Returned recently from a 2 week trip through Japan’s Nagano/Niigata area and I got some good info searching through threads both here and in Tripadvisor, so thought I’d share my experience in case it is useful for anyone else.
12/25 to 1/7
* Airport: The pre-travel clearance via Visit Japan (hopefully) made things faster, but it still took us a good 1.5 hours from arriving at the airport to getting our bags. The main wait was in the long immigration line.
* Train into Tokyo: Bought our Keisei Skyliner tickets on Klook and redeemed the tickets at the Keisei ticket counter that you see on the left once you get into the basement area from the arrivals area.
* Random thing about trains – Local trains were down in Echigo Yuzawa on the day we had to head back to Tokyo so this was the first time I bought shinkansen tickets off of eki net. Loved how easy it was to buy the ticket and even better, how I could enter my Suica card numbet online to pair the ticket with my Suica card so when I got to the station, all I had to do was tap my card to get in/out for the train.
* Tokyo recommendations:
* Food: Ate at a few places we haven’t tried before, all of which we enjoyed:
* Yakiniku A5 Ginza – About 6000 yen for an all you can eat course of A5 beef – they bring out a small steak (complete with cutting board and knife) and a platter of beef of varying parts to eat first. You can order other items off the menu but I think you have to finish the initial servings first before you can order more meat. A very good meal and pretty good value for money in my opinion.
* Gyukatsu Ichi Ni San (went to one in Akihabara) – First time trying gyukatsu which is basically beef instead of pork katsu. They serve it to you with the outer part already deep fried (but the beef is still a bit raw) and sliced up, so the fun is taking each slice and placing it on the hot plate in front of you to cook each individual piece. Very delicious. The place opened at 11am, and we arrived at 1030am upon which there was one guy waiting. By 11am, a long line had formed and by the time we got out, the line was even longer. The place only has maybe 4 bar counter seats and 2 two-person table seats, so we were glad we got in early.
* Sukiyaki Ibuki (Shinjuku) – Sukiyaki place with A5 beef where they cook the sukiyaki for you. Very nice older lady to seems to run the place and also who can speak English well, and the food was very good. Also a small place with maybe 6 tables.
* Accommodations: We love Dormy Inn hotels because of the usually nice open baths and free evening ramen, but we tried an APA Hotel at Sugamo for the first time and I also thought it was quite nice. Check in is via an automated kiosk, and the room was comfortable with a huge TV with lots of channels/movies, as well as a bath at the top floor. The Dormy Inn bath was nicer but for the price, APA (7000 yen) was pretty good.
* Nagano recommendations:
* Sake Tasting in Kami Suwa: In the city of Kami Suwa next to the Suwa Lake (Suwa-ko) the biggest lake in Nagano, they have a bunch of sake breweries, 5 of which you can participate in a sake tasting/hopping sort of experience not too far from the station (called Suwa Gokura). You pay 2000 yen per person at any of the 5 breweries upon which they’ll issue you a stamp card and also give you a commemorative glass and bag to hold it in. At each place, you show the stamp card and they’ll give you 4-5 coins + 5 plastic cups in a cardboard cupholder which you can use at their sake tasting/dispenser to get a small sample of different sakes that the brewery makes. All in all, I think we got to try about 20 different types (not all had 5 sake types available), and it was fun walking from brewery to brewery (they’re all close to each other). If you’ve done the ponshukan in Nigata, the amount of sake you get per sampling isn’t as much but it’s still enough to get a taste and enjoyment. Once you get stamps from all 5 breweries, you can fill in your address and then mail it out to participate in a raffle. Not sure if they accept foreign addresses so I put in the address of my Japanese friend.
* Norikura Kogen and Zengoro Falls (Zengoro no taki): Went out to Norikura Kogen to do the Zengoro Falls frozen waterfall hike and stay in a ryokan. It was quite a far trip to get out here (Matsumoto Station to Shinshimashima Station on a small train and then a long bus ride from Shinshimashima Station via the alpico bus), but the bus ride over was lovely as it drove through the country side, passing some large rivers/gorges which reminded me of Norway – and the whole landscape was snowed over which was beautiful. We rented snow shoes and poles from Little Peaks which is a small rental store in the Norikura Kogen Tourist Information Center and did the Zengoro Falls hike which probably took about 2.5 hours for us round trip (but we stopped a lot to take photos/videos). After the hike, we stopped at a small cafe in the tourist information building and then headed to our accommodations, Ryokan Kodama.
* Shibu Onsen / Yudanaka: Enjoyed our stay in town and exploring the 9 public baths. Your guesthouse will give you a key which provides access to each of the 9 public baths which all share a master key – each bath is unmanned with just a small changing area and the bath itself which can only fit a few people, so each one isn’t very huge. Because the water temperature can be quite hot, there’s a cold water tap that you can turn on to regulate the temperature and sometimes a stopper to minimize the hot water coming in – for some baths which probably didn’t have anyone coming in recently, the water was super super hot (still immensely hot after running the cold water tap for a good 10 minutes) and for others which I assume the previous bathers added cold water to, not so hot so I think it’ll vary – and when I say hot, I am saying this as someone who loves going to onsens in Japan and can generally take the heat. In Yudanaka town nearer to the station, there was a small, cute unmanned pudding shop where you can either buy pudding from a vending machine or take some from a refrigerator and then put money in a box – the pudding was quite good!
* Niigata recommendations:
* Ponshukan – The ponshukan is a sake tasting center which has over a 100 different types of sake – similar to what I described above at Kami Suwa, you pay 500 yen here and they give you 5 tokens, which you can use to try different sake types, most of which require 1 token and some which require more. Compared to the Kami Suwa sake tasting, you get more sake per glass here. There’s 3 locations in Niigata, so we went to the one in Echigo Yuzawa station – loved tasting a lot of different sake types and would highly recommend it.
* Matsudai Shibatouge Onsen Unkai – We stayed at this ryokan in Matsudai city. The place is about a 10 minute drive from the station with no public transportation, but luckily they offer pick-up service from the station so that was fine. The ryokan itself is nice, but the best part of it is definitely the onsen and the awesome view over the valley that you get from there.
* Kiyotsu Gorge and the Tunnel of Light – Since we had some time to spare, we checked out Kiyotsu Gorge and the Tunnel of Light. Our original plan was to take the local bus which would require a 25 minute walk from the bus stop to the entrance, and thankfully, on the day of we found a tourist bus that would take us straight to the entrance for 500 yen more per way. When we eventually took the bus, we realized how good a decision this was since the roads were absolutely covered in snow and there didn’t appear to be any sidewalks to walk along. Amidst the flurry of snow, the gorge was beautiful, and the tunnel itself was generally a nice walk with some good photo spots.
* Not much of a specific sight, but I loved seeing the snowy countryside scenery when we took the local train from Nagano to Nigata. Maybe I’m easily impressed as someone from a warm country lol
* Next time, I want to splurge on trying one or a few of these: Tokimeki Echigo Setsugekka train, and Shu\*kura train. Both weren’t running while we were in Japan.