Our 237th entry in this blog is our first time trip to Hakuba, in Nagano, Japan. This place is really breathtaking specially in Autumn. Our timing was a little late from the peak of Autumn colors. Some of the trees are already balding, but were still very happy to see a few red and orange colors in the mountains.

We started our trip by getting out of bed so early that we arrived around 5:30am in Shinjuku from Yokohama. So I think we went out of the house around 4:30am and was still dark. hehe.
We just continued our sleep inside the 4-hour ride bus to Hakuba. 🙂

We were greeted by the beautiful scenery of Hakuba.

We got off the bus and walked a little bit to Snow Peak Land Station. They have some tourist information in here where we got our maps 🙂

We then rode a taxi to our first, and only, stop for the day: the Hakuba Mountain Harbor. After arriving at the station for the gondola, called the Iwatake Gondola Lift, we left our bags in the lockers and went up the mountain through the scary and old gondolas. hehe 🙂

We arrived in this magnificent place around 1:00 in the afternoon. We haven’t had our lunch yet, it’s a good thing there is a Cafe on top. We ate some lunch and spent the afternoon looking at the views while drinking our warm coffee and hot choco. They have this big swing but Ate Rei and Sai was still afraid to ride them. Maybe next visit! 🙂

We ride back down to the gondola station through the old, scary, and noisy lifts. That was indeed quite a ride! 🙂 We hired a taxi to go to Hakuba station. From here we will walk to our Airbnb place.

We stopped by some groceries at a nearby Lawson on our way to our rented apartment. The view while walking is so peaceful and nice. It’s very relaxing to live here 🙂

We loved our cozy and clean apartment. The weather is so cold outside! We were busy eating our grocery items while watching movies. The sofa in this sala also can turn in to a bed.

For the next day, we went out early to do our hiking at Happo One. We took a taxi for its ticket office, then rode some lifts to go to the starting point of the hike. It’s like a lift for skiing. 🙂

We were blessed with a perfect weather on this day. Not so cold and and the skies are clear. 🙂

We reached the top, well, the almost-top for the 3 of us. hehe. Papa Dave was the one who still have the strength to go to the peak. While me, Ate Rei and Sai went up to around 3/4 of the hiking trail. haha 🙂

After some hours of walking, hehe, we went down to a cafe for some light snacks. We then went back down to a Yakiniku place near our apartment for a perfect meal to close the day!

We also played card games while watching The Lord of the Rings 🙂

And for our last day in Hakuba, we initially decided to go back to the mountain harbor to try on the giant swing. Unfortunately, a lot of people are already lining up for the scary gondola ride. So we decided to walk around Hakuba and went to Oide Park instead. The scenery in this place is also breathtaking. We stayed for a while before going back to the station to ride our bus back to Tokyo.

While waiting for our bus ride home, we did some foot spa and ate some ice cream. 🙂
And that was our 3 day tour to Hakuba. We so love to go back here for Spring. 🙂