NOZAWA ONSEN: Where to Stay and Where/What to eat

Alright, so over the last few days, apart from working, I've also been very busy trying to plan our January Niseko trip. And it's very energy and time consuming because we've never been to Niseko so we really have to start researching everything from ground zero.
And sometimes you really wonder " where do I start? "

For me, I always start with " what to eat in ( insert place) "

So because I'm feeling extra nice today, ( actually know la, I just like being helpful :p ) I shall
type this concise post introducing Nozawa onsen to you, so that you don't have to go thru what I went thru last year, trying to piece together information from everywhere while I research Nozawa.

This is a very useful self explanatory picture. Essentially tells the the schedule of the shinkansen you can take from Tokyo, what time it reaches Iiyama and the nozawa liner schedule that will take you to nozawa chuo station.

Stay 
I highly recommend the family runned ryokan we stayed at - Nakajimaya Ryokan ( click).

The reasons why I really like this place, and will definitely stay here again if I'm ever back in Nozawa are:

1) It is really near the nozawa chuo bus terminal ( about 10 mins walk). However the hosts are really nice, they offer to pick and send you to the bus terminal in their mini van for free ( that black van in the background on the left)

2) It's located on Bear street which is a quick 5 min walk from the main shopping street - O yu Dori

3) It's a family runned ryokan, both husband and wife speak really good english.

4) They serve REALLY yummy and filling breakfast - perfect energy booster before you hit the slopes. There's 4 different breakfast menu and it rotates everyday so unless you stay more than 4 days, you'll never eat a repeated menu.

5) There's an onsen in the ryokan itself, but if you like bathing with many people, there's a public onsen/bath located just opposite the ryokan 

6) There's a taxidermied bear just as you enter the Ryokan. 

hehehhe, I've never seen a taxidermied bear before. Don't recall seeing any taxidermied animals before actually hmmm.

Whilst it's aesthetically alright to place the bear facing the entrance, however, if I were them, I'll have the bear standing upright and just beside the entrance.  I'll also install a motion activated sound sensor, such that when someone passes the entrance there'll be a growling bear sound.
Can you imagine, if you're a burglar and it's dark at night and you come into the ryokan and suddenly instead of a guard dog you see this HUGE grizzly bear just towering over you growling?! 

WAH, SO SCARY. 

Eat

1) Wagyu Tei ( read here ) 

2) Toyo Ramen ( Read here) 

3) Hamachozushi ( Read here) 

4) Daimon Soba ( Read here) 

5) Haus St Anton  on oyu dori street

I highly recommend going to this place for dessert after dinner. They serve the BEST ice cream in town! my favourite is the buckwheat ( soba) flavoured ice cream. 

If you're feeling peckish after a ski run, they also serve bao outside their shop. However, I think if you're having a good dinner after, i think you should keep your stomach for dinner and dessert instead of wasting space on this bao. 

6) Nagano Apple

Nagano is very famous for their apples! There's alot of shops on the shopping street selling them. Enxin bought 5 apples from this old lady whose shop was just filled with apples. 

We bought the most expensive which cost 1000yen for each. So good and crunchy! 

7) Nozawana (野沢菜)

Nick insisted I make a special mention about this famous nozawa pickled vegetable. We have this vegetable at breakfast everyday and it's really nick's, mine, enxin's and yihan's nightmare.
I guess this must be an acquired taste just like pickles. We really dislike it.
But hey, it's famous, so you really ought to give it a try :D
And the Japanese love it! Nick's dad had a special request by his friend who's living in Tokyo to buy 1kg of this nozawana back for him :/

Wah, okay, I was gonna continue to blog about where to take a day trip to, but I'm just so traumatised thinking about the nozawana i feel like my soul has left my body.
So I guess we shall have to wait till the next post :/

NOZAWA ONSEN: Toyo Ramen

What type of food comes to your mind when you're faced with heavy snowfall like this?

Given that we've had shabu shabu and sukiyaki ( read here) already, we decided that the best dinner we could have after fighting thru the cold and wind is a bowl of hot soup i.e ramen.

A quick google search tells us that the ramen we should try when we are in nozawa is Toyo Ramen.

Now now, this place is SUPER difficult to find, to be honest, I don't even know how to give you instructions to where it's located. If hunger games or battle royale was held here and you hid at this restaurant, I think you might be the eventual winner even without killing anybody. Provided you're lucky enough to have this place avoid being in the danger zone la. 

We were asking almost every single passerby with our broken Japanese for directions, and really most of the time is blind leading the blind because most on the main street are tourists and... yeah. 

A couple of times we thought we struck Jackpot because people were very confidently pointing directions to us, but you know something is wrong when you walk towards the direction you were being pointed to, ask someone else and they point you to the direction that you just came from hmm... 

But I have to give it to these people, they point with such confidence... It just never crossed my mind to doubt them ! I think all of us ought to work hard to achieve this skill, I can only imagine how useful it is when it comes to work. 

Anyway, after what felt like a wild goose chase... We FINALLY reached the restaurant. 

It's this really hole in the wall kinda small family run ramen shop.  I think we did make a booking but I'm not 100%. All I can say is that, it was SO crowded !

Normal shoyu ramen for me. The broth was amazing ! The only thing I didn't like about this bowl was that there were SO MUCH beansprouts. I don't really eat beansprouts :/

Nick had the spicy miso 

No pictures for what was the highlight of this meal for me.... I think the stars of this restaurant is actually their Karage chicken, gyoza and fried squid.

So good. The karage chicken was not oily, the batter was light and the chicken was SOOOO juicy! Same goes for the home made gyoza. Super generous with the fillings and they were so flavourful.
Fried squid is fried squid la. squid is always good.

Toya Ramen 
9347 Toyosato Nozawaonsen-Mura | Tokiwaya Ryokan B1, Nozawaonsen-mura, Shimotakai-gun 389-2502, Nagano Prefecture
Mon- Fri : 11.30-12.30pm, 6-8pm

NOZAWA ONSEN: What to eat on the ski slopes

THIRD DAY ON THE SLOPES!

By today, Nick and I have already conquered the Green slopes on Yamabiko, Uenotaira & Paradise, Hikage.

And we have also upgraded our Ski attires

.

.

.

.

SUPER badass now with our facemask + gopro 6. 

My pro-tip to those who are intending to pick up skiing is: FACEMASK is extremely important.

We didn't have any on our first day, and I realised after the day of skiing ended, I was SO sunburnt ! And for asian girls getting sunburnt is not the best because now most Asian girls like going for the 白富美 ( fair, rich, beauty) feel right?!

Especially me la hehehe. And I've realise that getting complimented that they are 白富美 makes girls happier than when they get complimented that they are 真善美 (truth, goodness, beauty)

I'm not the most intelligent person and I couldn't figure out how I got sunburnt. Enxin says that it's because the sun shines on the snow, and the snow reflects the light onto my unprotected face and so this is how sunburnt occurs in skiing. 

HMMM. MAKES SENSE. SO SMART

The faces under the face masks

Anyway, skiing is a very energy consuming sport. And definitely you will have to have one or several meal breaks when you're skiing. Depending on how hard you push yourself la. Otherwise you may ketoacidosis on the slopes leh :/ And that is very dangerous because you may have a seizure and bite your tongue and have urinary and faecal incontinence, and on the white snow... 

Thats just pollution, mate.

Today I'm gonna introduce places to eat on the mountain. Nozawa snow resort has a page that features all the food shops on the mountain, it is really helpful, you should definitely check it out here.

Nick and I are most familar with Hikage area because this is where we rent our skis from, and this was where poor Nick mom spent her whole day waiting for us to finish skiing. She almost became a resident statue at Mos Burger lol.
BTW, Mount Dock ( We highly recommend renting skis from them) is located at Nagasaka area. We only couldn't rent skis from them because of logistics and physicial limitations lol.

HIKAGE

1) One Day at St Anton

Picture courtesy of Nozawa ski website

Perfect for a caffeine boost before hitting the slopes! I have nothing but admiration for their male barista. He has zero stress even when the queue line is SUPER LONG, he just stands there, oblivious to his surroundings and take his time to pull the perfect shot for your coffee.

2) Mos Burger

                                                   Picture courtesy of Nozawa ski website

I would personally discourage you from eating at this Mos Burger branch. It's serves the worst tasting Mos burger. But it's a perfect spot to wait for your loved ones/friends to finish their ski session. They will never chase you out even if you don't order anything. First hand experience from Nick's mom :p

3) Kazumi

                                                Picture courtesy of Nozawa ski website

We had soba here which was good, we heard also, that this restaurant is a favourite amongst ski intructotrs

4) Sun Yamaki 

Picture courtesy of Nozawa ski website

We had a yummy pork katsu here

If you're an intermediate skiier, we highly recommend you to eat at Utopia and Ise area.

Utopia and Ise

1) Utopia

This place, according to Yihan and Enxin is only accessible if you ski the red ( intermediate ) slope. 

Took us a long time to convince Nick to attempt the red slope !

But eventually He came, He saw, He conquered

This MISO ramen was SO GOOOD! I love how this restaurant was perfectly positioned facing the black slopes - utopia & schneider courses. We saw alot of people attempting and rolling hahahahah. 

okay la, don't laugh, have to give them A for effort. At least they have the balls to try the course, whilst Nick and I can't even take the first step to step off any black course lol

NOZAWA ONSEN: Hamachozushi

Okay. I have to admit, we actually look really noob on our first day of skiing lol. I mean, Nick and I are new to the sport, and you don't just become pro skiiers overnight right.
But I became a pro skiier after a day. 
HAHAHA NAH JOKES.

We rented our skiis this time from the shops at the ski area ( This picture taken just in front of the ski shop) because it really was too taxing having to carry skis and getting on the travellator from Mount Dock ( As much as I love Mount Dock's equipment and their staff, really cannot lah. Have to think of my life first. )

Can you imagine having to carry these skis, up the travellator?!

I look really refreshed here because I didn't have to carry skis up, I really can't imagine how I would look if I had to carry them :/ Probably won't be all smiles.

Probably will reach the ski area and just chill the whole day just like these dogs because 100% energy depletion.

 Ascending the mountain !

TEAM SHOT!

Weather took a turn for the worst after this run actually, it became extremely foggy and cold :/ And whats best to eat for dinner after an energy burning ski session + cold weather?!

HOTPOT!

But no, we decided to go have sushi instead because 1) We prebooked it 2 nights before 2) we had shabu shabu ( read here) the night before

One place that ski instructors and the locals recommend for sushi is Hamachouzushi.

I'll be very honest, it's not the best sushi I've had, and perhaps if this sushi shop opened in Tokyo or any of the bustling city, I probably wouldn't patronise them.  However, as Nick says " EH, WTF, DON'T BE SO SPOILT PLEASE, YOU'RE ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN, YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL THAT THERE'S SUSHI EVEN AVAILABLE"

Okay lor. I guess... Trust the locals, if you are craving sushi on the mountains, definitely give this restaurant a try!
 In fact, I was actually really scared I'll have another toilet bowl hugging session that night because the otoro ( fatty tuna) colour looked way off..... But I have lots of trust in the Japanese, that they would not do anything to harm me. And especially not when on a ski mountain, because really, if I had the runs in the middle of skiing, I really have no idea what am I going to do. 

Hamachozushi
9519 Toyosato Nozawaonsen-Mura, Nozawaonsen-mura, Shimotakai-gun, Nagano Prefecture 389-2502, Japan

NOZAWA ONSEN: Wagyu Tei

First day of SKIING in Nozawa.

Almost all geared and ready to go rent our skis and pole at Mount Dock. Nick and I highly recommend renting your skis and board at Mount Dock even tho reaching the location may be a bit physical - it's a pretty long hike. However their skis are new and of really good quality ( and I can vouch for this before the next few days we got lazy and decided to rent skis at the ski area and the quality was really.. meh ) Plus point also, we were very satisfied with the service staff especially Marina and Soichiro.

Look at us all geared up hahahaha and ready to hit the slopes.
Okay no la, first day Nick and I went super easy, because.... amateur what. What if we get into an accident on the first day?!?!

thats me! #pizzanoshame

 Nick in his awkward position hahaha. 

Super tired after a whole day of skiing, but extremely satisfied with the weather and snow condition in Nozawa.

The best part of ending a ski session is a good dinner.

We were so lucky to have found this wagyu shabu shabu/sukiyaki restaurant - Wagyu Tei. We actually just accidentally stumbled across while we were walking along the main street after our amazing soba dinner at Daimon Soba ( click)  the night before.
Wagyu Tei still hasn't made it to any of the guidebooks yet at that time, and I think it hasn't made it to many blogs yet even now ( I did a quick google search just) because it has only recently commenced business on Dec 20 2017.

I'm a SUPER fan of Sukiyaki, and to date, I say my best sukiyaki experience was when we were in Yokohama ( Araiya 荒井屋牛鍋店万國橋店 - click) 
Nick on the contrary prefers Shabu Shabu. So actually this restaurant in perfect because they offer both Shabu Shabu and Sukiyaki.
The main difference being the Sukiyaki is a sweeter broth of Soy Sauce, Sugar and Mirin. The Shaybu Shaybu is a cleaner water with dipping sauces. 

We actually ate at this restaurant TWICE out of our 5 dinners in Nozawa. This is how impressed we were with the quality.

First night - shabu shabu.

Second night , we decided to go for sukiyaki because Enxin and I really enjoy sukiyaki.

Look at the marbling !

SUPER SATISFIED!
This restaurant serves few kinds of beef, we went for the most expensive A5 Japanese wagyu. There were a couple of other tourists who were eating the normal Australian beef.. I mean... I usually respect people's food choices. But if you're in Japan, and you've just finished a day of skiing, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU EATING AUSTRALIAN BEEF?!

Definitely A MUST TRY restaurant when you're in Nozawa, especially if the weather is cold and snowy

Wagyu Tei

Click to enlarge map  - map reference E6
We highly recommend you to make a booking beforehand