Niseko

We went on a 6-day, 5-night trip to Hokkaido, in Northern Japan, for some awesome skiing and to see the famous Sapporo Snow Festival. We went with a group of friends, which made the experience even more fun.

After a 2 hour flight from Nagoya to Sapporo, we had to take a 3 hour bus ride to Niseko for the skiing portion of our trip. I was nervous about this part: Elodie and I on a bus, winding through the mountains on narrow roads, leads to some serious car sickness. But it ended up being just fine. We stayed in Niseko for the first 3 and a half days of our trip.

My first impression of Niseko was - whoa, are we still in Japan? It felt like we were in a mountain town in the U.S. rather than Japan. The town was completely Westernized and everything was in English. I hardly even saw any Japanese people there, it was almost all Australians. It was an interesting feeling taking a vacation in Japan, but yet feeling like I was somewhere back home... or anywhere but Japan for that matter.

The skiing started off rough, but ended up being fantastic. The first day, it rained in the morning. This turned into ice, which made for some crappy ski conditions. It eventually turned into snow after a couple of hours, and then didn't stop for the remainder of our trip. But it was so windy the first couple of days that the air was blowing all of the fresh snow everywhere - leaving the ice underneath for us to ski on. The high wind conditions also closed all of the top lifts, so we weren't able to visit any other parts of the mountain (you have to either take a bus to other parts, or go all the way to the top to ski over to other resorts).

Luckily, the third day was awesome. Feet of fresh snow, no wind, amazing conditions, with all the top lifts open. This day made the trip worth it.

You can see in the map above that there are 4 different resorts or sections of the mountain. It's seriously huge. So you can see why we were a little disappointed that the top lifts were closed the first couple of days. There wasn't any other way to get over to different parts other than to take a bus, and we didn't feel that was worth our time. Luckily, we were in the middle section, which I think is the best part of the mountain. Below is a picture of Joe and I going up the very top lift on the last day, thanks Sarah.

We stayed in a Japanese-style room, which ended up being perfect for us. I don't usually like to sleep on futon mats on the floor because they are typically pretty thin and therefore you might as well just be sleeping on the hard floor. But what I've learned is that the beds in Japan are just as hard, so you might as well sleep on the floor anyway. No beds in the room made extra space for E to play, and then we didn't have to worry about her sleeping conditions, since she also slept on a futon mat on the floor. It worked out perfectly.

It was also E's first experience in daycare. We put her in daycare for all 3 days that we skied. All in all, it went really well. She didn't particularly like us to leave her, but she got over it and did just fine. I'm glad the resort offered a daycare facility, otherwise Joe and I would have had to take turns skiing... and that's just not fun.

A great ski trip, with wonderful friends, on a beautiful mountain.

I'll write about the Sapporo Snow Festival in my next post. It was amazing.