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After Hokkaido last year, it was challenging to find another unusual place to spend the Golden Week holidays. As you might know, the Golden Week (first week of May) is probably the most busy time in Japan for travellers, as the huge majority of Japanese spend at least a couple of days away from their home. For example, in the middle of this week, we had a working day - Monday the second. Even though, 90% of the people in my company decided to took an extra day off! So finally, just at the end of April, we found an offer for going... skiing! Indeed, in Japan, it is possible to ski in several places as late as early May, as for example in the "snow country" Niigata-ken. We headed therefore for Naeba, which is located at the boundary between Niigata-ken and Gunma-ken, at an altitude of 900 meters. The place is conveniently reached from Echigo Yuzawa by bus, while Echigo Yuzawa is only 1 hour from Tokyo by shinkansen rapid train. Here is a picture of the famous Naeba Prince Hotel. Why famous? With 4000 rooms, it is the largest ski resort hotel in the world! You can see the 5 main buildings, as well as the new tower... This hotel - and almost all the village - was built during the economic bubble in the early 80s. But in early May, it looked more like a "ghost hotel", as Seiko called it: less than 2/5 of the hotel were opened, and only 4 of the about 25 restaurants were serving customers...
What was even more acceptable was the temperature!!
And if you want to ski somewhere else, no problem! Just get in the Dragondola, the world's longest cable car linking Naeba with the neighbouring three interconnected resorts of Kagura, Mitsumata and Tashiro. It takes 18 minutes to literally fly the 5.5 kilometres between the two areas, and at some time the cable car is just above a mountain river. Very impressive view...
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