Actually I wanted to explore Kusatsu area but after chatting with Zeno, I realized that traveling around in Japan (especially without a car)is quite time consuming. So I decided to stay at Shiga Kogen for 2 nights to experience snow and ski. I arrived at Shiga Kogen after spending a night at Shibun Onsen (you can read about it in the other forums), I took a bus that cost 980yen from Shibu Onsen to Shiga Kogen and it dropped us off infront of Hotel (where I stayed). The hotel is also recommended by Zeno and the rates are very reasonable, the hotel room is simple and the view is nice, ours was facing the forest and I can see the other ski resorts as well. The food is buffet style and everyday the serving of the food is different and it is delicious (I love the Tomatoes that they served, simply sweet). Unless you are in this area to ski, if not I suggest you stay in other places or areas cause during Winter time, everywhere is skiing, not much of other activities going on. As we are Singaporeans, we have no snow in our country, this is our first time learning to ski. Frankly speaking, skiing is actually a fun and exhilarating sport but we did not realize it is also difficult to learn and our body was aching so badly (maybe our bodies are not flexible)after the lessons! The ski instructor which we hired in the hotel was very patient with us and i think he suffered too! it cost us 20.000yen for a 4 hour lessons including rental of the ski boots, jackets, goggles and the chair lifts. It is for 2 of us. We take it as an experience and we enjoyed it even though we had aches after that. On the day that we left Shiga Kogen to go back to Tokyo, we had a surprised! It snowed! It was so beautiful and I was getting a little disappointed at not seeing any snow falls. Lucky it snowed before i left. I took the Nagaden Bus all the way back to Nagano stn, it cost 1900yen. And from there, I took the Asama shinkansen back to tokyo. I would love to go back again but this time with my kids, I am sure they will enjoy it.