Japan boasts over 600 ski resorts and some of the best are in the Hakuba area. Hakuba is home to 13 resorts - all within a 15 minute drive! Hakuba's famed lift-serviced deep powder, accessible back country, terrain parks and a consistent 11 meters of snow per season make it one of the best kept secrets in the snow-going world!

Iwatake:

Iwatake with its 15 courses boasts one of the most breathtaking views of the region, including a 360°panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. It's a great mountain for intermediate skiers and after a few tips so kindly shared by Luke and Charles whom we met on the slope (they must have felt sorry for us beginners doing it all wrong), we progressed to intermediate ourselves! Yay!

For those who wish to take a break from skiing or just want to try something new, Iwatake also offers a snowshoe course at the top of the resort. This we saw others attempting, but we were enjoying the faster pace of skiing so didn't get round to this.

The snow was overwhelming. Fresh powder every morning. Combine that with Japanese food and onsens in the evening and it is pretty much what a skiing holiday should be (in my books). And the mountains are just so… hauntingly beautiful. The trees appears as though they were etched in charcoal by a great artist sketching a memory. A friend we met on the slopes, Luke so kindly offered to give us some skiing tips which we welcomed! His comment that the trees look like the stubble of a man's beard couldn't have been more true.

We spent our evenings first soaking our bones in onsen and then in sake. Unfortunately, or thinking clearly, fortunately, you can't take pictures inside the onsen but soaking in them is something I am mildly obsessive about.

There is just time for one more panoramic of the ski slopes: