We woke up early for Hatsuhinode, the viewing of the first sunrise of the year, up on Niseko Annupuri. No sun was to be seen. We returned for breakfast at the Hilton and then headed out for our first ski day of the trip. After, we headed to Hirafu for a very late lunch and % ΔRΔBICΔ before returning to Niseko Village.
Hatsuhinode
We woke up extremely early at the Hilton for 初日の出 Hatsuhinode, the viewing of the first sunrise of the year. At Niseko Village, this takes place at the gondola’s upper station on Niseko Annupuri, the mountain shared by the Niseko United ski resorts. This activity is obviously very weather dependent and is subject to cancellation. The weather didn’t look very good at all in the morning, however, it was not cancelled so we decided to go up to take a look.
The way Hatsuhinode event works here is that you simply buy a ticket from the ticket office in the morning when ticket sales open and then join the queue to go up. There is no ability to buy tickets in advance but it does not seem like they run out of tickets either. We went down to buy our tickets just before boarding started. The line wasn’t too long.
We didn’t have any particularly successful photographs from the gondola. The gondola is obviously always moving and it was dark. The light seen here is an extremely bright light that shines up from the gondola station. Modern image denoise does clean up the image quite a bit but it doesn’t stand up to any sort of close scrutiny here.
We made it to the top of the gondola at around 6:50am. Visibility was pretty limited. Sunset was at around 7:08am so it definitely did not look good!
We followed some other people as they walked uphill to the northeast. This slight slope connects Niseko Village with the neighboring Grand Hirafu. The chairlift that we saw from the top of the slope is at Grand Hirafu and ascends further up the mountain.
The weather never changed while we were up there. Visibility remained limited and it was snowing, though the weather wasn’t unpleasant with the proper clothing.
Soon, we followed everyone else as they returned to the gondola to head back down.
The gondola is of a design that we’ve never experienced before. Each gondola has two sections, each with a single bench seat in the middle. Each side sits two to three people, depending on the size of the passengers. The outer shell closes before leaving the station.
We were able to take some better photos on the way down as although we couldn’t see the sun, it was still significantly brigther.
Soon, we could see the Hilton come into view.
Crews were busy at work clearing away snow and preparing for the morning’s ski operations to begin.
Breakfast at the Hilton Niseko Village
We headed back into the Hilton for breakfast. As Diamond members of the Hilton Honors program, breakfast is complimentary here.
The breakfast was pretty good with a wide selection of items! There were two donburi options, one with salmon and the other with eel. These were probably our favorites out of everything that was available. There was also an omelette station and some typical western items such as tater tots, sausages, and bacon, though not the crispy bacon that we have in the US. There were also various pastry selections as well as a waffle / panini / wrap station. There were also some dimsum choices as well as some noodle and soup options as well as Japanese curry.
There was also cereal and, of course, Hokkaido milk!
Niseko Village Skiing
After breakfast, we went back up to to our room to rest a bit before heading out for our first ski day of the trip! When we were ready, we headed down to the ski valet to get our boots and skis.
As this is our first time skiing in more than three years due to my torn ACL during our last trip to Arapahoe Basin, we started off easy. One of the absolute easiest options from the Hilton is to ride the adjacent Community Chair and take one of the green runs back down. It was a bit too easy! We headed over from the top of the Community Chair to the Banzai Chair, which goes a bit higher up the mountain. Turning to the right from the Banzai Chair, we came across this big blue Niseko Village bear!
Looking up, we could see some intermediate terrain above.
The snow here was very different from what we’ve experienced before in the US. It was extremely light and dry, more so than out in Colorado. It was easy to ski, though felt very different as there was minimal resistance where it seemed like there should be more.
We caught a glimpse of part of Mount Yotei, a Fuji-like volcano to the east. Also visible from here near the big blue bear is the Hilton and Niseko-yo next to it.
We decided to try going higher up the mountain on the Mori-no Chair. This lift goes about half way up the mountain compared to the gondola.
The ride up on this slow lift takes awhile.
The terrain here is a bit confusing as the map does a poor job of illustrating the contours of the mountain. We started to head down the easiest way, via a green trail.
There is also intermediate and difficult terrain accessible from this lift.
There is only one easy way down. On the map, it appears as a trail that sort of snakes down the mountain. It turns out that it is very narrow with quick turns, making it a bit more difficult than it should be. There are also drop offs to the side, though it seems if you bust through you would simply end up on the intermediate Namara trail rather than sliding down a cliff or something like that! Overall, we found this easy trail rather unappealing due to its design.
A portion of switchback along the easy trail.
We were pretty tired when we returned to the Hilton! The weather while we were skiing was mostly very good and greatly improved compared to when we were up on the mountain for Hatsuhinode.
After getting our shoes and dropping off our boots and skis at the ski valet, we went back to our room to rest.
The weather soon got worse with heavy snow and greatly limited visibility.
A brief video of the snowfall. It was quite beautiful to watch from our room’s massive window!
But, it cleared up after a bit and we saw some blue sky again.
We even saw that the sun was shining through gaps in the clouds!
Hirafu
We decided to head over to Hirafu to check out the town and possibly have a late lunch.
On our way out, we could see quite a bit of a queue for the gondola below.
We took the Niseko Village shuttle bus from the Hilton over to the Hirafu Welcome Center, which is basically the central bus station for Hirafu. The bus stops at all the Niseko Village hotels which are part of the corporate entity that owns and operates Niseko Village.
It was snowing quite a bit when we arrived at Hirafu. The welcome center is at the edge of town at the base of the mountain, right by the Ace Gondola.
We walked to the southwest, away from the mountain, on the sidewalk.
We walked past this ice bar.
Hirafu is very different from Niseko Village and is much more like an actual town. There are many lodging facilities as well as many restaurants and shops.
We walked by this cow which depicts various birds and flowers. Presumably, they can be found in the area?
This small building had a winter owl mural.
We were rather surprised to see % ΔRΔBICΔ while we were on the shuttle bus. So, of course, we had to get some coffee from this location.
Overall, it was pretty similar to what we had in Tokyo. The inability to pick the beans is probably the biggest weakness of this shop and the one we visited in Tokyo compared to the one we visited in Seoul.
We were a bit undecided about where to get lunch. While there are many restaurants in Hirafu, many were closed as it was after the normal lunch time and before dinner. We decided to try Yuki no En, a shabu shabu restaurant in Grand Hirafu that turned out to be run by Chinese.
We avoided the shabu shabu as it was expensive. We ended up getting an A5 wagyu and eel box as well as an A5 wagyu sukiyaki.
Both were merely ok and not really worth the price paid considering we can get much better food in other places in Japan for less. Generally from browsing restaurant prices Niseko seems to be way too touristy to have any worthwhile cuisine that isn’t very overpriced. Thankfully the US Dollar is extremely strong compared to the Japanese Yen right now so the overpriced foods here are still cheaper than getting something comparable in the US.
After our disappointing meal, we continued walking down the street. We went into the Rhythm Summit shop where we saw this kaiten glove display!
Across the street, we saw a small fire department building. Of course, they have a mascot!
We started to make our way back to the welcome center to take the shuttle bus back to Niseko Village.
It was starting to get darker as it approached today’s sunset time, 4:14pm.
Grand Hirafu still looked to be pretty busy. They have night skiing here.
There is an actual welcome center building here. We didn’t go inside to take a look though.
We waited for awhile for the next bus, scheduled for 4:30pm.
There ended up being some traffic as we headed out of Hirafu.
Niseko-yo
After returning to the Hilton, we decided to walk over to Niseko-yo. It was snowing at a pretty good rate.
We walked around a bit, first to the Christmas tree. We also visited the Sapporo Drug Store here again.
We recorded a short video of the Christmas tree.
We didn’t really see many people at all here at Niseko-yo. It felt rather dead, particularly compared to Hirafu which was pretty busy.
The bright lights for night skiing illuminated the falling snow quite well.
We started to walk to the north along the western edge of Niseko-yo.
Like the big blue bear near the top of the Banzai Chair, there are other sculptures here at Niseko-yo. This white bird is a シマエナガ Shima-enaga, known formally as the Long-Tailed Tit.
Is this supposed to be a タヌキ Tanuki?
We started to head back to the Hilton.
The falling snow really shows up well when illuminated!
We returned to the Hilton.
We could see from our room that it continued to snow pretty hard.
A snack that we picked up, Avocado Cheese Doritos! Japan has many interesting variations of snacks that generally aren’t available in the US.