Niseko and Sapporo

Hot on the heels (sorta) of my last post, I wanted to share our recent trip to Niseko and Sapporo before too much time muddied my memories. After our last, abbreviated trip to Sapporo, Uncle Moto and Hime mentioned wanting to see us again for a longer period of time. We decided to start with a snowboarding day, then travel to their house for a few more days before heading home.

Quick note: I added a new image gallery component that should let you cycle/swipe through photos, where applicable. If you see arrows on either side of an image, there are more where that came from! It’s a bit crude at the moment (e.g., image heights don’t match up very well between portrait and landscape photos) but I’ll make it look better in the future.

Logistics

When Seri and I left Oakland, we made a strategic decision to leave our snowboarding gear behind, instead taking only the things we deemed absolutely necessary (e.g., my golf clubs). There are two stores—that I know of—in Hakodate that have large selections of snow gear: Xebio and Alpen. We made our way to both to compare their wares before ultimately making our decision.

Fortunately, since we were doing our shopping in late January, prices were already starting to come down for winter gear. This was convenient, as I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of spending $500 on a snowboard. Some things (boots) were still painfully expensive, though. I’m OK with that so as to not have a terrible, blister-filled day at the slopes. Or so I tell myself as I try to forget the price tag.

Alpen’s selection was a bit better and generally cheaper, though a number of snow gear out here is sold specifically with an “Asian fit.” This doesn’t sit well with me, quite literally, but I managed to find a pair of goggles and a helmet that didn’t feel too bad. Seri had a easier time finding something that fit than I did, naturally. We got upsold on some snowboard wax (or maybe it was thrown in? the details are fuzzy) and like 4 cans of Scotchgard. Seri said she thinks the cans were thrown in, or maybe only a few of them were. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of this stuff. Maybe I’ll start putting it on our trash bags before we put them in the bins to freak out the collectors as to why no snow has stuck to them. Can you put it on bath towels? Probably ill advised. Anyway…

Uncle Toshi helped us pick up our gear, since it would’ve been pretty inconvenient lugging it on the tram back from the store. It barely fit in his car with our other stuff, but it was at least a good trial for him taking us to the train station in the coming days: our stuff would fit.

Niseko

On a Thursday, a few hours after my Japanese class, we headed to the train station for Niseko. The trip takes about 3 hours, although we did have to transfer once which was kind of annoying with 2 snowboards, boots, backpacks, and two large pieces of luggage. Have I mentioned we need to buy a car? We need to buy a car. I mostly worked on the train, since I tend to only work a couple of hours—at most—before my Japanese class on Thursdays, opting to do the rest of my day’s work when I get back. With no reliable internet connection, that meant working on a side project with a larger scope and longer timeline than my usual projects.

We got to the Niseko train station after sundown and I was pretty beat. Seri had previously tried to book a taxi to pick us up, but there weren’t any available that day. Fortunately, we were the first people to make our way to the station lobby, and the woman worked with Seri to call a taxi for us. There was a white guy working there who was greeting people in both English and Japanese, but I was too out of it to play “let’s talk about being foreigners” so I just pretended I didn’t hear him. Gomen, dude.

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The taxi ride to our ryokan was short, only about 10 minutes or so. A lot of resorts in Niseko operate as both hotels for people going to the mountain as well as day-spas for people who are passing through or are there for a day trip. In fact, we visited one for that purpose on our honeymoon with Uncle Moto, Hime, and Uncle Toshi after snowboarding at Niseko.

Our ryokan was on the small side, but we were only there for 2 nights so it didn’t really matter. We ate our dinner (meals were included), then headed to the onsen. A lot of ryokan don’t have bathtubs/showers in the room; you bathe in the shared onsen. I was looking forward to using the outdoor bath, since it’s a cool feeling to be submerged in hot spring water while it’s -10 °C outside. The only downside was that the outdoor bath was deeper than I expected, so it wasn’t easy to sit comfortably without half my head being underwater. I’d like to file a complaint. We headed to bed pretty soon after finishing at the onsen to get a head start on our snow day.

Snow day

The ryokan operated a shuttle bus every hour to/from the mountain. Weirdly, we were the only two people on our shuttle, making me wonder if people either got up super early or worse, seeing the weather conditions, decided to not go out at all. See, the front desk clerk had told us a number of the lifts had been closed due to high winds and generally blizzard-like weather. Looks like we picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue go snowboarding. That being said, I wasn’t about to waste all the money we spent on new gear because of a little “blizzard.”

But uh… it wasn’t the best day. It’s been a few years since I last snowboarded, so I needed to get my bearings again. The closed-down lifts meant more people had converged on the few that were open. And occasional white-outs that had me worried about running into people not 3 meters (that’s about 10 feet, folks—we metric now) in front of me made me more worried about safety than I’d prefer to be. Disclaimer: I’m not saying I don’t like being safe out there. I just didn’t like the idea of needing to be that safe, which basically meant stopping every handful of seconds to make sure that shadow in front of me wasn’t a person.

Having said that, I really like Niseko. The mountain itself actually has 4 resorts that, depending on your lift ticket, can be accessed freely via a shuttle (or via lifts at the top of the mountain that happened to be closed that day) that connects them. We started at Annupuri but headed to Grand Hirafu after a few runs to see if it was less crowded. Unfortunately, that resort didn’t have many lifts open, either, so after eating an overpriced lunch at one of its restaurants and doing a few runs there, we headed back to Annupuri to finish out the day.

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Seri’s cousin, Satoshi, was there that day and the next with his co-workers, but he told us conditions were so bad that they left early in hopes of a better day the next. It sounded like he didn’t even go out the next day, though, as conditions got even worse. Poor guy.

That evening, we ate dinner and were gearing up to use the onsen when we found out that, because of the high winds and generally terrible weather that day, they had closed off the outdoor onsen. Fortunately, the staff had the shuttle taking guests to other nearby ryokan to use their onsen, so we hopped on and headed to Kanro no Mori, a short drive away.

Kanro no Mori is a much larger resort and as it turns out, is the same one we went to on our honeymoon. Memories! Seri still rags on me for not having washed her uncles’ backs the previous time, as a sign of respect. I maintain that I had no idea what I was doing at the time, so it’s not my fault. We agree to disagree. The bath was much larger, and they had a sauna. I used the sauna last time but this time just stuck with the various baths.

Since our snow day was technically a Friday for me when it comes to work, I wanted to head back to our hotel to get a few hours in before heading to bed. Our hotel had a “relaxation room” with massage and lounge chairs, and it got a better wifi connection than our room. We stayed down there for a bit before Seri headed upstairs while I kept at it, heading upstairs around 11pm.

Milk Kobo

We’d originally planned on taking the train from Niseko to Sapporo. Uncle Moto, ever accommodating, offered to pick us up from the hotel instead. We ate our breakfast, packed up our gear, and waited for him in the lobby. We spotted a woman with a knee brace walking pretty gingerly to the shuttle—possibly a casualty of the snow the day before. We were fortunate to have gotten out unscathed, based on the previous day’s conditions.

When Uncle Moto arrived, we packed up our things in his van and headed out. Our first stop was to a nearby store called Milk Kobo. We’d actually been here before, too, but it’d been years. Even though it was incredibly cold, Seri got a soft serve—Milk Kobo has great dairy sourced from a local farm, so it only made sense. We also got some tasty cream puffs and I picked up a box of flaky dessert cracker things as omiyage for my Japanese class.

Our stop here was quick in an effort to get to our next stop in time and back to Sapporo before the sun went down. There’s only so much dairy you can eat when it’s -4 °C, anyhow.

Shikotsuko

Our drive to Shikotsuko was rough, there’s really no other way to put it. The combination of the snow and wind made visibility almost impossible at times. Seri helped guide Uncle Moto back into our lane whenever things got bad enough that our lane and that of oncoming traffic’s blended into one. Fortunately, there weren’t many cars on the road to contend with. Those that were went slowly, for everyone’s sake.

We eventually made it to the lake, and conditions would get considerably better for the rest of the journey. When we came here in December, workers had started building the annual ice festival. Now, it was in full swing. To remind, every year at the edge of Lake Shikotsu, an ice village is erected. Variously decorated rooms are crafted. It’s a relatively small affair, but it’s an inexpensive and fun sight to see.

Oh and they also had an outdoor wrestling match going on. I’ll save you the trouble of answering your question for you: “…me neither.”

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We made our way through the rest of the structures, ate some ramen for lunch and headed back out. The rest of the drive was mostly uneventful—something I was thankful for—and we made it back to Uncle Moto’s house before nightfall.

Sapporo

Aside from the snowboarding, the main event of this trip was to see the Sapporo snow festival, or yuki masturi. The Japanese self-defense army creates incredible snow sculptures every year that draw huge crowds from around the world. Our first day in Sapporo, we thought we’d be sneaky and visit the festival before the foreign tourists arrived en masse. Unfortunately, most of the area was roped off, so we had to come back another day. There were still a few sculptures that were available for viewing, but it was pretty cold and we thought it better to head back home after browsing some nearby shops.

That day happened to be a holiday called Setsubun, and Kazu and his family came to the house to eat dinner and celebrate. This holiday basically celebrates the beginning of spring. One fun custom of the holiday is called “mamemaki,” where someone traditionally dresses up as a Japanese ogre or “oni” while people throw roasted soybeans at it and tell it to get out. Our celebration was a bit simpler, with Uncle Moto and Hime putting up pictures of oni on their windows while the kids threw pieces of candy at them. Super cute to hear Yuzuki yell, “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” (Ogres out! Luck in!), throwing candy at these things, while Haru pointed at the pictures and kept saying, “Oni! Oni!”

The next day was pretty low-key. We started with a trip to Shiroi Koibito Park. They make a popular cookie (shiroi koibito means “white lover”) and the park isn’t too far from Uncle Moto’s house. Unfortunately, they had stopped tours to renovate, so the gift shop area was pretty packed with people who’d suffered a similar fate. We still managed to get a soft serve in -10 °C weather and ate it inside a double-decker bus straight out of London, as one does. There’s also a show that happens at the top of (every?) hour featuring animatronic animals and workers singing and gyrating. It reminded me a bit of It’s a Small World. I’d probably go nuts if I worked there and had to hear the songs every day.

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After the factory, we headed back home to take things easy. To our surprise, the Super Bowl was showing on TV, so we watched the Japanese announcers talk excitedly about a sport hardly anyone cares about over here. Also there are no commercials during the game like, at all. Time outs are just an opportunity for the camera to pan around the stadium or show the team huddles. It was basically like being at a game, without the hot dogs. I heard this year’s commercials were terrible anyway so I’m not really convinced we missed anything.

This evening, after dinner, Hime showed us her goshuinchou. These are books you buy at temples and are stamped, with prayers written by monks. The handwriting ranges from somewhat hurried to absolutely gorgeous—I couldn’t stop looking at them. Seri would eventually buy one of her own, and I think I’ll have to as well. Japanese calligraphy is just intoxicating to me.

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The 5th was my last full day in Sapporo, while Seri would stick around for the rest of the week to do a bit more exploring. I wanted to get back home to not miss my Japanese class and get back into a more normal work pattern. We wanted to make the most of the day, so we headed out early to see the snow festival. The scale of some of these things never ceases to amaze me. There was a Star Wars sculpture with a snow X-wing you could stand in and get your photo taken. There was a waiting list, though, and we wouldn’t have enough time to come back for our time slot before dinner. Oh well. They also have athletes doing exhibitions (snowboarding and skiing) on a huge slope, but we didn’t catch them while they were doing their thing.

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One thing that’s always cool is an international sculpture competition that goes on throughout the week. Teams from around the world come to the festival and carve their sculptures on the spot. Presumably they’re judged at the end of the week, but I’ve never paid too much attention. It’s just cool seeing them with their various instruments, shaving snow into impossible shapes while we look on.

We had to be a bit mindful of time, because we had a reservation at 6pm at a nice sushi restaurant with Uncle Moto and Hime. They had been so nice to us the entire time, and it was the least we could do to treat them to a night out where they wouldn’t feel like they had to entertain. I really enjoyed the place, and it seemed as though they did, too. Mission accomplished.

I went to bed a bit early that night to make sure I wouldn’t be too groggy the next day. Seri and I would head to the train station in the late morning so I could board the early afternoon train from Sapporo back to Hakodate. Because I’d purchased a non-reserved seat, there were only 2 train cars that I could board. I’m glad I got there a bit on the early side to secure a seat. Things got pretty crowded as tourists boarded to continue their trips southwardly through Hokkaido, en route to Noboribetsu, Oshamanbe, and elsewhere. I quietly did some work on my laptop while a Chinese guy with a ridiculously oversized coat pressed against my side, seemingly unaware of my presence as he thumbed through his phone. I was relieved when he and his travel partners left about an hour before my destination, back home in Hakodate.

Oh and then I caught a cold for the next week. At least it didn’t get me during the trip!