Why you should snowboard in Japan: Day Trip to Gala Yuzawa
If you’re in Japan during the months of December to March, you should definitely consider taking a snowboarding or skiing trip while you’re there!
There are so many snow resorts that you can visit all over Japan, and especially in Hokkaido, but if you’re just looking to dip your toes in, so to speak, Gala Yuzawa is a great resort to start with!
Gala Yuzawa
Gala Yuzawa is a snow resort that’s open during the snow season. It’s a considerably short shinkansen ride away from Tokyo (about an hour and a half’s time) and can be done in a single day trip. If you want to stay longer you can look for lodging nearby as well.
Rental Gear and Lift Tickets
Renting gear and purchasing your lift tickets is super simple and straightforward and can all be done online.
You can rent just the snowboarding/skiing equipment if that’s all you need, and can optionally also rent clothing or other necessary items. You’ll need to know your sizing ahead of time when you fill out your rental application form. If anything isn’t the right fit at the time of rental pickup, you can always exchange the size as well.
Lift tickets can likewise be purchased online.
I would highly recommend doing this if you’re going to visit Gala Yuzawa. There are separate lines when you reach the resort for people picking up their pre-paid purchases and those who are purchasing at the location, and the in-person purchasing lines for both the lift tickets and the rental gear are much much longer than the pickup lines. This will save a lot more time, which is especially important if you’re only visiting for the day!
Day Trip Schedule
We took the first train to Gala Yuzawa out of Tokyo Station, so we had to arrive at the station bright and early! Our train departed 7:00AM and we arrived at the snow resort by 8:30AM!
The station was already bustling and the convenience stores were already super busy. So I would highly recommend preparing snacks and food the day before. We stopped by the convenience store the night before our trip so that we could get everything we wanted and didn’t have to worry about it the morning of.
The train ride to Gala Yuzawa was smooth, and we promptly fell asleep along the way since we were up so early in the morning. By the time we awoke we were just about to arrive! Already we could see the beautiful snow-covered mountains!
Gala Yuzawa Resort
The JR Gala Yuzawa station is connected directly to the resort, so once you leave the station you’re already in the resort. While it may be busy, following the available signage and crowds is helpful to know where to go.
We picked up our lift tickets first at the available lift ticket kiosks. This was very straightforward since all we had to do was scan our QR code to get them printed.
Then we found the next line to pick up our rental gear. This was similarly straightforward - we provided the workers with our confirmation email and were given our items. I rented a helmet, goggles, snowboard, and boots. Make sure that the helmets and the boots are the right size when they give it to you and make sure they fit well while you’re still at the pickup desk! If they end up not fitting properly you’ll need to get back in to a separate line to exchange them.
Make sure to snap a photo of your snowboard’s number so that you can keep track of your snowboard. Locker rooms and the cafeteria on the slopes do not permit you to bring your board with you, so you’ll need to leave it at the snowboard area. Getting a photo is a good idea just in case you forget what your number is.
After we got our gear, we went to the locker rooms to change and stow our items. The men’s and women’s locker rooms both have locker rentals that are yours to rent for the day. They cost 1,000 yen with unlimited access for the day.
The Slopes
Once we were all ready to go, it was time to head to the gondolas!
The gondolas fit a party of 6 quite comfortably, and the whole ride was actually quite long. It was really cool getting to see all the fresh snow on the mountains from the gondola! And the day was nice and sunny so the views were so beautiful!
Once we arrived at the summit, we spent some time skating around trying to get familiar with the snowboard. This was Aldrin’s and my first time snowboarding so it was all brand new to us! (Actually, I tried snowboarding once as a kid but it was so long ago that this was basically like my first time.)
When we felt somewhat comfortable, or as comfortable we could feel with little to no prior experience, we went up the easiest slope. The summit has a route map that shows the different levels of the slopes based and which ski lifts you’ll need to take to get there. So we went with the beginner slope which only required one ski lift.
Since there was only one beginner slope, this was probably the busiest one since there were lots of skiing and snowboarding classes going on all day. That definitely makes it a bit more difficult to go down the slope without incident since some students did end up crashing into us on top of us falling plenty of times on our own on the way down.
So just be aware that if you’re a well and true beginner, it can be a little crowded and just requires a little bit of patience. If you’re brave enough to try the higher difficulty slopes though, or are advanced enough to already do so, those slopes have much more room and the ice is a lot softer since there are less people going through it compared to the beginner slope
Lunch
The summit has a single cafeteria where you can get lunch. The cafeteria has food like curry rice, noodles, and burgers and fries. They only take IC card or cash, so be prepared with either of those forms of payment since they don’t take credit card.
It can get pretty busy during meal times, so if you can offset your meal time with the main crowd you’ll probably have an easier time ordering your food and finding a place to sit.
I ordered a curry rice bowl and it definitely hit the spot! Even though I had only gone down one slope at that point, learning to snowboard and continually picking yourself up off the ground after falling really does take it out of you!
The cafeteria area also has coin lockers if there’s items you brought with you to the summit that you don't want to carry while you’re snowboarding. These require 100 yen coins and they are one-time access unlike the lockers in the locker rooms at the resort. This actually came in handy for us because we definitely overdressed for the trip. Aldrin and I had worn two or three extra layers because we weren’t sure how cold it would be. The day was considerably warm and we were so sweaty from snowboarding that I was basically overheating! So after lunch I shed some of the unneeded layers and stowed them in the locker until we were ready to go, and thank goodness for that!
More snowboarding!
After lunch we split ways with our more advanced group so they could take on some more challenging slopes, and Aldrin and I spent the remainder of the day going down the same beginner slope.
We did so much better on the second and third runs! I was feeling so much more confident after going down the slope for a second time because I was able to go down with just one or two falls, and I felt like I really got the hang of the falling leaf movement!
By the third run though, the slopes were much icier than they were before. This could be because there were just so many people on it, plus the day was actually quite warm so the soft pillowy soft snow we experienced earlier in the day was gone. This made for some at times unmanageable movements on my part and I felt quite a bit more on the last one.
Returning to the resort
By the time we finished our third run down the beginner slope, it was just about time to leave in order to catch our Shinkansen back to Tokyo. We gathered our stuff and headed back to the gondolas to return to the resort.
As it turns out, skiers and snowboarders can actually forego the gondola to return the resort and can instead take a route all the way back down to the resort! Of course, you do need to be skilled and confident enough to do it, but for those were going down, as we saw from the gondola, it looked like it would be a lot of fun. The slope is very long so you’ll definitely get a lot of practice in.
Returning our equipment was very easy. At the same snow gear rental area they already had beens prepared for guests to return each of the equipment items they rented. After dropping everything off we stopped by the store in the resort to grab some electrolyte drinks and snacks for this Shinkansen ride.
We got to the platform with around 10 minutes to spare so the timing worked out pretty well! And as soon as we got to our seats in the train, we all knocked out after such a long and eventful day.
Tips for snowboarding at Gala Yuzawa
If it’s your first time snowboarding ever or just your first time snowboarding in Japan, I hope even a few of these tips will help make you more prepared and your trip smoother!
Things you should bring
Warm layers
It’s good to be prepared for the cold, but to also have the flexibility to shed layers when you get warm. You’ll inevitably break a sweat while you’re snowboarding or skiing, so you don't have to overdress, but it’s good to have extra clothing just in case.
Hand warmers
Hand warmers are great for the same reason as the warm layers. There’s no telling how cold the mountains will be or how cold you’ll feel, so it’s good to bring supplies that counteract the potential for extreme cold. Keeping hand warmers in your pockets are helpful when you’re riding a ski lift up the mountain if you’re feeling chilly.
Neck gaiter / head sock
A neck gaiter is super useful! Since most of my body was covered up by my snow clothes and my helmet, the only part of me that was really exposed to the cold was my face. And so even though the rest of me was warm, my face was freezing before I decided to cover it up. I actually used a head sock that I had handy from a previous experience go kart racing, and I personally like the head sock a little more because it also provided a layer of separation between my head and my helmet. Since I was renting the helmet that gave me a little more peace of mind.
Contact Lenses (if you wear glasses)
I’m a glasses-wearer through and through and I rarely wear or bring contact lenses around with me. But wearing glasses while snowboarding is not a great idea, especially if you have large frames (like I do). Luckily I was able to use someone else’s contact lenses who had a similar prescription as I did, but if I didn’t, I don't know what I would have done. My frames are way too big that they don't even fit under the goggles. But lesson learned there - always bring contact lenses.
Cash
It’s always a good idea to have some cash on hand wherever you go in Japan. It’s particularly good at Gala Yuzawa since everything was pretty much cash or IC card only.
Snacks
Snacks or easy on the go food is always a good idea to have anywhere you go. If you’re heading to the resort early in the morning you’ll definitely want to have something to eat for breakfast, and since it’s chaotic at the train station the morning of, getting them even just the night before will already save you one headache.
And I can definitely say that after we were finished snowboarding I was starving. I wished we had brought more onigiri or something with us for the Shinkansen ride home just to get something in our stomachs after such a long day. So the next time around, I’m preparing more snacks and storing them in the locker for after the trip.
Pre-book everything
Pre-booking our lift tickets and our gear rental saved us so much time! The lines at the resort were so long in the morning with everyone arriving and doing all the same things, so any time saved was helpful.
Renting the gear ahead of time also gave me a better idea of what to expect when I got there, instead of having to figure out on the spot what size I needed or what items I wanted. So this also helped me with feeling prepared for the day and knowing what I needed to pick up.
Book your Shinkansen tickets at least a week in advance
If you want your choice of train times and seats, you should definitely book at least a week in advance if not sooner. During the open season, there’s so many people who are going back and forth from the resort, so the first and last trains of the day are probably the most likely to run out of seats the soonest.
As a California native, I’ve rarely seen snow where I am, and even when I’ve been to snow areas the ice there just doesn’t compare to the snow in Japan. It literally looks and feels like a cloud! Experiencing snowboarding there was such a fun and unique experience. The snow was just so beautiful undisturbed and even just looking around, I felt like the surrounding scenery was unreal!
I really did have the best time even though it was a short day. It definitely makes me want to go back to Japan and try out the other snow resorts!
