Nozawa Onsen

We took a long weekend trip last weekend to the hot springs town of Nozawa. It was almost a 4 hour drive. It is known, of course, for the many hot springs, but also skiing. And I think it should also be known for foreigners and English. Everyone spoke really good English. And many of the shops and restaurants were even owned by English speaking people. Our airbnb owner was a guy from Utah. This is a popular tourist town. Of course, due to corona, there weren’t too many tourists there. Only foreign nationals like us.

Thursday night we arrived around 10pm and both kids were sleeping. So we just went straight to bed. Our last trip to Shirakawago, we stayed in an airbnb that was old and cold and we had to sleep with a kerosene heater. So compared to that, this was like luxury. We had 2 showers, heated floors, and separate rooms.

We got up on Friday morning and had French toast for breakfast before heading up to the ski lifts. The town sits at the bottom and is surrounded by mountains. You can buy a lift ticket and get access to all the runs all around the town. Its a huge area for skiing. It ended up being our favorite family ski trip because all 4 of us were able to go down the mountain together. Caroline is good enough now to go down the mountain over and over. And Nathan just rides on my board and loves it.

We also had a chance to get pulled by a snow mobile between skiing sites. Since the place was so big, their taxis were snow mobiles. The kids definitely enjoyed that.

We were done skiing by 4:30pm. After that we went out for some beer. There were a few taprooms around the town where you can just bring your own food and drink their beer. Like The Daily Growler in Columbus. So we brought the Nintendo Switch for the kids and Heather and I had some beers. The kids had a gourmet apple juice and peach juice. We are training them to be hipsters. The place we went was a 3 minute walk from our airbnb.

After that we went to a Mexican restaurant! We got burritos and tacos and chips and guac. Mexican food is just too rare in Japan. We have to get it any chance we have. The owners of this restaurant were Malaysian Australians and spoke perfect English. Whatever, they were Mexican to me.

We were all asleep by 9:30pm that night. And we didn’t wake up until after 8am Saturday morning. Saturday we had no plans in the beginning, but ended up being a great day. We had pancakes for breakfast. And we were reading the airbnb recommended activities book. They suggested this stamp activity around the town. Basically the kids got a little stamp book and we walked all over the town trying to collect them all. This took 6 hours to complete. But with the promise of a treasure at the end of the hunt, the kids were focused all day! So we got to explore the town all day on foot without hearing any complaining of having to walk so far! Our watches put us around 18,000 steps for the day.

The stamp books were full of carbon paper and you had to rub this wooden peg across the engraving. That’s what made the “stamp”. There were 27 in total, but you only needed 10 to get the prize. Of course we had to get all 27 though! The prize was a hand towel for taking into the hot springs. But if you collected all 27 you got a star sticker! Totally worth it! Actually the kids were very proud of the star sticker.

Throughout the day we had a chance to stop at a foot onsen. You can just sit down and let the natural hot spring flow over them.

For dinner we went to a burger place called Genki Burger. We got dumpster fries and loaded burgers. This was a treat for us. We just don’t get this type of food ever. Nozawa knows how to treat foreigners though.

Then we went back to the airbnb for some rest. We were actually planning to be done for the night, but Heather and Caroline wanted to go out and hit up a hot spring. So I stayed with Nathan at the apartment. But a few minutes later Heather called saying there was a street performance about to start. It was a traditional Japanese drum concert, called taiko. So Nathan and I ran down to the town square to watch it. Nathan was scared at first, but once he got used to it he was fine.

Finally we all got back to the apartment around 9pm and got the kids into bed. Then I went out for some night photography around the town. Unfortunately it started raining, but it was nice because everyone went inside. So I had the town to myself mostly.

Sunday morning we cleaned up and checked out. Before leaving the town we stopped in a little restaurant for breakfast. Again, foreigner friendly. We got French toast, BLT sandwich, and bacon and eggs. And we found Heather’s magazine out in the wild for the first time.

As a bonus, here are most of the stamp collecting spots. I tried to get all of them, but I missed a couple.

以上です。