Quote: (01-04-2015 01:12 AM)Phoenix Wrote:
Quote: (01-02-2015 11:31 PM)enfuego Wrote:
Does anyone have any perspective on whether it's easier to pull at Niseko, which sounds mostly Australian, or the Tohohuku resorts, such as Hakuba?
Hakuba was full of Australians too last time I went, albeit not to the same extent. It is, after all, closer to the Tokyo airports.
I have never tried to pick up at the slopes, nothing about it seems conducive to picking up. If you have more time, you could try hanging out in another non-skiing city for a bit too (probably after), and try your luck there.
Fifteen years ago, Hakuba was the main snowboarding place my friends and I went. Goryu Toomi, one of the Hakuba resorts, had this special in which you could sleep on a cot in a big room in their attic for 2000 yen a night (about $20). The catch was that they wouldn't open the room until midnight (I don't know why). I don't know if they still offer this deal. Anyway, during the day we would talk to the young girls working in the lodge and tell them our situation, and then ask if they would hang with us after their work until we could go into the room at midnight. It worked and we hung out with them at a nearby izakaya until midnight and they went back to their dorm and we went to our cots. We didn't bother pursuing it any further than that for various reasons, but mainly because we were dead tired.
Later on, I got caught snowboarding through the trees and the ski patrol detained me and took me to the patrol office where they confiscated my pass and chewed me out. They also pulled in my two friends. I offered to write a letter of apology. As I was doing that, my friends started a friendly discussion with the ski patrol dudes and the cute female interpreter. One ski patrol dude, whose wife also worked on the patrol, invited us to stay at his house in the nearby area the next time we came up to snowboard. We ended up staying there twice. My one friend almost got with the interpreter. I almost got a girl who was working the ticket window at another, nearby resort to come over to their house and join the party one night, but the logistics didn't work out.
Another time three friends and I went to a different Hakuba resort (I think it was Tsugaike). Two of my friends discovered that they hadn't brought enough money to buy ski passes. So, we took turns using two ski passes. After lunch, when two of us went to the lodge cafeteria to give them their turn, they were sitting there talking to two girls from Osaka who were on a snowboarding vacation. We got their numbers and emails. One of them later moved to Tokyo to work and she came to visit my house and I banged her.
I'm just relating these stories to illustrate that there are ways to score at the slopes, you just need to be a little creative, persistent, and friendly about it. The influx of more foreign visitors into the Hakuba area in recent years, however, may have changed the culture there somewhat. Nevertheless, I still think the larger resorts are the way to go, because the girls working at the smaller hills may have more of a village mentality and I think most of the college students are employed at the large hills.