Nozawa Onsen is such a gorgeous little village. Because it’s an onsen (hot spring) village, there is water just running through all these special drains in town. It’s amazing. It was really quite disorienting the first few mornings, as I’d wake up thinking I could hear rain, but would then look out the window and realise that it was beautiful and sunny and it was just the drains I could hear. 
The onsens themselves are a huge part of the village – there’s 13 in total, one for each district of the village. And in a village of just a few thousand people, that’s quite a concentration.
The main street is really cute, lots of souvinery shops. These are open only during the ski season, so it must be a bit of a ghost town during summer. There’s a supermarket, convenience store and meat shop too.
In a stroke of sheer genius, the roads are all heated with kerosene, which means that the roads stay free of snow and, more importantly, ice.
Besides the main road, Nozawa also has an army of insanely cheap, delicious restaurants and another army of lodges.
It’s a tiny, absolutely gorgeous town, with the mountain rising up behind it. Beautiful.
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