sheena

I was one of the lucky winners of a Hakuba Alpen Resort lift ticket. In January I spent two weeks in Hakuba and got a chance to use my free lift pass at Happo One (along with other self purchased lift tickets for the duration of the trip). When I first arrived in Hakuba around mid January it appeared to not have snowed for a while (how long, I don't know exactly). The village looked a lot less white than I'd remembered from my previous visit in 2011. This was very much evident on the mountain. There was snow, but it wasn't the fluffy powder I'd been dreaming (and salivating) over whil

Thanks. I've been doing a bit of googling over the past few days and think that a day trip to the monkey onsen would be better (because they want to see that anyway), but then stopping off in Shibu Onsen for lunch and getting that old town feel. I think I have figured out timetables (a bit of a challenge when I know no Japanese) for buses and trains.

http://www.snowjapan.com/access-transportation/maps-a-times.html Very hard to read the jpg that they have for the shuttles, but the resorts have free shuttles. You can get better details when you're in Hakuba.

If you want to get on an organised tour it can be done for 10,000Yen/person. They visit the monkeys, zenkoji temple and somewhere else (but I forget where). You can book this anywhere when you get to Hakuba.

I'm heading to Hakuba in Jan with a couple of people who aren't as enthusiastic about hitting the slopes as I am. I think they may enjoy a day trip to Nozawa (as they may get bored of Hakuba) just to have a look at the place, eat some soba etc. The only problem I'm finding is that there is only one bus per day so they can get there in the morning, but aren't able to get back. Does anyone have any idea on how to return the same day (in the evening) from Nozawa Onsen to Hakuba? Would something like the chuo taxi do this?

Beautiful. How do you set the lighting? Whenever I try to shoot snow it always gets blown out because it's so white!