Hokkaido Niseko Boarding

Oh, Hokkaido... with your 1-story-high snow, its quality like a powdery milk, and with your actual milk that tastes quite a bit better than a mouthful of said-milky snow after your first snowboarding face-plant.  How I wish we had more time together, before a plane ticket and lack of funds stole us away.  Sigh desu.

My fiance and I visited Hokkaido for the first time a couple weeks ago for some intense snowboarding and R&R.  Don't know Hokkaido?  Take a look at a map of Japan - it's that island way up north.  Looks huge, right?  The Japanese think so to, until I point out that it's actually no bigger than New York.  The mountain we chose for the extended weekend was Niseko, famed as one of Hokkaido's biggest and baddest for snowboarding.  Then we reserved the Green Leaf Hotel in Niseko Village for ski-on-ski-off awesomeness.

Shortly after flying into Sapporo on Thursday the 22nd, we met with my fiance's brother, his wife, and their 5-month-old daughter.  Since our first meeting in December, their daughter had grown to be able to move her head quite freely, and enjoyed making baby babble that she was only beginning to do 3 months back.  It was interesting to watch as she experienced many firsts in her life: first time in Japan, or any foreign country, or anywhere outside Guam, or anywhere on a plane, first time seeing snow, touching snow, eating snow (Father of the Year), etc.  We all got to experience eating ice cream for the first time, but I think No-chan liked it most of all.

When we arrived at Green Leaf in the late afternoon, we were already itching to snowboard.  So my fiance volunteered to watch No-chan, and the rest of us went to Niseko Hirafu to check out "the best night boarding in Japan" (source: fiance's bro).  The lower trails were alright, but being late March it had already gotten a little icy.  Stupid March.  We made our way as high as we could go, and finally we hit the powder.  People had been telling me how the quality of snow in Hokkaido put the snow from everywhere else to shame, and I finally got a taste of what they meant.  Even outside the best time of the season (Jan. and Feb.), it was so hard to mess up because the soft snow was cushioning the board from every angle.

The next day was our first full day of boarding.  My fiance and I went out in the morning, and after a couple frustrating runs near the bottom (including getting lost while walking between trains lol) we checked-in for lunch.  Man, just as icy as the night before; this wasn't the Hokkaido experience I was expecting.  After lunch, I finally made it nearly to the top with my fiance's brother and found the sweet snowboarding conditions like the night before.  When in doubt, just go further up, yeah?  Niseko is split up into 4 parts - Niseko Village, Grand Hirafu, Hanazono, and Annupuri - and though you can access all on a single all-mountain-pass, you need to get pretty high before you can switch to another part. We switched to Hirafu and got dinner in the cool town below, and then I went right back out with my fiance's brother to night board.

Saturday was our Sapporo sightseeing day, an official break from snowboarding.  We took a taxi early in the morning to the station, and then a train into the city of beer and ramen fame.  Turns out that taxis are the cheapest and most convenient method of transportation when you're in a group of 4, so we went to a fish market for breakfast, the Sapporo factory mall for shopping, ramen street for lunch, the TV tower, and finally back to the station for a bit more shopping.  I must say that I was quite impressed with the food.  The sashimi was pretty good, but ramen and surprisingly Sapporo beer were delicious (though I'd recommend sticking to the standard tap, not the cans or Classic or any other flavors, and feel free to have it with some cheese made from that quality Hokkaido Jersey milk ^_~).

Our last full day was the next day, Sunday, so we devoted it to boarding.  My goal was to get all the way to the top of the mountain.  After stuffing ourselves with viking (read: Japanese for buffet) breakfast, the morning saw a couple practice runs and the end of my camera battery.  Finally, my fiance's brother and I decided to make the climb to the top right before lunch.  Wait, the climb?  Yeah, at Niseko, the final ascent has no lifts because the top of the mountain is home to god spirits.  That's right, this is god territory (watch more Gibli if you don't believe me).  The actual climb takes about 20 minutes, so using our boards as hiking sticks we slowly made our way.  Not going to lie, it was a bit exhausting, but we finally made it!  Our reward?  Lots of fog that made it so you couldn't see 10 ft down the mountain. x.X  But we took some pictures, talked to the other 3 guys we met, and pointed our boards down the mountain.  Now THIS was the powder, guys.  I can say without doubt that it was the pinnacle snowboarding experience of my life, though I know were it January or February it would have been much sweeter.

We got some yakiniku (self-bbq beef) for dinner in Hirafu, and prepared for our return to normality the next day.  It would be a short-lived normality, however.  For our week-trip to Tokyo with my fiance's other brother's family was about to begin...

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