As you would expect for a ski area of this size, Shiga Kogen boasts some serious lift infrastructure, with around 70 lifts throughout the valley. These range from some relatively fast and spacious gondolas in Yakebitaiyama and Okushigakogen to a single-seater, no-safety-bar chairlift in Sun Valley. The latter was a new experience for us and actually a lot of fun, though this isn’t perhaps the sort of lift that parents will be overjoyed at seeing their children taking. A word too here about the Higashidateyama Gondola Lift – an egg-shaped cable car which is so small that one of our party’s snowboards wouldn’t actually fit completely inside. We ended up ascending with it sticking out the top of the doorway! Not recommended for the claustrophobics among you!
Great signposting and infrequent buses
Most of the central and northern part of the resort is efficiently interlinked and navigating between the resorts is easy with the excellent signposting and guidance in both Japanese and English. There are also plenty of trail maps available. Personnel were also always incredibly friendly and very helpful despite our near non-existent Japanese and their sometimes limited English. This all meant that navigation was easy despite the relatively complex layout of the ski area. The southern part of Shiga Kogen requires skiers to take the free shuttle bus down the valley. Although there were lots of bus stops, we felt that buses could have been a bit more regular, especially given how packed they always were.
A wide range of services available
Eight of the resorts offer night skiing, which is likely only geared towards people staying in the valley itself. In contrast to other Japanese ski resorts, Shiga Kogen has already introduced electronic lift tickets which make for seamless queuing at the turnstiles. We only encountered queues anywhere at the weekends. WiFi zones are sadly few and far between, though most restaurants and hotels tend to offer their own hotspot to guests. Like most things in Shiga Kogen, the ski schools and ski hire shops tend to centre on the hotels. Okushigakogen offers an international ski school with English-speaking instructors, but most of the others are Japanese-only. The rental shops (which are often combined with winter sports shops) are excellent and stocked a wide variety of sizes and equipment (including large Western sizes).