It has almost become a tradition for me to travel every other year to Japan for skiing. 8 Years ago when I did it the first time it was this secret powder spot that some people heard about but no one has ever been. This is quite a contrast to today when everyone and his grand mother has flown to Japan in search of the powder. To avoid the masses of people, me and my friends decided to go this year with less preparation and more flexibility. We decided to fly to Tokyo, take the Shinkansen to Nagano. Get our rental car there. And then just take the days as they come and decide on the fly where the snow is good and where we want to go. This gave us the opportunity to avoid the masses and not being stuck in an area where there is no snow.
The first days where not so great regarding snow. There was no snow fall and Japan in general did not get a lot of snow at all. There was about 2 meters of snow base missing. We went skiing in certain areas and almost couldn’t believe it. After a few days exploring Kyoto and Osaka the weather turned and it started dumping. We started to get amazing powder days.
A couple days later we headed up towards the island of Hokkaido. One long car trip later we were not disappointed with what we found. There was good powder to be found near the lifts. But everything easy accessible was tracked within minutes. This is quite a difference than I remember from the first time I was in Japan. Back then there were very few people riding powder. Because of this we often decided to put our skins on and walk into the backcountry for some untracked lines. And lines we found!
After all that skiing (and a big party for my birthday) it was time to head back towards Nagano to return the car and take the Shinkansen to Tokyo. No Japan trip is complete without the experience of this busy city. I love the duality of Tokyo. There are some of the most crowded streets just a block or two away from the quiet back alley or a nice park.
Personally the skiing was the reason why I wanted to go to Japan. But in contrast to the years before it was not my only reason. I love Japanese cities, especially Tokyo. And I wanted to take my time to explore these cities with my camera. My goal was to take in the emotions and capture them in pictures. I don’t know if I succeeded but I enjoyed the process a lot.
I created a photo book of our experience in Japan. You can see the pages in the gallery above. There is no text as it is intended to be viewed in person together with one of us. We can explain where the pictures were taken. Feel free to show up with a six-pack and I am more than glad to add some more stories of our trip to my explanations.
As you can see, we did not take a lot of pictures while riding. I preferred to enjoy the great powder myself. What we did is use our GoPros, 360°- and compact cameras, as well as our cell phones to film the experience. On some pages there are QR codes you can scan and watch short edits of our trip. Alternative you can just click in the photobook page and a new window will pop up with the video.