Originally Posted by
Cynicor
Can you get a car? I don't bother treating the Hakuba resorts as individual as they each have barely enough terrain for a couple of laps on each and you could be done by midday on the first skiing day.
What about Myoko? Similarly, 3 resorts but the shuttles are better than hakuba so you probably don't even need a car.
I think the Tribute is often more expensive than the Sheraton at Kiroro, and that place is sooo flat! Kiroro is for the BC access I reckon.
Last year we went to Shokanbetsu and camped in the backcountry hut there. That's probably not an option :P but we then based out of Furano. I really like furano as a little resort and there are lots of BC day trips you could take to start to get away from expensive and crowded resorts!
Another ski season is close upon us, and perhaps you, shuigao and I will again be dominating this thread.
I only have secondhand knowledge of ski places in Jpn without much firsthand experience, so we very much appreciate your advice throughout this ski season.
Since shuigao is upper-novice/low-intermediate, I don't think he's looking for back country experience. I'm certainly not into that myself.
Have you skiied Cortina and Norikura? If so, can you provide feedback as far as crowd, whether they tend to keep all lifts open, having to go between the two areas, etc?
With regards to Kiroro, my experience has been that Tribute is more often the cheaper of the two hotels during ski seasons. Hence I've booked Tribute for this winter.
You are right that Kiroro has a lot of almost-flat areas. However, it is not completely flat like some runs at Whistler. When Kiroro is fully open like it was when I skiied there this past March, it is easy to avoid those near-flat terrains. The flat terrain is really just the lower half of the left side of the resort, plus the lower half of the run that comes down from the top of the right side of the mountain. I tried to avoid that area by doing all my skiing in the upper half of the left side of the resort (three great long runs up there) and the lower right part of the resort (few long runs down there). I had a blast skiing those runs over the course of two days. I do think Kiroro would really suck if they closed down the summits, as that would severely limit options for anyone who's above beginner level. Wonder how often that happens.