Most of the Cortina ski resort facilities are housed within the Hotel Green Plaza Hakuba or the buildings next door.

Cortina Ski School and Snowboard School

The official Hakuba Cortina ski school only provides snowsports lessons in Japanese. The international snowsports school provides lessons for adults and children with an English speaking instructor. These are only held in a private format, so you’ll either need to pull together your own group (up to 4 people) or pay the premium for private lessons. Lessons should be booked in advance.

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Facilities for Children

Cortina is somewhat child oriented; more so for Japanese kids, but English-speaking families will also enjoy the resort.

The child care facility next to the hotel is no longer operating. As an alternative, there is a mobile babysitting service in Hakuba that may be able to assist with child care.

Next to the hotel is an outdoors kids’ area with play equipment, a jumping castle, tubing, tobogganing, and mini snowmobiles, whilst inside the hotel is a large arcade games area.

Cortina Ski and Snowboard Rental

The ski shop inside the hotel rents out standard ski equipment, snowboard gear, and snow clothing. Discounts apply for hotel guests. If you’re looking to hire fat skis, premium equipment or backcountry gear, you’ll need to head to Hakuba or Wadano – see Hakuba ski rental.

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Lunch Restaurants

The Hotel Green Plaza Hakuba has a couple of restaurants that are open for hotel guests as well as non-guests. Restaurant ALPS is a mid-range buffet restaurant that has a good variety of Japanese, Chinese and western fare. A few of the tables in this 2nd floor restaurant have views across the slopes.

The Lyrical Tea Lounge is open for lunch. This fabulous Italian restaurant serves up coffees, pastas and other Italian fare, but the main drawcard is the DIY pizzas. It can be rather entertaining to watch some of the Japanese kids making their own pizzas and piling them up really high. What can be funnier is watching them try to eat the pizza with cutlery (probably about as amusing as watching some westerners using chopsticks!).

Near the kids’ play area is a food van selling hamburgers, fries, and drinks (including the alcoholic variety). There is outdoor seating so you can munch and enjoy the views simultaneously.

Over near the base of the #6 lift on the Norikura side are a couple of lunch spots that serve up basic Japanese meals. There is also a small café at the base of #6 for take-away coffees.

Dinner

The Green Plaza Hotel has two buffet restaurants, with the ALPs restaurant being a little more upscale than the basement food hall (AZUMINO).

Lyrical Tea Lounge is also open for dinner.

In case you’ve eaten one too many buffets or you’ve grown tired of having dinner in the hotel, you can catch a night bus to the little village of Tsuigake where there are various little izakayas and restaurants. There are also a couple of options near the base of the Norikura ski area.

Nightlife

As is typical of most Japanese ski resorts (not including the westernised ones), there is no bar at Cortina. Well that’s not quite true because there is a karaoke bar that has a little “bar” area as well as the sound proof cubicles where you can do your best Mariah Carey impersonation.

Banking Facilities

There is no ATM at Hakuba Cortina. If you need cash you’ll need to head to central Hakuba.

Hakuba Cortina Onsen

The hotel has a fabulous onsen which is a beautiful way to finish the day. It is free of charge for hotel guests, whilst day trippers can pay for use of the onsen or get a lift ticket/onsen combo (towels included).

There are various hot pools of different temperatures as well as little waterfalls and open air baths that overlook the slopes, with partial screening to prevent the stragglers coming off the hill from perving on you in your birthday suit. And remember that standing up and dancing is probably not part of the Japanese onsen etiquette! 

For the ultimate in relaxation, the hotel also offers very inexpensive massages.

Cortina Shopping

Hakuba Cortina has a little retail ski shop adjacent to the equipment rentals, selling very basic ski and snowboard accessories as well as some Cortina souvenirs. The main shop in the Hotel Green Plaza is located opposite the reception area, with lots of local produce, local wines, sake, cakes and other food treats, and tonnes of Japanese trinkets. This shop also sells some Cortina souvenir apparel including undies, T-shirts and hoodies.

Paw Paws

Cortina (aka Koruchina) is also a major drawcard for the real powder hounds (ie the ones with four legs) because next door to the Green Plaza Hotel is Paw Paws, a hotel for the pampered pooches of Japan. And they are pampered! If you think the Japanese love Hello Kitty, wait until you see how much they adore their dogs.