dumb! I guess it didn't really matter though as Chris managed to sleep during the whole journey, with his head on the shoulder of the random Japanese business man sitting next to him heheheheh (Chris: OMG I did not!). It's not like you can see much detail as you zoom past at 300kph anyway!!!! We did get some awesome views of Mt Fuji during the trip though which was quite surreal.
We switched from the Shinkansen to a local train at Nagano. The local train ride up through the mountains was amazing. There had been a little bit of snow down at Nagano but further up the line, it was just covered. Cars in parking lots had what looked like a meter of snow on their roofs. The train followed a river which made for absolutely fantastic scenery. Local trains don't go very fast which made the trip very smooth and relaxing. At a small town called Togari Nozawa Onsen, we switched from train to bus. The bus was crammed full of people and all we knew was that we had to get off at stop '6'. The driver kept yelling out stops in Japanese which really didn't mean anything to us. At one point I thought I heard him say the word for 6 in Japanese so I jumped up and asked if this was our stop. He had no idea what I was saying and I had no idea what he was saying. After some pointing and mentioning of names such as 'Villa Nozawa' (the lodge we were staying at), he finally said 'yes!' and let Chris and I off the bus. Omg. How embarrassing.
Eventually we managed to find our lodge and were very very pleasantly surprised. Our room had views of the village and mountains across the other side of the valley. It was so beautiful, snow everywhere. The lodge had a chill-out room with a stereo, a breakfast room set up in a traditional Japanese style, a large industrial sized kitchen, a room with a large flat screen TV, DVD player and plenty of DVDs. Basically it had everything we might need. The lodge is run by a very friendly Australian guy called Rob, his lovely wife and two very cute daughters. The lodge almost had a homely feel to it which made it a really nice place for us to stay.
After dropping our bags off, Chris and I explored the town. Nozawa Onsen only has a population of 5000 so it's really quite small but very well known as a ski resort. It's also called Nozawa 'Onsen' because there are 13 major public onsens in this small town! There was snow everywhere, huge amounts of it. We saw several people standing on the roofs of their houses shovelling snow off onto the road. Foreign tourism isn't huge in Nozawa Onsen so there was basically no English anywhere. We had to look quite hard to find places with some English in their menus because as much as we'd love to be able to read Japanese, we just haven't quite mastered that skill yet. We decided to make use of the good weather and jumped on a gondola (called Nagasaka) up to the top of the mountain. It took ages to get to the top of the mountain, not because the gondola was slow but because the mountain was so high! At the top, we sat in a cafe and drank hot chocolate while watching skiers zooming down massively steep slopes. It was a very relaxing afternoon. :)
Later that night, Chris and I tried our very first onsen. Rob at our lodge gave us a run down of onsen etiquette. Although Chris was petrified at the idea of taking all his clothes off infront of who knows how many men, I think his experience was actually better than mine. The water in the women's onsen was so ridiculously hot, I just couldn't sit in it for more than about 2.5 seconds at a time. It felt like my blood was going to boil. There were two old Japanese ladies already in the onsen when I walked in and when one of them noticed the trouble I was having getting in, she tried to help me... in Japanese. Hand motions ended up being a lot more useful. She was convinced that if I sat on the edge of the pool, threw some water on myself then rubbed my skin hard, it would make the heat more bearable. I don't think so. It still burned. I did manage to get in... for about 30 seconds at a time. If I moved any of my limbs while sitting in the water, it would burn. Getting out hurt. I just wasn't enjoying my experience very much so eventually I just got out. Chris on the other hand didn't find the water unbearably hot so he just sat in his for 15 minutes and eventually joined me back at the lodge. Glad we tried it but I need to find an onsen several degrees colder than that!
This is when our trip to Nozawa Onsen gets interesting. After some noodles for dinner, Chris and I sat down to watch a DVD. About an hour later, Chris starts complaining about pain in his side and lower back. I told him to take some panadol and just relax. That didn't help. It got worse, much worse. About half an hour later Chris is lying on his bed in our room rolling around in pain. I tell him to stop moving. He can't, it hurts too much. Right, that's it I say - we're going to the hospital. At this point it was about 9:30pm and I had to get Rob and his family out of bed to explain the situation. After a few phone calls, we discover that the emergency room at a hospital a couple of towns away is open and a van arrives from our Villa Nozawa's sister lodge up the road. Andy, a Kiwi guy who runs the other lodge and speaks great Japanese, Rob, Chris and I pile into this van and zoom down to the hospital. Although it only took about 15 minutes to get there (because Rob was driving at twice the speed limit, on snow and ice covered roads, running the red lights, etc etc), Chris was moaning and groaning in the back seat and asking how much longer it was gonna be. He'd gone all white and looked like he was about to faint. I had no idea what was wrong!! Rob and Andy speculated that it might be kidney stones.
We ended up waiting at the hospital for about 2 hours during which time Chris had his blood pressure taken, a blood test, x-ray and pee test done. Rob and Andy waited with us and being a dad, Rob felt he had to cheer us all up by being a comedian the whole time. Get a tired ozzie, a kiwi with a broken hand, a guy with potential kidney stones and you get quite a funny group of people. There were endless jokes about how much it would hurt to pass a kidney stone and lots of references to Chopper Reid and his 'Harden the f*** up' lines. To everyone but Chris, it was worth laughing at. Still it was good to have someone there trying to make light of the situation.
Eventually the doctor called Chris into the examination room and sat him on the edge of a bed. The doctor proceeded to draw a picture of a kidney, with a small tube coming out of it and then drew a dot in the middle of that tube, with an arrow passing down through the tube. It was fairly clear what he was trying to communicate, but he followed up by speaking quickly to us in Japanese. At this point, after hours of joking around about the pain of kidney stones, Rob, Andy, the nurses and myself burst into laughter (Chris: she's not kidding - even the nurses were p***ing themselves!). I'm not really sure why but the situation just got to be so ridiculous (kidney stones in Japan??) that we all just laughed. Chris didn't. I guess it really wasn't very funny from his perspective. Chris, who was still looking rather pained, had to turn to Andy and say 'please translate!'. The doctor was basically saying that Chris had kidney stones, maybe just one, and that it was already passing down the tubes so at this point the only thing to do was take a strong painkiller, drink lots of water and try to pass it quickly. It wasn't really what we wanted to hear but it was much better than it could've been. Chris was given ONE pain killer (one?!) to take away with him and some advice - no skiing or snowboarding for at least a couple of weeks! Well that kinda threw our plans to go skiing / boarding the next day but oh well, gotta follow the doctors orders!
The following day, Chris was feeling a bit better. The pain killer was working and he was drinking all the water he was instructed to. All in all we had a very relaxing day at the lodge, watched a couple of DVDs, did some reading, and generally lazed around. It snowed all day long so we gazed out the window and marvelled at the weather. Chris was feeling well enough that night to go out for dinner - where I got to have my favourite... chicken gristle!! Yum.
The day after, we got up and decided to go for a bit of a walk up to the ski slopes. It was an amazingly clear day, sunny and even kind of warm. Standing at the bottom of the ski slopes was a bad idea though. It made us feel like we really come all the way to Nozawa Onsen and not go skiing (me) / boarding (Chris). At this point, Chris put aside all pain and said, screw it, let's go boarding. We'd already bought a day pass (as part of our accommodation package) so all we had to do was hire some gear and get going. I urged Chris to be reasonable but he just couldn't hold back. $60 later we were fully kitted out in ski / boarding gear, clothing, goggles, gloves, skis, poles, boards, etc. Very reasonable pricing! We had an amazing day of skiing and boarding up and down a real variety of runs. There were dozens of runs and dozens of lifts and there was no-one else around! The runs were so clear, you really didn't have to worry about anyone smacking into your side like you do in NZ. It was just amazing skiing down narrow tracks lined with trees covered in snow. There was so much powder because of the endless dumps the previous day, there was no ice... it was perfect. Check this out - it's Annie!
One word of advice though: interpret the names of the runs LITERALLY. We tried most of the green (easy) slopes because I'm really not that great on skis but thought we'd go all out and try a red slope (next level up) called 'Challenge'. Turns out it's the steepest slope on the mountain (39 degrees!!!!!!!!). I felt like such a noob going down at 1mm per minute while other experts zoomed past me. Doh. Lesson learned, read the signs.
Chris: There really isn't a lot to add about the boarding in Nozawa Onsen other than to say that if you get a chance you have to try it yourself. It's easy to understand why people come back from boarding overseas and say they're never going to board in NZ again. Don't get me wrong, NZ is awesome but the skifields just don't compare. :)
Annie here again now!! Damn Chris, taking over my laptop ... yeesh!! Tomorrow we're heading to Kyoto via our new favourite transport - the Shinkansen! Speeeeeeeeeed ohhh yeah!
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