Japan: February 2026: Day 4: Skiing in Shiga-Kogen

Japan

Feb 2026: Day 4: Shiga-Kogen

Dining room at Yudanaka Yumoto.

Breakfast spread.

Cereal and bread.

Resort #1 for the day, Okushiga Kogen. Inside.

Inside.

Jase, Japan Powder Culture Tours owner, getting everyone organized.

Ski and board distribution.

Chris ready to go.

Heading up.

So much snow.

Knee deep powder.

What am I doing, and why am I here?

Going up.

Old school clamshell gondola. Fits 1 front-facing and 1 back-facing, 2 each (4 total) if you're skinny.

Stuffed animals at this other blue-green gondola.

Going up.

Now at Shigakogen Yakebitaiyama.

Chinese restaurant here?

Ramen was good, supposedly the Chinese restaurant upstais is not good.

Hard at work.

Noodle pull with our fearless leader, Jase, in the background.

Now at Ichinose.

Yes, they do have groomers here.

Whole area is very pretty.

View from the top.

Now at Higashitateyama.

Top of Higashitateyama gondola lift.

Learning to ride through the trees.

Ichinose.

Back on the clamshell gondola.

Waygu for dinner at Yudanaka Yumoto.

More of the dinner spread.

Akamai, hamachi, katsuo? Might be madai instead of hamachi.

Chris loves his yukata.

The spread.

Lotus, date, carrot, etc.

Grilled prawn and broccoli.

Clear mushroom soup.

Green tea ice cream.

Photos after the geisha show.

Japanese hotel breakfast is almost always good, and Yudanaka Yumoto is no exception. How they do such a spread every morning is consistently impressive, with the only slight flaw not being the hotel's at all-- but rather a tight pickup schedule, with just enough time to enjoy breakfast (although I supposed we could have asked for breakfast 10 or 15 minutes earlier...).

First day of skiing began with beautiful weather at Okushiga Ski Area, one of the many interconnected (18) ski fields that make up Shiga-Kogen ski resort. Sunny, clear, and cold (but not as cold as it would be later in the week) meant for a great introduction to skiing. Additional impressions were that most individual ski resorts were small and dated, ditto for the rest of the infrastructure, most of which dates to the Winter Olympics last held at Nagano in 1998. That aside, you're here for the snow, and the powder is indeed excellent.

Japan Powder Culture Tours did a great job, with a large enough group and a large enough staff that you never had the same guide twice. I ended up with seven other skiers/snowboarders and the owner, Jase, on the first day, which was actually ideal, as I had minimal powder skiing experience and Jase was insistent on hammering in the five basics of skiing for a successful powder experience. Many moments of unexpectedly tight trees and a few of not just ankle-deep but knee-deep powder throughout the day, trying to remember all these lessons and techniques from Jase.

Throw in an old school clamshell-style ski lift (!) as well as some older but somewhat more modern equipment, along with a Chinese restuarant/Japanese restaurant combo on the mountain. Even at marked-up ski resort prices, the ramen was still delicious and not all that expensive, and provided solid fuel for what was 4 or 5 (or was it 6?) different ski areas in a single day. Japanese ski resorts are much more strict on what in-bounds is, so we did a lot of technically out of bounds side-country that might have been classified as in-bounds from what I'm used to.

Dinner was in-house at the hotel tonight, a superb sashimi, cooked food, and stone bowl seared waygu set, finished off with baked prawn and broccoli. It's not a fancy meal, but for the price it was an unbeatable value, and simply superb in quality. Wrapped up the night with the geisha show provided by JPTC, which showed their emphasis on cultural activities-- nothing fancy, but genuine and appreciated.