Walter Weston was a British missionary who "introduced" mountain climbing to Japan, and played no small role in the movement to have the Kamikochi area designated as national parkland.   There is an annual festival and group hike in his honour and is a great time to visit this magical area of Nagano Prefecture.

Tom from the Go Nagano website was there last year, and his blog entry here is a good start in what to expect.

Hakuba can be your base for many fascinating day trips, on the way up or back from the major centres, or to break up your ski vacation.

Nine resorts spread out through the valley ensure you are spoilt for choice on any given day, with each mountain having it's fair share of beginner, intermediate and expert terrain.  That being said, each resort has it's own personality and we encourage you to check out at least a few over the course of your stay.  Happo-one is, of course, five minutes walk from our doorstep, but all the other hills are easily reachable by shuttle bus service.  See you on the hill!

The Japanese love of Hot Springs, or "onsen" is inseparable from the national character.  People will gladly travel many hours just for the chance to have a soak in one of the many thousands of hot springs throughout this volcanic country.  The "onsen" experience, like so many things in Japan, is a multilayered experience.  Some hot springs form the focal point for a whole tourist region.  with requisite souvenir shops and restaurants (a whole other topic meditating on the Japanese national character!)  Others serve a very local constituency (outsiders are always welcome, though they might be given a curious but friendly look over) and probably have served as the trading house for local news and interaction much longer than any local tv or newspaper.

Each hotspring may have a slightly different makeup to it's water, a different alkali content or mineral content, but they can all be guaranteed to leave one feeling not only physically clean, but somehow...   feeling much better about life in general after sloughing all your cares away in the tub!

A boundless range of other activities can be found in Hakuba and area, from canyoning to paragliding to rafting to kayaking to canoeing, arts and crafts and more!

The Nagano Prefecture area and beyond offer a variety of sightseeing opportunities, from the laid back ambiance of Matsumoto, with it's justly famed Matsumoto Castle, to he beauty of Zenkouji Temple in Nagano City, to the resort shopping town feel of Karuizawa...and more.

There are many hiking opportunities around the Hakuba area, ranging from challenging multiday hikes to ones that are more suited to the "strolling".  The one constant is views of the Japanese Alps and the surrounding countryside that is sure to soothe the soul.

Japan is a cyclist's paradise in a number of respects.  Forgetting the highways for a moment, it is a country of well kept roads, many of them with very light traffic (thanks to those highways!) which lead you through blissful scenery and villages where time seems to have stopped, or at least has slowed down a bit, with a refreshment stop or lodging for the night never more than a few kms away.  Japan is extremely mountainous which means a bit of hard work sometimes, but there are valleys and highlands where the cruising is just as good and not quite as taxing!

A mostly futile wish for most of humankinds existence, the dream to fly like a bird in the sky is now well within our reach.  Well, not quite like a bird I suppose, but still the feeling of soaring on the air currents is easily accessible to anyone with the desire. 

There are a number of places around Hakuba, where you can bring this wish to reality, and just up the road from us at the Hakuba Springs Hotel is the Happo Paraglider School.  They have a variety of "courses" you can follow, but I think probably the most suitable is the "tandem course" or the "tandem plus experience course".  The straight up tandem course (12,000 yen) involves very little in the way of training as such, and after a suitable amount of drilling on basic safety procedures, you are strapped to your instructor and away you go!  As you can see by the pictures, the flight over Happo gives you a fantastic view of the town below.  The "tandem" plus "experience" (15,000 yen) version gives you slightly more training on the fine points of steering and landing and is of interest if Paragliding is something you think you may want to pursue in the future.  The lowest cost option is the "experience" only course, and I think is mostly suitable to chlldren perhaps who simply would enjoy the feeling of rising a few metres into the air.

The homepage for the Happo Paragliding School is only in Japanese, but the instructors do speak enough English to successfully and safely navigate you through your day!  Feel free to send any questions our way here at the Hakuba Springs Hotel and we'll make sure you "jump off" on the right foot!

Information in Japanese, and some more pictures giving a good idea of what's involved in each course can be found here.

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