iiyama Nozawa Powder House

A four-bedroom house in iiyama, Nozawa Onsen 12minutes up the road and another 4 within 11-30min, as well as easy access to the Shinkansen, with the station only 10min drive, and the local station a 5min walk.

Getting to the mountains

• Nozawa Onsen — 12 minutes
• Togari Onsen — 11 minutes
• Cupid Valley — 21 minutes
• Madarao Kogen — 22 minutes
• Ryuoo Ski Park — 29 minutes
• Myoko Ski Resorts - approximately. 40minutes
• Shiga Kogen — under an hour

Most people book a room in one village and ski one mountain. From here you can ski a different one every day. Togari is eleven minutes, Nozawa twelve, Cupid Valley twenty-one, Madarao twenty-two, Myoko Kogen Resorts all about 40minutes and Shiga Kogen is comfortably inside the hour. You check the snow report over breakfast and go where it fell.

The house sits in Iiyama, in the valley below the resorts, on the Hokuriku Shinkansen line. That means Tokyo is 1hr 40min away by bullet train, and a day in Nagano city is easy. It also means you're staying in a working Japanese town rather than a tourist strip — quieter at night, and a lot more space for your money.

The space

A 150m² two storey fully renovated house. Awesome Mountain Views from several rooms. Four bedrooms sleeping eight: three queens and two singles, so it works for three couples, two families, or a group of mates without anyone drawing the short straw.

The kitchen is new and properly sized for a group cooking together rather than heating something up. There's one bathroom plus a separate toilet — worth knowing with eight people, and the reason the mornings work better if you stagger them.

Gym, undercover parking and table tennis

Not something you'll find in a ski house. There's a dual cable machine, a rowing machine, an exercise bike, benches and free weights — a real gym rather than a bike in a spare room. Useful on a storm day, and genuinely good for anyone here for a few weeks who doesn't want to lose their conditioning.

There's also a full-size table tennis table, which has settled more après-ski arguments than it has started.

Built for winter

Nagano gets some of the heaviest snowfall anywhere, and the house is set up for it.

• Dedicated drying room for boots, jackets and boards, so wet gear stays out of the living areas
• Air conditioning heating throughout — every room, not just the main space
• Fast fibre wifi, fine for streaming or working through a longer stay
• Washing machine on site

Your own car, and why it matters

This is a driving base, and that's the whole point of it. A car turns a week here from one mountain into five — chasing the snow rather than skiing whatever the hill above your hotel happened to get.

You'll want a 4WD with snow tyres. Nearly every hire car in the region comes this way as standard, so it's rarely an extra cost, but confirm when you book. Pick up at Iiyama Station and you're at the house in minutes.

Parking is a garage for one car plus driveway space for several more. A garage matters more than it sounds in February — your car starts, and you're not digging it out before you've had coffee.

Getting here

Iiyama Station is on the Hokuriku Shinkansen, roughly 1 hour 40 from Tokyo. Hire cars are available at the station, and the Nozawa Onsen Liner runs from there if you want a day without driving.

Food and supplies

There is a great supermarket only a few minutes drive up the road, right next door to the 'road station' which has one of the only cafes open for breakfast in the region, as well as the tourist information centre.

Iiyama town has supermarkets, restaurants and izakaya, and Nozawa's village has plenty more when you want to eat out after a day on the hill.

Onsen

Nozawa Onsen has thirteen free public bathhouses scattered through the village, open to visitors and maintained by the locals who live beside them. Twelve minutes away, and a soak after a deep day is not something to skip. Togari has its own baths too.

Good to know

• Maximum eight guests
• One bathroom and a separate toilet
• No parties or events
• No smoking indoors

Booking direct

Booking through this site means dealing with the owner rather than a platform. Questions get answered by someone who knows the house, the roads and the mountains. Planning a longer stay or travelling outside the ski season? Get in touch and we'll work something out.

Long stays only (currently), from winter 2026/27

This house is available for stays of 30 nights or more. If you've ever wanted to do a Japanese winter properly rather than squeezing it into a week, this is that.

Take the house for a month and it's yours — no turnovers, no cleaners coming through, no packing up between resorts. It suits families taking a season, groups splitting a house for the winter, and anyone working remotely who'd rather do it with five mountains on the doorstep. Unpack once, settle in, and ski the whole thing.

Get in touch with your dates and we'll work out the details.

Rates

From ¥3,500,000 for 30 nights. Stays covering the New Year period are priced separately.

That's the whole house — up to eight guests, all bills included. Split eight ways it's under AUD 4,000 each for a month in Japan.

Send through your dates and we'll confirm a price.