Japan Day 10 - XX Snow Snow Snow

Monday, 8 January 2024

I haven't blogged much since we've been here as ski days tend to be fairly repetitive and not very exciting to read about.  They have certainly been fun to do though - we've had every type of weather - cloudy, blowy, blizzardy and beautiful sunshine and the snow has been everything from soft to icy to what it is now which is very very powdery.  

Everyone apart from Jon has had a cold which has taken each of us out for varying amounts of time - Jett was ok after half a day in bed, I needed 2ish days to be back on the slopes (one of them was a rest day anyway), and Zali is still recovering after a full day off but managed to get out again today for a short night ski. We tried to go out earlier in the day but due to the huge dump of snow in the last 24 hours most of the lifts were closed while the slopes were checked for avalanche risks and brought under control.  This forced the queues for the very short and slow available lifts to be so huge - this is a snapshot from the local webcam at the exact point at which we decided a 20 minute wait wasn't worth the 5 minute downhill run and started to head home to wait for the gondola to open - which it never did:

We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon relaxing at home and then browsing the shops. The Happy Birthday balloons are for Zali's birthday back on New Years Day, the day we arrived - we duck under them whenever we need to get to the kitchen.

I understand that Niseko is the most western of the Japanese ski resorts - at least half the ski-ers are Australian, probably more.  Despite it being very new with just a few older buildings it's quite pretty - especially when covered in snow - I finally got some time to take some photos as we walked around the streets this afternoon:

Niseko has lots of food trucks - something I've never seen before in a ski resort.  The prices are reasonably high for Japan but still a lot cheaper than they would be in equivalent ski areas in Australia. I think the heavy dump of snow made operating challenging for them today though - they had a lot of work to do to dig them out before they opened this evening:

Being Japan there is no shortage of vending machines - including this one which vends t-shirts, socks, and beanies:

Tomorrow we're planning to get out early so we can hopefully get up the mountain ahead of the crowds and enjoy some fluffy powdery snow.  It's snowing again now - and has been for most of the day. In fact in all my time in Norway I never saw snow come down in the volume it has over the last day or so (hence the lift trouble) - fingers crossed everything is open tomorrow for our 2nd last day.