ESSENTIALS

For more about ski resorts in Nagano and Niigata, including hotels, visit classic-resorts.jp.

Further information and highlights: seejapan.co.uk. Three-star Akakura Hotel Annex (akakurahotel.com) in Akakura Onsen, with four onsens of varying size and heat, has rooms from ¥13,000 (£94) a night for two people B&B. First Tracks Lodge in Hakuba Norikura (facebook.com/firsttracks cortina) has rooms from ¥15,000 a night for two people B&B. under-the-radar Norikura/Cortina, furthest from the best known Hakuba area, Happo-One. There may not be streets of bars and restaurants as in Happo, but Cortina has lots of tree runs, and the rules for heading off piste are more relaxed.

We’re staying in the First Tracks Lodge, with an easy-going atmosphere and easy access to the gentle apron of slopes at the bottom of Norikura. Beautifully groomed pistes lead to the huge, incongruous, red-roofed, half-timbered Green Plaza hotel at the base of Cortina, before we head up and into the trees.

Up a double chairlift we reach a broad, forested valley and ski it repeatedly, charging untouched powder between perfectly spaced trees over and over, before dragging ourselves away to explore more runs off the back of Cortina, and higher up on Norikura.

The resorts’ compact piste maps belie the extent of possibilities – so much so that we hardly feel the need to explore Hakuba’s other areas. But we do have to go to Tsugaike, where every day the ski patrol runs a short safety briefing that entitles students to dive into extensive areas of trees that seem to take us miles from the long, wide pistes.

Tsugaike is also where we most often take the night bus out to eat or drink. At Kushibe, after some instruction, we construct okonomiyaki pancakes on the hotplate in the middle of our table, shaping and scraping, flipping and decorating ingredients into a messy but satisfying circle. At Cloche we quiz barman Ken about his huge range of sake and plum wine, and his ceremonial sword, hanging on the wall above the bar.

In Happo-One we splash out on tempura and sushi around a sunken table in a private room at Wash-iya, then hit a clubby bar, just catching happy hour in the nick of time.

And every night the bus rolls up in the snowy dark streets, right on time like magic, to take us home.

But it’s at Seki Onsen in Myoko that we have both the best food of the trip and the powder day that bucket-list dreams are made of. Following rumours that this tiny ski area with just two chairlifts, a double followed by a single seater, is the first beneficiary of storms, we taxi over