Tomamu Restaurants
If you're staying at
Club Med Tomamu, all your meals are included in your stay package. Otherwise there is a good selection of Tomamu restaurants ranging from traditional Japanese to French-Italian fusion.
A major hub of restaurants and eateries is at the Foresta Mall and Hotalu Street which are accessed from the Tomamu Tower Hotel via the Skywalk which is a glass walled corridor.
A few of the Tomamu restaurants are buffets, so it’s a great place to over-indulge. You can eat a HUGE selection of Western food and other Japanese delicacies, and hopefully plenty of sushi and sashimi. You'll need to prepare to put on a few kilos whilst at Tomamu! Alternatively you'll have to ski or board really, really hard to work off the calories. The food is too irresistible to knock back, so this is not a place for those with low will-power!
For up-market diners, there is a very nice silver-service restaurant located in the Risonare Hotel. The food is exquisite with French/Italian inspired cuisine, the service is impeccable and there are magnificent views overlooking the flood-lit ski runs.
And if you get a bit tired of buffets or you’ve got cabin fever, you can easily escape from the resort and travel to the town of Shintoku. To get there, take the complimentary shuttle bus from your hotel to the train station, and then it’s a 20 minute train trip to Shintoku. Shintoku is only a small town but it has some very nice little traditional Japanese restaurants (including some with karaoke rooms!) only a few minutes walk from the station.
Tomamu Bars and Nightlife
Tomamu doesn’t have any après ski festivities or nightlife, unless your definition of nightlife is having dinner or going to the wave pool! Officially there are a couple of bars at Tomamu but keep your expectations low. Firstly there’s Café & Bar Tukino in Hotalu Street. This is really a café not a bar. There’s also the Tomamu Wine House where you can sample Hokkaido wines and cheese, but this is also not really a bar. Or there’s the Tomamu Ice Bar in the ice village (if it’s open), but it is so cold in there that you'll potentially only last one drink.
Unfortunately the lack of nightlife is one of the drawbacks of Tomamu (although this is common to all non-westernised Japanese ski resorts). You might have to buy a drink at one of the gift shops, however the only place available to gather is back in your hotel room (luckily the rooms are big!). Drinks from the souvenir shops are not particularly cheap, so stock up before you arrive.