Hugh's News

Some friends who ski/ snowboard said they appreciated the write up I did of our experience there a couple of years ago. Plus anyone who I see regularly knows how much I love to talk about it...sorry.

Anyway, we ventured a bit deeper into Hokkaido (the north island) this time around so I thought I’d share an update on what we found. 

The snow in Japan really is mind blowing.  Basically it’s nearly always snowing. We’ve been in the mountains for 4 weeks in total now and it’s snowed most of the time, every single day. Even when it’s sunny, (not often) it’s still snowing. We’re more sure how this is possible, but there it is. And the snow is lighter than sugar. It’s heavenly.

We went on the 27th December, and it’s definitely busier and more expensive than Feb half-term. This kind of forced us down the route of not just going back to Niseko, the mega resort, which was a good thing. 

To mitigate this situation we stayed in Otaru, 30 minutes from the big city of Sapporo. It’s a coastal town famous for glass blowing, music boxes, and the best fish in Japan. There were some big hotels that have some skiers like us staying there but it’s absolutely not a resort town. 

Around Otaru there are 8/9 mini resorts within 45 minutes drive. We went to 3 of them - mostly the ‘biggest’ Kiroro, but also Sapporo Teine and Sapporo Kokusai. Niseko is an hour and a half away. 

The drives could be pretty intense as it would always be snowing, sometimes really blizzarding hard and the road would also be caked in snow. At one point I could literally see about 5 yards ahead for 15/20 minutes and had to drive at about 20mph. 

Kiroro was our favourite of these three resorts. It gets 18 metres of snow a year. By way of comparison, Tignes gets 6. By the end of December it had already got nearly 5 metres. However, frustratingly this wasn’t enough snow for the resort to open the side country gates/ tree runs. I heard a rumour of the pernicious impact of a big Club Med hotel, focusing heavily on safety vs off piste adventures. I definitely had to play it safe as was with the kids but dropped briefly into one designated ‘tree run area’ and the snow was up to my chest. Bliss. There were basically very few people there. We got a 40cm of fresh snow overnight on New Years Day and did 7 pure powder runs in about an hour and a half literally without queuing for a lift once. On the final day there was another foot of fresh snow and we went down one long powder caked black run and saw only one other person. If the side country had been open this could have been my favourite resort ever. Will just have to go back and see…

Sapporo Kokusai was tiny but we had a great day there. Cheeky tree runs off piste that were super deep and completely untracked but the trees were a bit dense. The Japanese love a warning sign with ‘Keep Out’ in big letters. Sometimes for pretty innocent terrain. So it’s a bit hard to know which to take seriously and which not to, especially when going into the trees with children. This does mean a guide would be very helpful to quickly acclimatise.

Sapporo Teine was a bit of a disappointment. On the plus side, you get insane views of the city of Sapporo and the Sea of Japan. which you are just above. It’s also a fair bit steeper than the other resorts, which generally are flatter than your average French Alp. On the downside the sea winds had iced up some of posted and the tree runs weren’t really ready yet. Maybe just wrong day/time of year though as the terrain looked good. 

We ended up going back to Niseko three times in four days after that as the snow was absolutely banging, tree runs are just incredible and everything is so easy to access. It’s a proper resort town and way more crowded but to be honest there is still just so much good snow to go around, it barely matters. Also it does make life a little bit easier than when you’re one of the say, 5% of westerners on the hill. And there’s tons of good places to eat. 

The food in Hokkaido is amazing. Our hotel restaurant looked fairly inconspicuous but my god the fish and meat was good. And the breakfasts….most days I had 7 courses. We ate dinner there nearly every night as the kids were knackered and didn’t want to go anywhere. Which did slightly undermine the upside of being in a ‘real Japanese town’. But the snow crab sashimi and wagyu beef from the grill helped me get over that.

A post ski onsen would be perfect but annoyingly, even in the outdoor ones, you have to be naked and in my case, surrounded solely, by naked Japanese men. Call me a prude but that kind of killed my onsen vibe.

We had expected an Alpine NYE party there with fireworks etc. from stuff we’d read online but actually there was bugger all going on. The only thing to do we found was a shrine that open at 11pm. I discovered afterwards that Niseko did have a fireworks display but I didn’t mention that to the kids. 

Japan is now actually quite cheap for most things. Adult lift passes were between 35 and 50 quid a day. In the US they can now easily be 200 at Christmas. Apparently if you stay in February, you can be in a 5 star hotel in Sapporo for 50 quid a night. Though I think that is a bit of a trek from the best mountains. Once you’re there, it’s now cheaper or at least on a par to the European resorts I’ve been too. We went shopping in Uniqlo, partly out of brand loyalty, but mainly because you could buy really well made t-shirts for £7, jeans for £15 and super warm jackets for £50. Madness. I stuffed my snowboard bag with shopping. 

In 2030, they are going to open a Bullet train from Tokyo to Sapporo (via Miseko) which would be the way to do it. Getting another flight to Hokkaido (the snowier North Island) after 14 hours flying to Tokyo is a lot. And this time we had to wait hours for one.

I’d expected this trip to be much more challenging to navigate as we were definitely more off the beaten track. But armed with the words for thank you  ‘Arigato gozaimasu’, arms, and Google Translate, we got by easily. And everyone was very friendly, helpful and of course, extremely courteous!