Niseko Trip Report - 19Feb to 02Mar 2009

[ssar 0]

Niseko Trip Report - 19Feb to 02Mar 2009

 

 

5 Guys, first time to Japan etc.

 

 

Itinerary:

 

Booked trip through: Niseko Powder Holidays, via a Sydney agent.

 

Paid for our Return Airfares, 11 nights Accommodation and 9 out of 10 day All Mountain Niseko ski pass several months prior to the trip when the AUD/JPY exchange rate was quite good for the AUD (THANKFULLY).

 

Snagged our pocket / spending cash only a few weeks prior to going, when the AUD/JPY exchange rate was very poor for the AUD (SUCKED).

 

The (JAL) flights were ok, though those seats in cattle class (economy) in those 747-400 planes sure are cramped – I would have hated it if I was a bit bigger.

And the flight attendants seemed a little too keen to restrict some of our (alcohol) drinking (none of us really hit it very hard either).

 

On the way home (only) our schedule found us flying domestic from Chitose to Tokyo Haneda, then having to fork out (a steep) 3000 Yen each for the bus to Narita for our international flight out of there around 5 hours later – this kinda sucked, and all details about this weren’t made clear to us prior.

 

 

Accommodation:

 

Asuka Apartments in Niseko Hirafu suck.

 

Here’s a report on that alone, which I prepared earlier:

 

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Review of Asuka:

 

We were booked into Asuka #7 for 11 nights during Thur 19 Feb to Mon 02 Mar 2009.

 

We were originally 4 guys, then a 5th was added, and advised, and the Asuka managers responded that a Futon would be provided for the 5th guy.

 

Upon arrival, we were all shocked at the very small size of virtually everything in it.

 

To the manager's credit, we were greeted and orientated into the place by a helpful english-speaking Japanese guy, who accepted our concerns and promptly phoned the manager to try and help us. This guy to greet us was a great idea, something I think should be expected, but never actually expect - credit to them for that.

 

He promptly got a hold of a 2nd futon to get us by, until they could transfer us to the bigger Yukon apartments nearby, which was ok, even if they couldn't offer that transfer for another 4 days unfortunately.

 

Asuka #7 is not even big enough for 4 single adults, let alone 5.

 

It had 1 double bed in 1 smallish bedroom - that double bed seemed to be very small for a double, in which we could only sleep 1 of us.

 

That left 2 of us in the other bedroom with a single bed each, and the last 2 of us on a portable futon + single mattress set each in the main lounge room - made for a very cramped lounge room!

 

The TV was very small, as was the kitchen and, in fact, all areas were small except the shower which seemed ok.

The furniture was cheap and mostly uncomfortable.

 

One website detailing this accom. Quotes: “Quite simply the best priced Niseko accommodation in Hirafu village.†– That’s just plain wrong.

 

I gauge the overall value for money for our group for Asuka to be extremely poor.

I will never stay there again, and would never recommend it.

 

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Yukon #3 was better, though still not very roomy.

 

Both places were located just close enough to the Inski corner to make it within walking distance in full ski gear / just far enough from the ski lifts to make it an annoying walk in full ski gear (depending on how you wanna look at it).

I much preferred getting the bus up – a shuttle bus stop was handy nearby.

 

Our overall Accommodation experience this trip was poor value for money, for mine.

 

 

Snowriding & The Niseko Mountain:

 

 

Niseko is great.

All the staff seemed great, happy & very polite.

 

The Niseko Powder Holidays crew there were all quite friendly, helpful and accommodating, and to their credit made our lift passes available to us around 8:15am the first day – in time for us to catch the first lift nearby if we wished.

 

The ticketing system is fantastic.

The lifts system is pretty good.

 

Taking into account the entire All Mountain areas (Niseko Annapuri, Village, Hirafu & Hanazono), the resort is pretty darn good, a fair bit bigger than Thredbo, and offers quite a range of runs & terrain especially off-piste.

 

With a fairly consistent temperature range of around -4 Deg C to -10 Deg C, the snow quality remained mostly light and dry.

This makes for some weird hard-packed sections down most of the groomed runs in the latter half of the day, but of course means the quality of the off-piste powder snow is retained far longer & better than in Australia.

We spent most of the time & had the best runs off-piste - that’s pretty much what Niseko is all about anyway.

 

Having said that, I also hit the best groomed runs I ever have there, during the first 2 hours of a certain day when we got up there for 1st lifts – absolutely perfect groomed runs - never seen that before.

 

During the day or 2 prior to our arrival & 1st day or 2 there, much of the All Mountain area was closed due to wind & blizzards – our 1st day snowriding (Fri 20 Feb) found us restricted to the Hirafu mid & lower areas only.

Mountain access to Annapuri, the Village & Hanazono was closed, and I believe most of these areas were closed fully anyway, as were all the upper peak lifts (Jumbo Pair Lift #4, Wonderland Chair, Ace Pair Lift #4 & King Lift #4).

 

We had a good day anyway, were excited about it all being new to it all etc., had a good time and hit the Irish pub for several extremely expensive but great-tasting draught guinesses mightily thereafter.

 

 

The morning of Mon 23 Feb was a wonderful “bluebird†clear, cold & sunny morning, where I skied some of the best stuff I ever have, around the Hanazono Hooded Quad Lift #3, down the Yotei Sunset run & off-piste adjacent, out the G5 gate and through the bowl/ridge near there, and down though Blueberries & around the Legend of Shinya run area.

 

 

Hit some pockets of waist-deep extremely light & dry powder, flowing all about us wonderfully as we floated through it in some sections.

This was my 3rd day skiing at Niseko – and what a blast!

 

 

(I actually messed up the dates on the few of my edited photos – switched Sat 21 Feb with Mon 23 Feb a few times, shrug)

 

Over our remaining stay it snowed on and off at some stage during most days & nights, intermixed with a few sunny breaks as well – made for some pretty scenic and sweet conditions!

It also remained fairly cold, averaging around -5 to -8 degrees C. Only once did it warm up and approach 0 degrees, but that didn’t last long and we hit a few nice periods of around -10 too.

 

We found the Annapuri back bowls and glades out the G1 gate to offer some kickass snow and runs as well – doing several different lines and routes down through there repeatedly over a few great days.

We hit a few real nice light dry pockets of knee and thigh-deep powder, and some days the wind kept topping it up nicely as well.

Even managed to avoid most of the trees in there.

 

Only once did the walk up the ridge out through the Annapuri G2 gate, where we traversed real wide and then rode down along the next ridge – that was very nice, very scenic, but the snow wasn’t quite as good as it had been elsewhere prior.

 

Never did the long hikes further up out that gate or up out the Hirafu G3 one either – looked like a pretty long & tiring walks.

 

The Hirafu G5 gate looked interesting, tho I never noticed it open until late on our last day – wish I had taken more notice as a traverse out through that looked like it opened up a nice big bowl into the sweet runs back to the Hanazono Hooded Quad Lift #3 etc.

 

Also found some interesting stuff down skiier’s left from the top of Swinging Monkey lift – through some trees and into a big ravine, then through more trees/gully onto the Holiday run.

 

 

Similarly, around the Hirafu Gondola area, we had some real sweet runs around the Miharashi run, through the trees either side of it, as well as down around the Konayuki run.

 

In the Village area we caught the ropetow with the sign: “Niseko Best Powder†at it quite a few times, accessing Superstition, down through Misohiru and Yard Sale areas – whilst it was very good during the first couple of days we did it, much of that area’s snow quality dropped markedly later in our trip.

 

In general we rode the Gondolas where possible, as they clearly offered the best methods to get up high quicker.

Those single parrot chairs were pretty wild (Wonderland Chair, King Lift #4) – no safety chain and a small backrest – pretty intense when the wind picked up!

 

Overall, we struck excellent timing with our trip – around 1 week prior they had quite warm temps and heavy rain then boilerplate ice all over the mountain, which I hear was real nasty. And since we have left Niseko has also experienced some warmer conditions, so we are really glad we were lucky during most of our stay.

 

Sure, it wasn’t great snow conditions the whole time, in fact we did find some quite dodgy quality snow here and there.

But overall we struck pretty good snow & weather conditions, including some absolutely fantastic times.

 

I only did a few hours night skiing in total myself, and found it quite interesting with my dark (and somewhat scratched) goggles.

They have very well set up facilities and it was fun though!

 

 

Eating on the Mountain:

 

Our fav sports turned out to be Boyo-so (which we nick-named “Hobbitonâ€) under the Hirafu Gondola, and Nook near the base of Annapuri.

Some of the noodles at both places were real nice, and Boyo-so was real rustic and quaint – love those jam dumpling thingies, and the kitchen & staff there were pretty old-school & rustic, was interesting to check them out.

The crab pizza at Nook is over-rated & over-priced, but some of the other stuff was pretty good.

 

 

 

I also ate at the Paradise Hut once on Annapuri – was also rustic and quaint, but there was no need, nor temptation to ever go there again.

 

The Lookout Café near the bottom of the Wonderland chair was pretty good – the décor was a little bit sterile and plain, but the service was good and the soup with unlimited extra bread was great. Some of the other food there looked tempting too, but never had time to go again.

 

Had a drink only at some bar in the Niseko Hilton – the restaurants, sushi one etc. there looked very slick and probably expensive.

 

 

Had a couple of lunches at the King Bell Hut – was pretty good. The kitchen and cooking equipment there was very impressive – appeared very clean, well-organized, looked good. Both meals I had there were real nice.

 

Regretfully I never ate anything more than a hot chocolate & muffin at Hanazono 308 – I really wanted to try their crab ramen, and some other things on their menu, but our snowriding paths and others I was with/meeting each day just meant we ended up elsewhere during each lunch.

That 308 place certainly looked the part – though each and every one of their 30 or so flat panel tvs were showing the same thing, it would have been good to see some variety including some live weather conditions or info perhaps!

 

 

Eating in Niseko Grand Hirafu town:

 

There were heaps of places I wanted to try but missed out on.

We enjoyed:

- Home delivery hamburgers from The Brick once – very nice,

- A little café kinda opposite the Safety Info Centre on the corner between Food Market & Australia House on the Resort Map – both upstairs & downstairs though we preferred upstairs as downstairs permitted smoking inside,

- Downtown café had some of the best Hot Chocolates I have ever had, and 2 computer terminals for free internet access for customers who ordered something – they also had Coopers Sparkling & Pale Ale beers for a reasonable price,

- A-Bu-Cha on the corner at the traffic lights was good,

- Senchou 2 was ok but way too warm inside,

- Dragon was pretty good, nice & dark inside and good décor, food was nice,

- Fujizushi was pretty good too, went there on our last night and enjoyed it, though found sitting on the floor mats a bit uncomfortable.

 

Unfortunately never tried Rin, Yummy’s, Senchou or a couple of others I had my eye on.

 

 

(continued..)

[ssar 0]

General:

 

Based on a rounding-down calculation of AUD$1 = 50 Yen (we actually bought most of our currency at 58 Yen), 99.9% of everything I saw was expensive.

Some of it very expensive.

We expected and knew that buying drinks at bars / restaurants etc. was going to be pricey, but some of them were just over the top.

There was very little I saw worth buying that represented very good value, for mine.

 

The best value item of all was our lift pass – 9 out of 10 day all mountain pass which we bought when the AUD was strong against the JPY and worked out to around AUD$45 per day.

 

Prices have been heavily affected by not only the AUD weakening heavily against the JPY over the past several months, but also I hear by some significant real increases in retail prices for many goods & services in Niseko.

 

There was a distinct lack of weather conditions & forecast information available unless you had internet access or could possibly speak / read Japanese and went looking for it.

 

These websites proved real useful for Niseko snow conditions:

 

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/daily/niseko-now.php

 

Sure there were those Avalanche Info sheets (in both Japanese & English) posted daily at several locations, but a daily weather & snow forecast chart along with it would have been great to see.

 

The shuttle buses were cool – the medium-sized ones around Hirafu anyway, though the general Hirafu Shuttle should start at 8:00am instead of 8:30am.

Thankfully the Hanazono Shuttle starts prior to 8:00am and I reaped significant first tracks / no other riders’ on the hill benefits for the first couple of hours on a few days by catching that puppy – glad I did!

The staff on all the shuttle buses were very friendly & courteous – good on ‘em.

Having riding equipment racks on the rear of every bus would help, as carrying them onto some of them proved pretty testing for some folks.

 

My mates caught one of the larger shuttle buses from the bottom of Annapuri back to Hirafu one arvo when much of the upper mountains were closed due to strengthening winds kinda stranding them there – I don’t know why but they all said that trip sucked.

 

The 5:00pm to 11:00pm Kutchan Night Go Bus was fantastic value and is a great idea – at only 100 Yen for a ticket that lasted months, it is something I used twice whilst there.

For those thinking about using such to go shopping in Kutchan some evening(s), be sure to check out the big Co-Op shop near the train station – it was the best & most interesting grocery type shop I visited, and also had a big “Best ‘N Less†type section with some cheap clothes etc.

 

 

(At least one of) the ATM(s) in Kutchan that accepted overseas cards was pretty easy to find, as was the Information Centre which also provided free internet access too.

 

 

Re: Internet Access in Niseko – this was easier to come across than I had expected.

I have already mentioned the free customer access at the Downtown Café, there was 1 terminal similarly for customers in a little café in a building between Fujizushi & Food Market buildings, though the keyboards with several changes to our western ones and lots of asian language options proved testing to type promptly.

 

Hot Shots Photography near the bottom of the Ace Family Pair lift also offer nice food at their café and several internet access terminals for good value.

 

 

Visiting Niseko Again In Future?

 

I’d really like to one year (won’t be for a while at least though), after orientating ourselves with much of the mountain.

 

I would look at better accommodation, around 12 nights in total permitting a possible maximum 11 snowriding days, with, say, a 7-day Niseko All Mountain Ski Pass.

Then factor in 2 lay-days, 1 day to Rusutsu, and 1 day to Moiwa (or whatever it is nearby), both of which I have heard good things about when the snow is good.

 

 

I’d also shop early at Kutchan and stock up on beers, groceries etc.

 

The prices of most booze in the supermarkets was pretty good value, though the range of spirits duty free (at airports) simply outclasses what’s generally available in town shops (e.g. Jack Daniel’s Silver Select, 18 Year Old Glenmorangie etc.) if yer keen on that type of stuff.

 

 

I’ll be monitoring the AUD/JPY exchange rate mightily when even thinking about another Japan trip in future.

Maybe one day..

 

 

Easing out of the white room,

S.

 

[ssar 0]

Ahh, yes. This is better in the "Snow Trip Reports" section of these forums, thanks for moving it.

[muikabochi 208]

Nice report!

[Ezorisu 0]

Nice! Beats March 8 and 9 when I was there by a long shot!

[gurgle 0]

Great report!

 

Are you allowed to say how much $ the accomodation was, or is that bad form here ?

 

Sorry but where I live "how much $ was..." generally creeps into every conversation....

[Hotaka Scott 0]

Looks like it was a good one

 

Thanks for sharing.

[ssar 0]

(from another forum)

 

Originally Posted By: ssar

Originally Posted By: Go Native

you can definitely access some great slopes from G5. If fact you can ski all the down to the base of Hanazono (all off piste) rather than just to the bottom of the Hano #3 lift.

 

I eyed that off closely, and saw what looked like a few tracks down there one day, but the terrain honestly looked like it fell away significantly from the Hanazono resort boundary area all the way down.

Interesting, thanks.

 

Actually, thinking further on that I 'reckon it may have been posssible to head out there and then, if you miss / are too far to skiier's left of the Hanazono Base / 308, you could just pop out onto that road that accesses it, then skate along it back to 308 (provided it's covered enough with snow, which it was most of the time I saw it).

Never even considered this at the time.

[ssar 0]

Originally Posted By: gurgle

Great report!

Are you allowed to say how much $ the accomodation was, or is that bad form here ?

Sorry but where I live "how much $ was..." generally creeps into every conversation....

I honestly don't know.
Our component details of our overall cost back then has been lost / old emails deleted.
I actually browsed all my files and emails for it to check the breakdown out myself yesterday, shrug, no dice.
It was relatively cheap apparently.

[thursday 1]

packages don't give you a break down of each item. They say what is included;

 

x nights accomodation at basic lodging painted as luxury, big breakfast and crap dinners included.

x days ski pass

return transfers to airport via luxury coach

 

for the fantastic low price of 199,000 Yen per person.

 

or something like that