thericechronicles: Shiga Kogen Ski Area

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Shiga Kogen Ski Area

Hello My Dear Great Ones,

As usual Celia and I celebrated our Chinese New Year's by going skiing in Japan. This year we went to a ski area called Shiga Kogen, which claims to be the biggest ski area in the country. Actually it is several areas connected by little bridges, or tunnels to each other. Well it took us five days to explore everything. We both were impressed by the snow, wow does Japan have great snow, in fact we skied in a few blizzards, the amazing scenery, and the variety of runs. Most were easy to intermediate, and there were many trails through the trees. All in all Shiga Kogen is a wonderful ski area.

Map of the ski area. There are about 21 ski areas all joined up together. Tickets are only about 45 bucks Canadian. And that gives you access to all 21 areas! A great deal considering the quality and quantity of runs offered.

We stayed in the upper floors above the Restaurant Aspen sign. The whole place is called Aspen Shiga. They played John Denver songs all day in the restaurant. Guess where John Denver came from? Aspen, Colorado. There were Colorado posters and license plates hanging on the walls as well. A little surreal. But Aspen Shiga is right by the lifts. Perfect!

Yet despite all the Colorado ambience our room was 100 percent Japanese. Sleeping on the floor hardens the ole back.

A view of some of the slopes.

Happy skiers from Hong Kong. The whole world was there. We heard German, Australian, Chinese (mandarin and cantonese,) English English, Canadian, and of course Japanese.

Check out the hundreds of skis. Shiga Kogen was not crowded at all, but there were tons of ski classes all wearing the same clothes and skiing on the same skis. They were like locusts, converging on a run, devouring all space and snow in their wake. But outside of that there were no lift lines or crowd issues at all.