Nozawa Onsen Village Information

Eating out in Nozawa Onsen

Nozawa Onsen has a great selection of restaurants. The compact nature of the village means that you can walk anywhere in town, with most places taking less than 10 minutes to get to on foot regardless of where you are staying. Most restaurants are relatively inexpensive, expect to pay around ¥1000 for a main dish. A week in Nozawa Onsen – here’s our recommendation of how you could spend a week eating your way around town:

Day 1 – Wakagiri

Wakagiri is a good place to start with reasonable prices and a wide selection of different styles including tempura, katsu, sushi and teishoku.

Day 2 – Bun Bun

After a day spent getting your snow legs back, you will probably be in need of some nutrition. Bun Bun serves Sukiyaki, shabu shabu and nabe, hot pot dishes which come with plenty of side dishes and are sure to fill you up.

Day 3 – Pasta di Pasta

It sounds ridiculous coming all the way to Japan and eating Italian, but this restaurant is really good. They used to have a place slopeside on the resort which was so popular lunch bookings were required on busy days. They have been down in the village and moving around for the last few seasons, but seem to have found a place to stay just off the main street.

Day 4 – Hamacho Sushi

Hamacho Sushi is an authentic style sushi bar where you can order a set of sushi for a pretty good price or sit at the bar and choose which piece of fish you would like the master to slice and prepare right in front of you.

Day 5 – Soba

Soba (buckwheat noodles) is a local speciality in Nagano. There are several different soba places to try in the village, the soba is made fresh and

Day 6 – Masaemon Yakitori

Yakitori consists of chicken and thickly cut spring leeks skewered on bamboo sticks, grilled and coated with a sweet sauce. Masaemon is a classic hole in the wall joint ran by an elderly couple. The taicho (master) is an ex head of the Nozawa Onsen ski school who will happily talk for hours about the beauty of short turns with straight skis on icy slopes.

Day 7 – Shijukara Ramen

Ramen is a popular late night snack/hangover prevention dish often consumed at the end of a night out drinking. The best ramen shop in Nozawa doesn’t open until 9pm (although they also run a shop on the mountain called Mitsui Shokudo which is open during the day). They are famous for a dish called Nozawa-na tan tan men – ramen noodles drenched in a spicy and meaty sauce with chopped up Nozawa na pickles. It’s the kind of dish you will love or hate. The yakitori at Shijukara is a less controversial choice, tender, juicy and drenched in sauce, it’s fantastic. For the more adventurous there are a few oddities on the menu – rabbit hotpot (needs to be ordered in advance), frogs legs and various insects.

Nozawa Onsen is not exactly a party town, but if you have any energy after a taxing routine of riding/onsen/dinner, then there are a few places to keep you occupied:

Hot springs are the true life blood of Nozawa. No one knows exactly how long they have been around for, but one legend suggests they were discovered over 1000 years ago. Hot springs are what kick started tourism in Nozawa. Oyu, the grand old hot spring situated smack bang in the middle of Nozawa was once a feudal lord’s holiday retreat. It was subsequently opened to the public, and Nozawa began to grow as a hot spring destination long before foreigners where cutting through the trees on Yamabiko.

Nozawa’s Onsens in Pictures

There are 13 public hot springs in Nozawa which anyone can bathe in for free – you don’t even need to be staying at a lodge in town to use them. The onsens are maintained by local volunteer groups called yu-no-nakama – “onsen friends”

To take an onsen, you will need:

• a washcloth
• soap/shampoo/conditioner (no ammenities are supplied)
• a towel

And here is how it’s done (proper bathing procedure):

• When you enter the onsen building, you will see a raised entranceway. Take off your shoes before you step up onto the wooden floor.
• Put your shoes on the bottom shelf, take off all your clothes (yes, all of them!) and stash them in one of the compartments.
• Enter the bath and find yourself a spot to wash. It’s recommended that you take a seat on the floor or crouch while you are washing, so as not to splash other bathers. Scoop out some water from the bath to rinse yourself, then soap up. Once you are done washing, it is very important that you rinse off all the suds before you jump in the tub.
• It should be noted that the water is probably going to be a lot hotter than you are used to bathing in at home. The hottest water is on the surface of the bath, so if you take your wash basin and mix the water before getting in it should be more bearable.
• There is a cold water tap in all of the onsens for cooling it down. 95% of the people who will be bathing would like the bath to be nice and hot, so try not to add too much cold water.
• You may notice some floating debris in the bathtub. These don’t look so good to the untrained eye, but are actually just mineral deposits called “yu no hana” (hot water flowers). Yu no hana are the sign of a really good onsen, and all the onsen in Nozawa are cleaned regularly.
• When you exit the bath, rinse and wring out your washcloth then dry yourself as much as possible before you step back into the changing rooms, in order not to splash water on the wooden floor.
• Oyu ni kansha! You may notice some Japanese people clap their hands together and bow before and after their onsen (especially outside the main onsen in town, Oyu). They are thanking the onsen gods and the village volunteers who maintain the onsens for all the visitors. Isn’t that nice?

Paid Onsens in Nozawa Onsen

The free onsens in Nozawa are rather basic, with facilities going no further than a bucket and bathtub. If you want to bathe in a bit more comfort, there are a few paid onsens in Nozawa. Probably the best is at the Nozawa Onsen Grand Hotel, where you can use the bath from midday to 6pm on weekdays for an entry fee of ¥800 (free for guests of the hotel). There are several different baths to try including a rotemburo (open air onsen) where you can sit in the tub on a balcony with views of the ski field. Nozawa Onsen Arena (adults ¥600, children ¥400) has a big bath, showers and changing rooms, and is popular with families as the bathes are slightly more tepid than the free onsens in the village. Nozawa Onsen Kenkokan (adults ¥1000, children ¥500) also has several different bathes including a rotenburo.

Local Specialities

Sake

Life in the mountains is tough. Imagine getting up at 5 in the morning to shovel a foot of snow before work. You head off for a hard day at the office and return home only to find mother nature has caused a reset and you have to start all over again. It’s no wonder many locals enjoy a glass or two to send their aching bones off to sleep. Even less of a wonder when you find out how good the local drop is. There are two main local sake producers, Mizuo and Hokko. Both are made nearby and apparently Mizuo uses water from a spring on the back side of Kandahar. Mizuo is fruity and sweet and goes down very smoothly, best enjoyed ice cold. Hokko is a lot drier, with a lot more nose. Hokko should be heated up. Both are great sakes and either or both are available in most restaurants in town, or you can buy a big bottle of the cheapest Hokko (which is still excellent) for ¥1800 at the bottle store on the main street.
Although grapes are produced in Nagano the wine is not good at all. There are some microbrewed beers which are a bit pricy but worth a try.

Nozawa-na Pickles

You don’t need to go out of your way to try Nozawa na, it is served with almost every meal in Nozawa. Nozawa na pickles are made from a spinach like plant, which is first boiled in a cooking onsen and then pickled. It is usually served with bonito flakes sprinkled on top. Depending how long it has been pickled for, Nozawa na can be crunchy and fresh or fermented with a slightly fizzy taste (almost like it has been carbonated). No two Nozawa na are quite the same, and it is said that there are as many different kinds of Nozawa na as there are housewifes in Nozawa.

Basashi – horse sushi

This dish doesn’t take much explaining – basashi is thinly sliced raw horse meat served with ginger, garlic and soy sauce. Good basashi is very tender and takes all it’s flavour from the sauce. Basashi is sold in quite a few restaurants in town.

Soba noodles

Soba is a local dish of handmade buckwheat noodles. It is popular throughout Nagano.

Onsen manju

Manju is a sweet treat – almost like a cake – filled with anko (sweet red beans) or roasted chestnuts. They are served hot, steamed in bamboo containers.

Oyaki

Oyaki is another Nagano-wide speciality and a very distinctive site on the main street of Nozawa Onsen. Oyaki are similar to manju but slightly larger and with a wide variety of fillings, some sweet but mostly savoury.

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