nippontiger

I doubt this particular branch sells winter gear - its in Akihabara 'electronics town' and on the website it just says it has electronics stuff and so on. Looks like the nearest one to central Tokyo that might have skis and stuff would be the Oizumi Gakuen branch. Other possibles include the MItaka branch, the Koganei branch, the Hanakoganei branch and the Higashiyamato branch - all of them are in the western suburbs of Tokyo and could all be checked out in a day. I've never been to any of them so I don't know if they have skiing stuff, but the websites say they have sports and outdoor things.

You won't need much more than t-shirt, beany/helmet, gloves and goggles on a sunny day but if its windy or snowy, you'll want something to cover your face/neck/ears etc and fingers can get very cold - an extra pair of gloves which are thin enough to wear under your normal gloves can make a world of difference there. I think girls usually prefer an extra layer compared to guys. As mentioned, spend around 8k or more on goggles - it isn't worth skimping here otherwise its gonna ruin your fun with fogged up lenses all the time - cheap ones will be fine on sunny days, but useless on powder/snowy da

You'd be unlucky to spend a week in Hakuba in February and not see any powder. Its a bit hard to ski at first - I'd recommend just skiing in some ankle deep stuff to start with if possible to get the feel for it. Once it gets past knee deep to waist deep (a fair chance you could get that even on piste), you probably don't want to be straying too far away from other peoples tracks as an intermediate and make sure you stay in areas with a decent gradient. On big powder days, lots of people end up getting stuck or losing skis which can take a long time to find again.....!

10 years ago, 90mm waist skis might be considered 'fatties' but not anymore! I think over the years the designs and materials have been tweeked so that its easier to ski on fatter skis. Unless you are really into skiing fast groomers all the time, moguls or usually ski in hard packed icy conditions (i.e. not Hakuba in Feb!), I'm not sure why anyone would go with a skinny ski. Then again, its been so long since I skied a narrow ski and I've got a lot better since then - perhaps I should give one a try an a groomer day! The Mantras look nice actually.....

I ski 119 mm waist skis all the time - chest deep powder or corduroy groomers. I honestly never felt any problems at all when I moved up from an 85mm ski to 119. If you are hiring, check out the forecast when you arrive - if there's going to be a lot of powder - hire a ski with a decent waist - around 110 mm would probably be good. Also, would be a good idea to choose a ski with 'rocker' or 'early rise' in the tips with a normal camber underfoot. The rocker will help you float in the powder and make turn initiation easier. The camber underfoot will help it ski compressed snow a lot better. Ma

I think many ski-jo charge 1000 yen for parking TBH. Its pretty much par for the course in Japan, 1000 yen for a days parking. I doubt it has anything to do with the lack of nightlife - Japanese just don't do the apres-ski thing, it's an onsen, a beer at the hotel and then bed for the most part. Outside of the major cities, most of Japan is dead after 10 pm - even many parts of Tokyo on a Saturday night. The only resorts with much night life are those where lots of foreigners go.

I think buying from Yahoo Auctions is gonna be tricky if you don't speak any Japanese and you don't have a Japanese bank account. It's not like buying something on ebay. When you buy stuff on YA, you usually have to communicate a few emails to the seller in Japanese to explain your delivery address and payment method and any options. Payment can usually be done with bank transfer and I guess it would be possible to do this from an Australian account, but you would probably have to pay some kind of bank charge. The other usual payment option is the Yahoo service called Kantan Kessai - this invo

Nice report and pics! Got me itching to get back there again myself before the season is out - forgot about skiing with the warm March we've had but I really should get out for a few days in the spring...

What a lot of people do when buying boots is try on a pair and then keep trying on bigger sizes until they feel comfortable and then buy those and end up with boots way too big for them. I heard that a huge percentage of skiers have boots a size or even two sizes too big for them. This would be the process as I understand it: Get your feet measured for the correct size both length and last and then try to find a pair of boots that feels comfortable in that size (hint: most of them will feel horribly uncomfortable or even painful!). When you eventually get the pair that feels comfortable (or le

Got to Alts Bandai today! Not a bad little trip - no real deep powder, but a little bit of fresh among the trees and some nice fast cruising along the groomers which look to have had a little bit of a top up over the last day or so.

Probably doing my usual on Sunday - Kagura Higaeri...

Fantastic! Really wanna go to Hokkaido again sometime...

There's enough slope there to keep going its just the last 100 metres or so it starts to get a bit flat - bit of quad-burning leaning back and straight lining necessary to keep going at that point, but didn't have to walk at all.

Excellent video! Really nicely edited! Those drop offs look like fun, but I think I might break something attempting something like that right now! Im sure it'll come with a bit more practice though!

Yeah, remember it well! Would love to get up there sometime...!

Happy to oblige...! http://www.snowjapanforums.com/index.php/topic/22654-kagura-yesterday/

Here's a short vid showing the fantastic conditions at Kagura yesterday - hard to believe this was taken at 3 pm on a public holiday at one of Niigata's most popular resorts. I got a fair bit more footage from the day so I'll try to edit something together.....

Yep, best get the pole, especially for snowy or flat light days. Helmet mount better when following somebody else and filming them. Only thing using the pole for us skiers, it makes it a bit harder to ski holding the thing up like that - seems to put you a bit out of balance. Well, it does me anyway. I just use my ski pole and I bodged some mounting from an old bike light.....

Yeah, that's what I wanted! How do I do that?

Haha! Yeah probably a bit excessive! I was thinking the photo itself would just come up on the page, not a link to the picture in the gallery which did add another mention...! The pic is a screen grab from some video footage which I'll post when I have time to edit it... Excellent day anyway, apart from when I ran into a tree stump buried in the powder - that's gonna be some big bruise on my shin tomorrow. Could've ruined my day that, but luckily it didn't - only about 5 minutes of it!

Had an awesome day at my usual day trip place, Kagura, today. Said on the Kagura website 20-30cms fresh snowfall which I thought sounded OK - wasn't expecting it to turn out to be quite as epic as it did. I have to say, despite the long weekend, I didn't wait in a single line all day, apart from to take the ropeway back down and the off piste areas were pretty much deserted the entire day. Train back was packed of course - we couldn't get reserved seats on any train before 10 pm so we jumped on the jiyuuseki - nope, didn't get a seat but eased away the crowded journey with few cans of Echigo R

I think the anti-fog treatments do work, but they're not very durable. The way that they work is by making the lens hydrophillic so that when the moisture condenses on there it forms a thin film which you can see through rather than tiny droplets which is what happens when they fog up. Problem is the hydrophillic anti-fog treatment quickly gets washed away by the moisture so you'll probably have to apply it quite often. Also, that thin film I mentioned can start to get a bit thick and then it starts to run and becomes difficult to see through. I think best bet is just to stick an extra pair o

Looks like it's going to snow this weekend so you should have a good chance of getting some powder. As TB said, Kagura is going to be your best bet if that's what you are looking for. Kandatsu is probably a good choice if you have to make your trip when it's stormy - Kagura's top lifts often close in windy conditions but Kandatsu is in quite a sheltered valley so doesn't get affected so badly.

It never seems busy at Kagura though, even on holiday weekends... I don't think I've ever waited more than a minute or two for a lift there.

Hoping to get out somewhere this weekend - it'll either be a shinkansen trip somewhere - probably up to Kagura again, or a ride in my friends car somewhere - maybe up to one of the Fukushima resorts - I enjoyed Nekoma last time I was there. I think the ETC card makes it about half price on weekends, right? Would be nice to stay a night somewhere, but don't want to spend a fortune at this time....