I’m back in Nagoya after 4 and a bit days of travel, staying in Sapporo for two nights and Nagano for two nights. I caught up with Mak, and went snowboarding on Friday before she headed out on Saturday morning. Unfortunately I didn’t take many photos in Sapporo. Luckily Mak had her pocket camera with her

In comparison of both cities, I have to say I prefer Sapporo. Nagano doesn’t have much shopping around the station area (at least it seemed so on the 30th and 31st of December), and the nearest ski slopes (I think Hakuba is the nearest) are an hour away by bus. I think Sapporo is around as big as Nagoya, and has lots of shopping areas near the station. The ski slopes are less than an hour away (maybe 30 mins) and costs less to travel as well.
I stayed in the same Hotel in both cities. It was nearly 3000 yen more expensive per night in Nagano, there was no free internet access, and there was a problem with my TV which took 20 minutes for the staff to troubleshoot and replace.

Perhaps a better comparison would be Sapporo to Hakuba, the famous ski slopes an hour north of Nagano. I headed there (To the Happoone slopes, known as Happo) yesterday for an hour of snowboarding. The mountain views there are breathtaking. Unfortunately it hadn’t snowed in a day or three so the snow was a bit icy. I also accidentally went down an advanced and expert slope with my camera (in my backpack of course) instead of the beginner slope (wasn’t clearly marked). But if you were to get accommodation in Hakuba, you’d be a 10 or so minute walk/shuttle bus away from the slopes. In Sapporo it rained the day before we went to the slopes (we went to Teine), but even then, the snow quality was more like the better quality snow we get in Australia (at least that we got at Mt Buller in 2002).

For the remainder of the holiday break, I’ll just take day trips. Accommodation took up a large part of my budget, and 6000 yen can get a return bus ticket to Gifu, ski lift pass, and snowboard gear hire for one day - pretty cheap! (although lower quality snow, but it’s still snow).

Photos coming soon (man I hate saying coming soon; I really need a good automatic photo gallery php application with ftp access)…

Edit: view em here

This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.