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We’ve just come back from our first skiing experience in Japan - we spent a weekend in Zao Onsen, a popular hot spring and ski resort famous for its so-called snow monsters, which result from snow piling up around and over the wind-battered trees under particular local weather conditions. We travelled the Japanese way, of course, and stayed at a traditional ryokan rather than some guesthouse called "Pension Bergwald" or the like. Our weekend was utterly relaxing thanks to the gorgeous hot spring baths overlooking the slopes, and we had delicious regional treats for dinner, mainly based on local beef and vegetable products.

But… the skiing… well, how should I put it… was rather something like a time travel to past decades. In high-tech-trend-setting Japan, certainly not what we had expected. It was obvious that skiing is not really a trend sport in Japan, judging from the state of equipment and infrastructure. The first "shock" was the ski rental station, which, being used to ultra-modern sports outfitters in the Austrian and Swiss Alps, was so tiny and basic we first didn’t even recognize it as such. The skis we rented were at least 10 years old, and in fact in the whole ski resort we didn’t see many (if any) skis that were significantly newer than ours. We were lucky though to have brought our own boots, because those were really reminiscent of the 80s (the type with just 1 buckle). The guys in charge at the shop honestly didn’t have much of a clue, but since they were so sincerely friendly there was just no way whatsoever to be mad at them.

So we had our skis – and on to the cablecar, which turned out to be even more ancient and had an almost nostalgic feel to it. Queues were long, of course, as the technology used back in the days (I guess it must be at least 40 years old) simply can’t keep up with the capacity needed, and also the guards meticulously organizing the waiting crowd didn’t really fill the cars up to their limit (very unlike Tokyo Metro at rush hour).

We finally got to the top, only to find out that the chair lifts were even worse – in fact I can’t remember ever having seen lifts like this in my life (and I do remember the times before we were spoiled with wind bubbles and heated seats). Here the chairs didn’t even have a safety bar (again a surprise in such a security-concerned country), and as I occasionally suffer from quite severe attacks of vertigo, I wasn’t really too keen on using them. I would most likely have attempted to overcome my fear, had the reward been really appealing (I am definitely prepared to go through some effort for a nice slope!). But to be honest, we not too impressed with the terrain, so we decided it was not worth the risk of me panicking on the lift, frantically clinging to the chair and driving Simon crazy, and stuck with the cable cars (which with few exceptions catered for the same slopes anyway).

Overall we found most of the trails rather unexciting (we're more into the somewhat steeper type), and the few more interesting bits were only short (to our great amusement, one of them was called "Hahnenkamm", after the famous piste in Zao’s Austian partner community Kitzbühel, our usual weekend skiing destination from Munich). Also, the old skis didn’t really help the skiing pleasure. It is really astounding what new material can do! But the problem with our skis was of course not only that they were old models (early carvers, I would say), but above all that they were just really through, hence completely lacking tension and edges.

I wonder what more internationally renowned skiing areas around Nagano or Hokkaido are like, but in any case the mere existence of a major resort with virtually no investment in modern equipment in several decades was just really a surprise to us. I cannot help thinking that with so little effort, no wonder has skiing been declining in popularity in Japan (or could it possibly be the other way round and new lifts or state-of-the-art skis just don’t pay off because people don’t find it that interesting anyway?)…

As I re-read what I’ve written I realize I may sound quite negative – I really don’t mean to come across that serious! Actually we had absolutely great fun that weekend - not so much for the pleasure of skiing itself as for this rather different experience… and the stroll through the village trying all the local specialties here and there, the hot springs, and the absolutely relaxed feeling and wonderfully sound sleep after the bath. Taking the cablecar up to the area of the snow monsters was pretty impressive, too. It hadn’t snowed enough in recent days to really cover the trees, but already the few centimetres of fresh snow that fell on Sunday gave a hint of the bizarre shape they take. We decided we’d definitely like to come back to Zao Onsen some day (we’d love to see the snow monsters in their full beauty), but we’ll probably not bother to take along our ski gear…