Cheap Snow in Japan?
 

Any experts on Japan to tell me where to go January/Feb in Japan, looking for snow and scenary as opposed to skiing, looking for natural scenary, quiet, any ideas? Also what is is likely to cost on flights/hotels.
Thinking of flying into the North and then I guess train from there. Flying for BKK thinking about using Cathay into Sapporo and then onwards. Cheap hotel/accommodation.

ttt

Anyone?

I can't claim any great level of expertise here, but I have been to Hokkaido in the winter, and if you want snow covered spaces as empty as it gets in Japan, I doubt you could make a better choice. Sapporo has an ice festival with giant carved figures in the streets, but I'm not sure of the dates. I took a pleasant rural railway across to Noboribetsu, which is the hot spring area with the largest volumes of geothermally heated water in Japan, and very commercial (even the youth hostel has its own baths), yet not very busy when I was there at all, the walks around the volcanic area not crowded and the steam condensing smokily in the cool air.

As I recall, the Japan Alps are packed when there's snow, everything is very regimented, and prices are sky high. Hokkaido sounds the better choice for what you want.

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

Thanks Peter that's great.
You are right, not interested in the skiing, saw a great program on the 'Snow Monkeys'(?) and it included some magnificent scenes of snow and rural landscapes, now all the family want to go! We won't take the kids to Europe to see snow as apart from price my wife does not like Europe anyway.
OK I will check out what I can find on Hokkaido, thanks.
James(BKK)

OK, but we Europeans want a word with your wife.

You probably know this, but try:

www.jnto.go.jp/eng/

A search for "Hokkaido" provides 96 pages of information.

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

We stayed at a small town/resort called Niseko many years ago. The inn was the Niseko Grand. haven't a clue how much it cost or the address, but we stayed for a week and mostly just enjoy walking and eating the meals in the inn. (We had our 4 month old, so each of us skied one half day only..) Really beautiful and scenic up there! We then spent a week getting to Tokyo on the train...stopping wherever look good each day.