After our long journey to Japan, our visit to the ski fields was fantastic; we stayed in two gorgeous, snow emersed hotels and had a lot of fun together in the snow.
After one night in a capsule hotel, The Lodge Annapuri, we had to move on to our proper hotel for the remainder of our visit: Pension Tomten.
The area that we’re staying is called ‘Niseko United‘, and it is made up of one mountain with four interconnected ski resorts that share a joint lift ticket, should you desire. Apparently it’s one of Japan’s most popular ski resort regions. It’s to the west of Sapporo city on the eastern and southern slopes of Mt Niseko Annupuri. There are amazing views of Mt Yotei, and what makes it the most popular resorts is it’s often top quality dry powder snow conditions. It’s really not that hard to see why so many people love it here.
Anyway, back to the trip… hilarity ensued as we realised that the quick path between our current hotel and the new place, Pension Tomten’, isn’t going to be so quick: basically, the hand pointing to the map in the photo below is where we wanted to go…but the person in the distance pointing at the snow drift is what was actually there in real life.
[photo of the map]
Needless to say we had to get a shuttle bus.
Despite the slight hiccup, we managed to get to Pension Tomten with enough time to head out for a half day on the snow. It was cold! I know that’s a really silly thing to say given that we were purely there for the snow…but it was freezing!
The snowboarding was superb fun. I wasn’t sure that I’d be up to the same level as James, as he’s been skiing for years longer than me, but I was well able to keep up with him…we even did a black run! I’ve only ever tried green runs before. Now i’m feeling very accomplished! I managed to snowboard remarkably well, even if i do say so myself 😊
It’s a good job we got a bit of snow action, as Christmas Day and Boxing Day were a no-go. Instead we chilled at the pension, we ate lots of food, read our books and went for walks.
Due to storms and the lifts not being operational in the wind, we had two full days of complete write off in terms of skiing and snowboarding. We did make very good use of the sofas and free hot drinks at the Pension, chatted to a lot of the other people staying there and generally chilled out in the warmth of inside.
We also made it to one of the other resorts on the mountain, Grand Hirafu. This is what I imagine the Alps to be like; full of people, lots of drinking, loud and mostly fun…but I’m glad we stayed in a less crowded resort. Our resort, Niseko Annupuri, is quieter, with mostly domestic tourists. The hotels are smaller, and there are more traditional things to do, like the onsens or Japanese restaurants.
After a few days of terrible weather and being shut up inside, we were finally able to get out onto the snow! It was wonderful. We both had such a great time. There were falls and tumbles (mostly me), but mostly lots of laughing. I found it really interesting to snowboard in fluffy snow; I kept going into the powder and getting stuck! At one point I was in powder up to the middle of my shins and I couldn’t get to my board to get it off to enable me to walk out of the snow. It was hilarious and infuriating in equal measures. By the end of our time there I could confidently swish down the mountain fast and avoid trees.
We had a few days just in Annupuri, and the rest of the time we spread out a bit over the mountain. One day we got the bus to the far side of the mountain and attempted to ski/snowboard across to the next resort…however, this involved a bit of knee-deep-powder-hiking (not really hiking).
We had reached the top of the Niseko Village resort, but had to walk for about 20 meters across to meet up with the top of the Annupuri resort. The area is ungroomed and quite deep. It was getting quite late as the ski patrol people were shutting up the top lifts and we began to walk over. This took AGES and we ended up with a ski patrol escort! He was very friendly and made sure I was okay in the deep snow (which was REALLY hard to walk in). Eventually we made it across to the friendly sight of Annupuri and back down to the best hot chocolate in the Northern Hemisphere. It was well deserved. Seriously though, the hot chocolate! It was milky and chocolaty, with this weird sort of buttercream whipped cream on top…and Baileys. Yes. Baileys. YUMMY.
I couldn’t get over how stunning the entire place is. So photogenic.
We also managed a few evenings at one of the local onsens (hot baths) while we were there. Basically, an onsen is a large, hot, communal and very naked, bath. The men stay in one and the women are seperate from them in another. As you go in there are little sit-down shower stations, and the key here is to fully wash yourself all over so that you are clean enough to get into the hot bath with everyone else.
You start with slippers….
There is a fine art to doing this washing, least of all if you get it wrong your sliding all over the place! You start with washing your hands and then do your body, then your hair. Only then can you get into the bath and chill out. At first i found it super weird to be there naked with complete strangers, but after about thirty seconds i was just like, “Fuck it”, and got on with it! It’s quite liberating really!
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