There are five women, all strangers, in the hot pool, surrounded by drifts of fluffy snow. Small lights glitter in the tree above. The sun is setting, and steam curls over the water.
We're all naked, thank goodness.
Shortly earlier, I'd a moment of panic when I stepped outside from the hotel to descend the stone steps to this onsen, a traditional Japanese hot-spring spa. What if all the Japanese women already in the water are wearing bathing suits? There was a sign inside the changing room saying "swim suit no", but that could have just been another quirk of Japanese-to-English translation, like the sign I saw on the skifield yesterday for "Gondora tickets".
This is my first onsen visit; imagine the culture-clash horror if I've blundered nude into a temple of modesty. The Japanese are renowned for shyness and restraint; communal frolicking in the buff isn't the first activity that I'd expect them to enjoy.
As I shuffled down the steps, blushing for my nakedness, the Japanese ladies already luxuriating in the water averted their eyes. "Konichiwa," an elderly woman smiled as I plunged myself into the warmth.
I snuck the briefest of looks. She was naked too. Relief.
Onsen is one of Japan's finest traditions, and it has become a favourite adjunct to the snowsports lifestyle. Everyone from late adolescence to dotage is here, some with little face-cloths draped over their heads, most with their eyes shut, just relaxing. The alpine village of Hakuba, three hours west of Tokyo on the main island of Honshu, is famous for its thermal springs and surrounding network of interlinked skifields, and most of the hotels and guesthouses have private bathing pools.
It's all surprisingly cheap - a night's accommodation at a mid-range hotel like our Mominoki Hotel in Hakuba is 12,000 ($147) per room, per night; a lunchtime bowl of fragrant vegetables, meat or fish and noodles with miso soup is around 800; and a day's skiing, including bullet-train tickets to and from Tokyo, lift passes and all gear and clothing rental is 8000.
Hakuba is the heart of the Nagano district, home to dozens of skifields and host of the 1998 Winter Olympics. The Olympic heritage lingers; a Scandinavian toboggan team left graffiti on the walls of a sushi bar, Kikyoya, in Hakuba village, and the owner - a garrulous former professional baseballer - has turned it into a tradition, encouraging visitors to scrawl their own messages on the walls.
The bar is full of Westerners on the night I visit, all eating salmon roe, squid on rice, tuna marbled with rich, flavoursome fat.
Only two of the patrons are Japanese, including my friend Chieko Oto. So where are all her compatriots? They seem to be at a nearby McDonald's, leaving the local food to the foreigners. In our two days of skiing together, Chieko and I have eaten like princesses - rice and poached salmon for breakfast, cool soba noodles with wasabi for supper, lunch of grilled lamb on rice, served with green tea.
Here, a snow holiday isn't just about deep powder, long runs and dodging the snowboarders - although there's plenty of that. It's an experience for the whole body and mind: hot sake at the end of the day; a massage at night; sitting in the onsen, poking one toe out of the water to feel the spike of cold.
In Takasaki, a mid-sized city between Nagano and Tokyo, we find a jazz bar where couples sit close on small stools, watching the chefs. We eat shabu-shabu, a bubbling hotpot of stock on our table, into which we plunge fine slices of beef, mushrooms, greens and tight little bundles of noodles. I'm pressing Chieko for some culinary tips.
"What do Westerners do wrong when we use chopsticks?" I want to know. A couple of nights earlier, at a sashimi counter in Tokyo, my friend Robert (an expat) chided me for picking up a sliver of pickled ginger in the same chopstick-ful as my fish.
"Don't do that," he says sharply, then: "Sorry. It's just that the ginger is a palate-cleanser. You're only supposed to eat it between courses."
Reluctantly, Chieko confirms Robert was right about the ginger, but like so many Japanese she'll do anything to avoid offending me, and steers us to a different subject.
But how does this innate politeness _ which seems to be at the centre of Japan's orderly, self-contained nature - intersect with skiing, always such a chaotic, messy business? On my journey from Auckland, through Tokyo to the skifields, I've observed thoughtfulness of a scale undreamt of in most Western societies, and I've been curious to know whether the general air of restraint will dissipate when we arrive at the snow.
On the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo, a conductor in the carriage turns and bows to the passengers before passing through the sliding door at the end.
When I stop to take photographs of the vertiginous Olympic jump-stadium near Hakuba, a young father stops building a snowman with his toddler to enquire if I'm alright. He's concerned I'm not getting the best view of the jump and inspects the snow-proofness of my boots before taking me uphill for a better outlook.
There also seems an aversion to risk. "No, no, no, no," says a cabbie another night in Tokyo. I'm trying to tell him the name of my hotel (Metropolitan Marunouchi, which might sound slightly different in a Western accent). He doesn't want to look at my map or the card I'm waving with the hotel's name printed in Japanese script. He just wants me to get out of the cab - and the taxi drivers in the queue behind him also refuse to take me once they see I've been rejected by their fellow driver. They don't know if I'm mad, drunk or just a crazy gaijin, and they don't care - they won't even open their automatic doors.
So how does this risk-averse, considerate race react when dipped in snowflakes?
With the same subdued good manners they apply to city life.
And in the onsen, the mood is hushed, calm, polite; the only sound is the splashing spring and a few murmured remarks.
Perhaps there was nothing to worry about, after all.
If I'd been the only naked bather, the gentlewomen of Hakuba would have been far to polite too make me feel awkward about it.
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