Top 10 Ski & Snowboard Areas in Hyogo Prefecture, Kinki

Reviewed By 517isah - Singapore, Singapore

We took a direct JR train from Shin-Osaka station to Rokkomichi station (about 30min). It is then a short walk (turn left after the exit gates) to the bus stop (16 or 106). We took bus 16 (frequent service at standard rate of 210yen for adults - JR pass not accepted). Board in the middle and alight at the front with payment. The last stop after a little more than 15min was the Rokko cable car station. We bought a ticket (<2500 yen) that included snow park admission and round trip cable car plus bus rides. The cable car took about 10min and the bus ride about 12min. All in, it took us about 2h to get to the snow park from Shin-Osaka station. The waits between rides weren’t long. I had booked online a group session for 11am to 4pm with 1h lunch break (30000 yen). At the entrance I paid for rental skis and winter wear (5650 yen each - includes 1000 yen deposit that you can claim back from the same ticket window after producing the rental stubs with stamps showing that you’ve returned the stuff). After entering you can get your ski bibs from the school office on the left. We entered the restaurant on the right to ‘claim’ a table with our stuff. We then went one level down to rent our winter wear. Bring 100 yen coins with you if you want to use the coin lockers (100 yen for shoes, 200 yen for medium size lockers and 400 yen for large lockers). They also have a coin changer. First we walked into the jacket and pants area and selected our jacket and pants. They are grouped by size. I’m 1.67m tall with a 35in waist - Large suited me fine. We brought them to the counter where we got our gloves. After folding them nicely, the staff indicated the items on our rental stub (ticket). Next is to try them on in the changing room. The first section is unisex for putting on your boots. The inner section is where you change into your winter wear. If they don’t fit, bring them back to the counter for exchange. Next, we got our boots. They have videos online and on site on how to put on the boots. Next, we walked over to the ski shed with our rental stubs to get our skis and poles. We put on our lesson bibs and met our instructor who was waiting patiently for us. Our instructor was excellent! She was patient, made us feel at ease, helped us take pictures and videos, wasn’t too fast nor too slow and made the lesson thoroughly enjoyable. Her name is Eriko sensei. King sensei popped by after lunch. Looking around at the other instructors, all of them looked equally engaged with their students. We had lunch at 1pm. We selected our items from a ticket machine. Halal options are available. For the food items, the tickets had two sections with the same order number. We passed the one with the food details to the person at the food counter and waited for our orders. When our food was ready, they were placed on the food counter with the respective order number. We used our corresponding sections to claim our food. Drinks and desserts were collected at a separate section. We returned our rental items before the time limit of 4:45pm. After exiting the snow park, we collected our rental deposit from the ticketing counter. We took the 5pm bus back to the Rokko cable car station. At the bottom, bus 16 was waiting for us. It was crowded, as we were slow in getting off, but became delighted when the subsequent bus 16 arrived less than 10min later and there were many empty seats. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.