ANA InterContinental Appi Kogen Resort

Located just about over four hours from Tokyo via the Shinkansen bullet train, Appi Kogen is one of Japan’s largest ski resorts — and in the ANA InterContinental Appi Kogen Resort, it’s got a first-class luxury hotel. It’s an unusually small one — just 38 rooms and suites — but each unit offers the highest standard of service that IHG’s hotels can muster, the Club InterContinental classification.

Visually, they’ve pulled out all the stops; there’s art everywhere, as well as a 400-year-old Japanese beech tree inside the hotel’s club lounge. The rooms and suites look out through vast windows at the ski slopes and the surrounding forest, and the bathrooms, especially, invite contemplation of nature.

So too does the onsen on the hotel’s top floor, whose cypress baths face the surrounding treetops. In addition to the Japanese-style hot spring baths, you’ll find an international-style spa, and the skiing and snowboarding is some of Japan’s finest. At this small size, one restaurant and one bar are quite enough, and they’re stunning: Shiratsuyu serves farm-to-table Japanese/French cuisine in an exquisitely crafted dining room, while Mocco, on the top floor, specializes in Japanese whisky.