Best way to travel

Our group is 2xadults; 1x16yo; 2x13yo; 1x10yo and 1x2yo. We are visiting in January 2008. We need to travel Nagoya airport to Hakuba (Happo One), then 5 days later from Hakuba to Shiga Kogen (Ichinose), then four days later from Shiga Kogen to Tokyo, then two days later from Tokyo to Nagoya airport. Can anyone help!

The obvious choices are rental car, bus and train or a combination.

The advantage of a rental car is convenience and flexibility, but you might need two cars considering the size of your group plus luggage.

The disadvantage of a rental car would be the long rental period, which converts into a large bill. Also driving via Tokyo back to Nagoya involves big distances and many hours behind the wheel. On the other hand, drop off fees can be pretty high.

Buses are probably the way to go. They offer convenient access up to the resort (instead of just the closest train station in case of trains, which can be distant in some resorts' cases). And buses are also inexpensive.

Unless you are on a very tight budget, I would recommend trains for travel between Nagano and Tokyo and especially between Tokyo and Nagoya to speed up the travel.