The pictures in the tourist pamphlet showed an ideal mountain scene in the French Alps, almost too good to be true: a lake of purest blue in the foreground surrounded by bright green hills leading up to spectacular snow-capped mountains under cloudless skies. If this were real, I doubted I could afford to go there. Places this perfect usually seemed to be reserved for super rich jet-setters. Did anybody actually live here?

The Parisian travel agency assured me that there were indeed year-round residents in Tignes, and during the right season, short-term rental apartments were really quite affordable. In fact, in the last weeks of August after most French people were done with holidays, and in the first weeks of fall, before snow brought out skiers, a deluxe studio apartment with kitchenette rents out at only 23,000 yen per week . . . about the same cost as one night in a good Paris hotel.

Before agreeing to this long-distance booking, however, the question persisting in my mind was whether reality could match the promotional spin. We've all seen travel brochures that promise unblemished beauty, but experience teaches us to take these with a grain of salt.