Sunday Snowboarding

Jaime Wong
Jan 14, 2018
2 min read

Another snowboarding day trip today! This time to Kawaba, a nice and close ski field just an hour’s drive away on the toll road! Set off early in the morning at 7:20am ish, and set off. We had to go to the next toll road entrance down, because the closer one was an ETC only entrance. I really wish Japan didn’t do that…but I’ve applied for a Japanese credit card + ETC card yesterday so hopefully it will be approved soon and I can have an ETC card! It will make future road trips so much easier. We had a bit of trouble going up the mountain in my friend’s bigger car, because the winter tires were pretty worn down. We eventually had to do a U turn and go back down the mountain to get snow chains, and then make our way back up again. The car park at Kawaba ski resort was indeed pretty fancy (I had read about it online before we went) and it’s a multi level indoor parking building, and you exit out the top onto the ski field! Pretty neat. The building also has lots of restaurants and snack shops and equipment shops. I used the voucher that came with my snowboard purchase so we paid ¥5100 for a lift pass + ¥1000 meal voucher + ¥500 shopping voucher. I used that ¥500 voucher to buy a card holder pass, since I didn't have one yet. Got everything sorted and then we hit the slopes!!! It was snowing and pretty windy for the first half of the morning, but it soon cleared up to become absolutely gorgeous weather with perfect blue skies. It was so clear out that we could even see what we thought was Mt. Fuji, but it was probably Haruna’s Mt. Fuji! But still pretty cool. The snow quality was just perfect – super powdery. I was also pleasantly surprised by the size of this ski field! I knew it was a smaller one but it still had a really nice decent number of runs, and all the runs were fun and different variations so I will definitely be making another trip back. It’s a great resort to practice your turns and just any tricks you want to try out. It wasn’t super crowded either! We decided to have an early snack cause all of us were getting hungry (I had a hotdog!) and then had a late lunch at around 13:30 to beat the crowds, and also to ski whilst everyone else was having lunch. Skied/boarded all the way till 16:00 before packing up and going to a nearby onsen! We had a bit of trouble taking off the snow chains, until a lovely staff member passing by saw us struggling and helped us out. The onsen we went to was super lovely! The building was very fashionable – all wooden and it even had its own exhibition of samurai stuff and old Japanese cutlery stuff. Stayed there will 19:00 before making the drive back to Takasaki and having dinner at Aeon mall.

It was such a lovely day trip and I will for sure be making more of these in the future!