All posts tagged: niseko

On the road again – Fodor’s Travel Essential Japan

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Since 2010, I’ve been one of the updaters for Japan guidebooks by Fodor’s Travel. I started with just the Okinawa chapter, but now I also update chapters covering Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Western Honshu. It might seems strange to have a writer who usually lives in sunny Okinawa update the Hokkaido chapter but… I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Before I moved to Okinawa I lived for a couple of years in Hokkaido. And before I lived in Hokkaido I’d had the chance to do a fair bit of snowboarding mainly in Lake Louise (Alberta) and Red Mountain (British Columbia). International tourism is booming in Japan, and Hokkaido has become an extremely popular winter destination with great resorts and huge amounts of snow. So last week I flew up to Sapporo to check on the accommodation, restaurant and activity options for overseas visitors. I then visited the ski areas of Kiroro, Niseko, and Rusutsu before traveling to …

The Best of Hokkaido

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Hokkaido is the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands, and its final frontier. It has a quarter of the country’s landmass, but only one twentieth of its population. Large sections of the island are national parks where foxes, deer and brown bears outnumber people. Visitors come during winter to ski, and during summer to camp, hike and soak in hot spring pools. Hokkaido provides an escape from modern Japan to an almost primordial time. Amidst volcanoes, geysers and ice flows visitors can experience the ancient, wild side of Japan. Winter Attractions Skiing and Snowboarding Hokkaido’s winter weather is strongly influenced by the cold winds blowing in from Siberia. In Sapporo, the temperature regularly drops to -5°C, and further east, away from the ameliorating affects of the ocean, it gets as low as -30°C. The winters bring a lot of snow, and the big dumps of fluffy powder make the island’s ski resorts the best in Japan. Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, but until recently, Hokkaido’s excellent skiing and boarding was not well known outside …