It's finally time again! Together with a handful of friends we fly to Tokyo. In addition to the annual New Year's Eve party with my Japanese friends, I'm finally snowboarding in Hakuba again this year.
With a rental car for 8 people you can drive from Shinjuku directly to Hakuba in just under four hours. We didn't go out of our way and booked an entire house in the snowy Alps of Japan - the Kiki Chalet - own onsen included.
If you plan to rent a car in Japan, you will definitely need an international driving license. If you come from Germany, a Japanese translation of your driving license is sufficient. You can get these in Tokyo at Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) apply locally. You can usually pick up the translation on the same day. Cost 20-30€. Many of the local streets are covered in snow and the smaller streets on the outskirts are often not well cleared. If you rent a car in Tokyo, make sure that the rental company also has winter tires. Since it doesn't usually snow in Tokyo, it can happen that you drive into the snowy area with summer tires and that can quickly become dangerous.
Hakuba is a particularly snowy place in Japan and our accommodation is already covered by a thick blanket of snow. The ski area Happo-One has a total of 52 kilometers of slopes large and will offer us a lot of variety during our 5 days on site. Above all, the comparatively few people and the width of the slopes make the ski area seem spacious and you have much more space than you are used to in the European Alps. Hakuba also offers perfect conditions for all free ride fans, as it snows here almost every day. And in terms of price, snowboarding here is really cheap compared to the ticket prices in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. For five days of snowboarding we only pay the equivalent of around €160. Since we are only there for a week, we decided to rent our hardware on site. At the ski and snowboard rental "The Boarding Co." You get top equipment for the entire period for around €80. Also a bargain despite first-class service and friendly staff. But we are also in Japan!
Whatever we save during the day we will invest in our food and drink in the evening. In addition to traditional Japanese Yaki-Tori and Katsu-Don restaurants, there are also a few fusion restaurants and a German restaurant called 'Bernd's Keller'. There will be an update on this at the end of the trip, which we can recommend.
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