TKY Dec'16 - D4 - First encounter with Snow

Day 4 was another travel day.  We left Tokyo after breakfast, for Nozawa Onsen Ski Resort.  It's located in the Northeast of Nagano Prefecture, slightly less than 2 hours train ride from Tokyo.  When we alighted at the Iiyama trains station, we noticed immediately that it's much cooler than Tokyo.  From here we took the bus to the town area of the ski resort (20 minutes journey).  There were no big hotels at this place, only small, family style ones.  The one that we stayed at was called Shirakaba, about 5 minutes walk from where the bus station.

I will let the pictures below explained what we did for the rest of the afternoon.  The next 2 days (Day 5 and 6), we went skiing for the first times in our lives.

We took the 11pm train our of Tokyo, and were on the bus at about close to 2 pm:


We got off the bus, and along the path to our hotel, the girls already started playing with snow.


The main entrance to our stay, Shirakaba.   Right opposite our hotel, there's an open field, slightly bigger than a basketball court, that was snow filled.


We checked-in, and headed out again for the snow filled ground opposite our hotel.  Here, I built my first snow man :)


I didn't take photo of our room, so I got this from the web.  The room for 4, was only big enough for 4 mattresses, 3 big luggages, one pretty big table, with very little space left to move about.

The onsen (public bathe) in this hotel was also small size.  It didn't matter to us, because it's way too cold to use the onsen facility.  It was a huge challenge bathing in public facility in this weather.  Anyway, we managed.

The last picture in this collage was the breakfast place.


We had dinning at a restaurant next door.  It had a fire place, and we ordered beer and hot tea, to enjoy our winter vacation.