A bit late but maybe you enjoy the read during summertime, too:
In the spirit of "Japan by Van“, „Cardanchi“ or an Onsen Tour an friend of mine and I made plans to discover the Japanese winter with a camper-van. It was a bit difficult to find a rental company that rents out equipped campervans in winter and so we could not find on on hokkaido wich was nontheless the destination we absolutely wanted to visit.
So after a while we settled on the following plan: Flying to Tokyo, renting a van from there and than ski just a little on Honshu and take the ferry to Hokkaido. Drive back to Tokyo to end the trip.
We flew into Tokyo Narita Airport and we took some time to discover Tokyo first. After getting our luggage and figuring out the right train to take we went to Narita (the Tokyo suburb not the airport) to drop of our ski equipment at the car rental. With just a little backpack each we than headed to discover Tokyo for three days.
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Nagakin Capsule Tower
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Our journey way fueled by ramen
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Tokyo Skytree and view from the top
The van made a good impression on us when picking it up but we were really skeptical towards the offered sleeping bag. In the end they where just fine as the parking heater was awesome and kept us warm and dried our gear without any issues.
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Starting off the roadtirp
Off we went towards Kagura Ski Resort. The first day was kind of nice weather and the snow was not jet that awesome but the other two days where full on nippon powder! Kagura is a little resort more suited to beginners actually but therefor there is little to no backcountry traffic and you can enjoy the gentle powder fields by yourself. Things got also a bit more interesting after we found ourselves in some no-go area (according to the little backcountry map) in form of a little runnel. Everything turned out just perfect and we got back to the slopes and up again without trouble. Unfortunately the uppermost lift and the backcountry access close already at 13:00 but we skinned up the slope and around the gate once wich was also a nice exercise. Probably there is plenty more terrain to discover around that litte place.
For people traveling by van the Michi-No-Eki is a dream. There is a Onsen just next to it and it is only 2 minutes from the parking lot of the gondola. Among the best setup for a Van based ski trip you can get. There is also a little restaurant hidden in town run by a former ski racer who takes pride in serving guests coming to his little hill from abroad.
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After Kagura we drove off to Niigata to take the Ferry. And for the first time we experienced japanese winter driving. Heavy snowfalls lead to low speeds (like really slow) but we played it safe and made it to the ferry terminal without trouble. The ride across the japanese sea was really wild. The big ship moved so intense that we once really lost the floor under out feet. After 18 hourse Hokkaido came into sight and the land of the rising sun served a sunrise I’ll never forget.
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Off the boat we decided for a rest day but made our way to Asahidake to check out the place in the evening. No a lot is going on and there is no nice camping spot. The Onsens are really nice though. After camping a bit further down the road the next morning we drove up and after a warm up run (all runs lead to the same gondola) we aimed to climb mount Asahidake a famous volcano. The bad visibility and the heavy winds soon led to the conclusion that it would be more fun to ski down in the woods and took off the skins just after passing the first geyser (that smelled bad, really bad!). In total whiteout we passed a fox and than found some good powder stach further down. But the place is quite crowded with larger guided groups and we decided after 3 laps that we had seen enough.
We drove off but not far. Along the road there were plenty of these constructions to prevent avalanches (how do you call them?) and we had heard that it is a typically japan thing to jump over those. One spot looked a lot less scary than most others and we set ourselves up for a little roadside action.
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Next stop was Furano. Nice but somehow tracked out a bit. We got lost and had to hike back to the resort for 40 minuites. But Still really nice palce:
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As we were a little underwhelmed by the conditions in Furano we went on to Kiroro. Kiroro was really nice. Some tourists and backcountry skiers but just 10minuites of easy skinning lead deep into the backcountry zones and you find untracked terrain as you wish. We skied Kiroro for two days and those where among the best ski days as we also had lots of fresh snow in certain spots. The more alpine peaks above the treeline where out of question due to wind and visibility.
The situation for camping is all right (tolerated on the hotel parking it seems) and the Kiroro Resort (just one hotel there) as a nice but crowded Onsen. We were not up for the pricy restaurants and drove to Otaru for Dinner.
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Unfortunately I twisted my knee on the last run of the second day and so we set off to Kuchan Hospital to get a check up. It was a holyday so in the end we came back the next day, too. The knee then seamed alright but the doctor adviced to stay away from skiing for a few weeks. We had other plans: Catsiing near Niseko. Due to rain this got postponed by two days and we had rest days in Niseko. Niseko feels a lot less like japan but we liked some of the popular places a lot to hang out: the cafe of the Gentemstick store and the Fridgerator-Door-Bar.
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For the cat skiing I bandaged the knee, threw in some Ibuprophene and off we went. The conditions where not as good as for the rest of the trip as sometimes there was a little crust from the rain three days prior. Nevertheless a fun day out. Don’t expect to much of crazy terrain here. Everything is rather mellow but you can hit off some nice features. On the other hand: the sun was out and we could stare at Mount Yotei all day wich was nice for a change opposed to the permanent clouds and snowfall.
This was skiing for us. We Drove back south, tool only the short ferry from Hokkaido to Honshu this time, visited Sendai for a few hours (just the Mediatheque for its architecture) passed Fukushima and made it back to Narita where we had to take our flight back home.
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I hope you liked this little report. I would like to thank everybody who contributed to the great Japan information in these forums! If you have questions on our travel, don’t hesitate to ask.