Niseko

Niseko is known by some as 'Little Australia,' due to the large amount of Australians that travel here for the great powder and have bought property in the last few years. I talked to a guy from the UK that has lived in Tokyo the last 12 years and he said the price of property has gone up to nearly 30 times the values of 10 years ago, but has receded with the recent global market woes. While another guy told me he had Japanese friends who could order dinner at a local restaurant because the waiter didn't speak Japanese! I went to a pizza place that looked like it was transplanted from Australia's Gold Coast and was complete with a Surfboard on the wall and a Japanese musician singing English tunes.

I, however, stayed on the south, Annapuri, side of the mountain, which is much less crowded with tourists and my hostel, Niseko-Kogen, was more of a traditional style Japanese accommodation. The owners were great and always on the move. The wife treated you like you were one of her grand children and took care of all the cooking and booking, while the husband was in charge of running guests to and from the train station and ski lifts. He was also a notable accordion player from what I could gather from the awards and newspaper clippings on the walls. Another couple staying there told me the place was Lonely Planet's top pick and that some guests are treated with some accordion playing during their stay, but I was not so lucky. They also told me that the building was an old school.

Every morning the wife would have a great breakfast prepared and on the table by seven and the husband would be rattling the windows as he plowed the snow in the parking lot with a little bulldozer, which I guess is a required piece of equipment due to the shear volume of snow they get in a typical winter. However, this winter has been far from typical and I was told it was actually some of the worst snow conditions for skiers in 14 years. That was depressing enough, but what made it the worse conditions I have ever experienced was the rain on day two. The night before it had snowed quite heavily so I was pumped to get out on the slopes in the morning. Unfortunately, as we were driving to the slopes it began to grow foggy with a light mist and by the time I got up the hill for my first run it was a light rain. I got to the bottom, completely soaked and called it quits. Fortunately, I had a nice fireplace back at the hostel to sit by and sip coffee while I caught up on Blogging about Tokyo and Sapporo.

The pictures are of the fresh powder covering the train track just before I left and the hostel also surrounded with the powder I missed out on. The area is beautifully set between the mountain that the resorts are on and a volcano that looks like a mini Fuji. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture the first day when it was visible and the rest of the time it was concealed by clouds, rain or snow.