Echigo Yuzawa, Niigata | Japan Deluxe Tours

Echigo Yuzawa | Skiing, Camping, Hot Springs, and Sake Baths

Echigo-Yuzawa, located in the southernmost part of Niigata and adjoins Nagano and Gunma, is one of the major ski resorts in Japan. Because Echigo-Yuzawa has good transportation service, particularly from the metropolitan area, it attracts numbers of people for skiing in winter and for hiking and camping in summer. There are approximately twenty resorts in and around Yuzawa, varying in size from one to over thirty lifts. A few resorts team up to offer combination lift tickets that give you access to all of the participating resorts. They are typically connected to each other so that you can ski or snowboard between them. Yuzawa is also known for its onsen (hot springs) and sake baths.

At the Echigo Sake Museum inside Echigo-Yuzawa Station, you can enjoy bathing in the sake spa. Around the station you will find museums such as the Shiro Shirahata Photo Museum, which has around 170 landscapes of world-famous mountains, and the Yuzawa Folklore History Museum. By taking the Yuzawa-onsen ropeway from Sanroku Station (at the foot of the mountain), you can go up to 1,000 meters above sea level and can enjoy spectacular views over the region. Around the Sancho Station (at the top of the mountain), there is Alp-no-sato, the alpine flower park, where you can enjoy mizubasho (skunk cabbages) in the spring, nikkokisuge (a kind of yellow lily) in summer, and the autumn leaves of Japanese larch trees in fall.