For our honeymoon, we decided to go explore the world renowned Japow (Japan Powder) and there’s nowhere better to start than Niseko! Niseko is located in the Hokkaido island of Japan, a short 1.5 hour flight from Tokyo. From San Francisco, we took a direct flight to Tokyo Haneda airport and had a short layover with a comfortable connection to Sapporo airport. From Sapporo, we drove 3 hours to Niseko to our accommodation and spent four days exploring Niseko, eating more edamame and drinking more sake than humanly possible and skiing bottomless powder EVERY SINGLE DAY. Here’s our day by day breakdown: Day 1 Arrive in Sapporo and drive to Niseko: Most intelligent people who show up in Niseko book a shuttle bus to their hotel. However, because we booked our trip only one month before our travel date, we got a lodge (amazing lodge... but a lodge nonetheless) and were too far from the resort to sort out shuttling around. Soooo we rented a car. This turned out to be an incredible adventure! The day we landed was a massive snow storm (this is every day in Niseko) and we had to drive on unnamed roads in puking snow in this tiny Japanese car! After 3.5 hours of treacherous driving and being sleep deprived, we finally arrived in Niseko at the Always Niseko Hotel (highly recommend). We slept very well and thoroughly enjoyed using the Japanese style toilets! PRO TIP #1 – Google Maps will take you on the backroads that are often blocked. Get a printed map of main roads before traveling to fact check google. It might be worth it to take the longer main road because the shorter back-road route will take just as long. Day 2 in Niseko: Always Niseko has an incredible breakfast included in the hotel nightly rate. We dressed up and caught the hotel shuttle to the Welcome center in Niseko Mountain. Here we bought a four day pass (rookie mistake) and spent our morning exploring the gorgeous ski resort. We skied a few runs, the conditions were snowy, windy and cold – like any good ski resort should be :). We stopped for a quick snack at the Lookout Cafe and continued skiing for the afternoon. I also discovered my favorite ski run of the Niseko trip – Miharashi. A short hike from the Gondola, the Miharashi ski run is full of powder pockets and steep but forgiving trees. One of the best runs ever. After skiing, we grabbed our stuff from Always Niseko, had some lovely lunch at The Organic Café, grabbed some ramen noodles and sake from the Seicomart grocery store and drove to our accommodation for the next 4 days – Moiwa Lodge! I will write a separate blog post about the Lodge and accommodation in Niseko, but long story short, we had a GREAT time. Our first day here, we promptly dropped our bags, unpacked and went off to our first Onsen of the trip: Niseko Grand Hotel. This Onsen was unique and one of the only co-ed Onsen (mixed bath). These are very rare in Japan so it was a great way to start our trip and get familiar with the Onsen culture together. This lovely Onsen has a great outdoor space but unfortunately isn’t very warm. We still enjoyed our time together and spend 1.5 hours here. Following the Onsen, we went back to Moiwa Lodge, heated up our ramen packets and enjoyed a lovely ramen dinner together in the Lodge cafeteria. The Lodge has a cool dive bar, where we hung out with the bartender, got some insider tips and drank amazing Japanese Whiskey (Hibiki). Day 3: Skiing Moiwa Ski Resort As it turned out, this day ended up being a massive powder day. Our Lodge, Moiwa, was across the street from the Moiwa ski resort, which is not a part of the Niseko United resorts. The snow conditions looked SO good, that we decided to ditch Niseko and ski Moiwa only. This was the BEST decision ever. The powder was deep and nearly untouched ALL day. We ended up skiing 3 feet of powder right on the main chair runs. There was plenty of steep off piste terrain that was way more rewarding that we had imagined. Hands down, one of the most memorable ski days ever. North Face operates a lovely lodge and café right at the base of the mountain: Lodge Moiwa (not to be confused with our Moiwa Lodge). We had a lovely lunch here, followed by some more skiing off piste into the afternoon. This was an INCREDIBLE day and one of the most memorable powder days I have ever had in my short skiing career. After this epic day of skiing, we went for onsent to Hotel Kanronomori. This onsen was one the best onsens in Niseko (and as we learnt later on, better than most onsens that we went to on this trip to Japan). After a good long soak, we drove into Niseko for dinner at an Okunumiyako place (Kabuki 1 - looks like they are now closed!), where you learn to make your own! This was pretty cool because I LOVE okunumiyaki but I never knew how to make it. We enjoyed this very much and then went down to the famous Bar Gyu (Fridge door bar). Also, a very cool experience and a must-do in Niseko. This was pricey, but the atmosphere and experience was worth it. Day 4: This day started a bit slow because I had a phone interview. By the time I got done, it was 12 and we decided to drive to Niseko downtown and try some Indian food for lunch at a place called Bombay Sizzlers. The food was some of the best Indian I have ever had. We really enjoyed the tastes and the presentation. Following this, we drove down to the resort and decided to ski for the afternoon. Here, we learnt of the 5 hour lift pass, which was $25 less than the daily pass!! Aaagh I wish we knew of this earlier. Most days, we didn’t ski more than 5 hours and this would have been way more affordable. We took the gondola to the top of Miharashi and lapped that a couple times. The conditions were AH-MAZING. We also skied some groomers and the crowds had thinned so it was pretty great going at high speeds :). We continued this for about 3ish hours, traversed way to the skiers right and called it a day. It was an incredible fun day of skiing a good combination of off piste and on piste skiing. We changed our gear and went back to Bar Gyu for another round of cocktails – YUM! We actually waited for 5-10 mins because we got there before the bar even opened. After this, we went back to try out a new onsen, much closer to the Moiwa Lodge. It was not that great but we enjoyed it nonetheless. We then went to an AWESOME sushi place for dinner and liked it so much that we booked it for a second night. It was called Kobito Japanese Restaurant. They have ton of vegetarian options and I absolutely loved everything I ate. Naturally, there was a lot of sake and edamame to go around. Day 5:
Our last day in Niseko was very bitter sweet. We had had such a great that I could have spent another 4-5 days here easily. We decided to start our afternoon at Hanazono ski resort lapping the gondola. It was extremely windy and cold at the top of the mountain and the summit chair was closed. There were some good pow “off piste” runs in the resort but after three laps, it got skied out. We packed up and drove down to Niseko to run a few more laps. On my last day here, I wanted to experience the popular “Magic Forest” section of the Niseko resort. Its off piste and steep. Unfortunately the snow conditions weren’t awesome but we still got some good turns in. Due to its popularity, it was skied out and not soft snow. Skiing is always a combination of varying conditions on the mountain. Some good, some not so good. We skied to the bottom of the resort and lapped the gondola and Miharashi a couple more time. To end our trip, we went back to the absolutely wonderful Hotel Kanronomori onsen the last night in Niseko. Followed by delicious food at _ again. It was an incredible day and an unforgettable time in Niseko. Our last morning, we packed up and drove to the airport to fly back to Haneda and catch a Shinkansen to Nozawaonsen! Read about this at my next post :)
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MahimaNuclear Engineer, Product and Strategy expert, Vegetarian, Adventurer. Categories
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December 2019
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