the long weekend

Sorry this post is coming in very late, I didn’t have access to internet for a while…(more on this later). Despite forcing myself to post every day, I have yet to post a full summary/reflection of the past long weekend, so it’s finally time (only a week late, shh). This might be a little bit dry but I know if I don’t do this now I’ll never come back to it.

Some context: my friend Angela, who I’ve been friends with since middle school but became really good friends with in college, moved to Tokyo 1.5 years ago. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was inspired to move to Japan after my first visit two years ago, and on the same phone call where I told Angela about my new-found aspiration, she told me that her company had offered her an opening in their Tokyo office and she was seriously considering the transfer. I’ll be honest, I’m actually surprised we both followed through with our plans (more so me than her). Angela’s apartment is the one we stayed in the first few days of our travels before moving into our current place.

A few days after arriving in Japan, Angela messages me: “hey, there’s a long weekend coming up and I’m going on a ski trip with some friends, want to come?” Well, I had gone through all that hassle to bring my ski gear, I might as well use it. So that’s how I ended up in Hakuba very minimally planned and prepared (but had a great time nonetheless).

Angela introduced me to her friends: Towen (who graciously lent us his car and drove us for many hours, and we maybe ended up cramming a few too many things on the way back), and Ryan. We met some more friends (Celina and Chris) on the slopes (see this post for group photo). It was really awesome to be introduced to so many people living in Japan right away with a wide array of interests and who are down to hang out - honestly I consider myself incredibly lucky since it’s made moving here way easier and doing things significantly more accessible. Especially in a place like Japan where things work kind of differently and people generally don’t speak English, having people who have been through this whole process already and know the ropes show me around is really invaluable, and maybe this is kind of silly, but I want to take notes as thoroughly as possible to make future visitors’ lives just a little bit easier.

Angela booked the place for the weekend, so I still have yet to learn the non-touristy tricks for booking accommodations. However, as far as getting to places goes, I’ve been able to get around with just Google Maps for the most part. Google Maps is okay but not perfect. It has a ton of data which is really helpful, but I think it likes to optimize for slightly different things than me when doing route planning. For example, it tries to suggest the fastest route starting at a specific point in time, but there are actually so many public transit options to get from point A to point B in Japan that even if it can properly suggest the fastest route at say, 2pm on a Thursday, maybe I actually want the route with the least transfers sometime Thursday afternoon, and that train is at 3pm.

In any case, eki-net is the place to book cheaper Shinkansen tickets, which can get kind of pricey, but it’s sooo nice. I much prefer taking Shinkansen to a bus or flying. If you’re just visiting Japan and you plan on taking the Shinkansen a bunch, get a JR Pass. But it’s only offered to foreigners - once you live in Japan, you’re on your own. For what it’s worth, I found it hard to make the JR Pass worth it - you kind of have to take the Shinkansen a lot since the pass is pretty pricey. Something I’ve been learning the hard way is many Japanese websites, especially anything with a form, and especially especially anything with a calendar-based form (i.e. enter a date with a little calendar pop-up), won’t work with your web browser’s auto-translate feature (e.g. Google Translate in Chrome). Eki-net is one of them. So you have to disable your web translator and navigate the page in Japanese, which might be challenging if you don’t read Kanji because all the station and train names are in Kanji.

I’m still figuring out what things I absolutely have to book/plan well in advance and what things I can book last-minute, which is especially important for me because I am a terrible planner. Not that I’m incapable of planning itself, but I’m just a bit too spontaneous and don’t really like booking things in advance in case a cooler opportunity pops up. I have a feeling my lack of planning is going to bite me when the holiday seasons come up, and I bet people have already booked things months, maybe a year in advance. Seems like you can generally book Shinkansens last-minute-ish, you just might not get a great seat. It is a lot like booking flights.

Skiing itself was pretty awesome. The lift tickets were about $40, and it’s amazing to be able to roll up to the mountain with only public transit. Hakuba offered many free bus lines, which I think were not in Google Maps, so that’s also something to note. They are pretty easily findable with a quick Google Search. The resorts in Hakuba were on a slightly smaller scale than US West coast resorts, but it’s nice to have an extensive resort cluster so you have a lot of options. Angela has gotten super into backcountry skiing since moving to Japan, but I’m still stuck in resort bounds.

The one thing I didn’t like about Hakuba, which allegedly has changed over the past couple of years, is the amount of foreigners that were around (mostly Australians). Nothing against Australians, but it was pretty interesting seeing once an area is no longer majority Japanese, the culture actually shifts. The service in non-Japanese establishments is significantly worse (to be fair, the bar is pretty high), people are loud and less considerate, the food is super overpriced and bad (one could chalk this up to ski town inflation, but I had a really excellent, cheap meal on top of one of the mountains!).

Anyways, I had a blast going skiing (technically snowboarding I guess), making new friends, and visiting onsens. The post-ski onsen is the only apres activity I want to do, and it actually solves a specific practical problem. Usually on your last day of skiing, you have to check out of your hotel in the morning and then hit the slopes one last time before heading home, but then you have to get home all stinky and gross. Now with public baths, you can take a bath after skiing without a hotel, and a really nice one at that for really cheap. Honestly such a perfect lifestyle.

[I will upload photos later…]