The Vagabond Skiers guide to Hokkaido

We’ve been out for quite some time now on our trip skiing around the world when I figured I should start writing about our experiences. Not only to let my friends and family know what I am experiencing, but also for everyone else out there who might be wondering how it is to be a cautious vagabond, travelling to ski while being… well, not too extreme.

So, let’s get down to the appetiser of this grand fest, the spice in the chili, the cherry on the ice cream: Hokkaido, and my attempt to summarise my experience by writing a guide: The guide of the nervous skier.

Skiing – la raison d’être

The terrain is mostly friendly with local steep sections. There are a lot of trees which scared me when I first saw them. It took me a couple of days to get over that fear of trees and three weeks later I was aiming for trees, knowing that they were a safe giveaway for untouched snow. When it comes to the snow, it felt like there was a never ending supply of fresh snow, with cold, soft, layers underneath. The snow could reset by itself over night just because it was so dry. If the snow was hard one afternoon, we could get up on the mountain the next day and be surprised to find the hard snow had turned into fluffy powder.

Even though the ski areas in Hokkaido get plenty of snow, the area is not very prone to avalanches. The quality of the snow is cold and dry and will seldom create layers in the snowpack. There are few areas where you ski underneath cliffs and steep loaded faces so the risk of being surprised by an avalanche from above is smaller than in Europe. What is important to know is that not all ski resorts will allow you to ski out of bounds, and if they do, it might be just during a certain period of the day. In Furano, out of bounds skiing is allowed whenever the gates are open. In Niseko, the gates close quite early in the day.

Flights

Yes, this is the easy bit. Any flight that will take your ski bags as additional luggage is fine, and I wold say most airlines do nowadays. We wanted to stay in Tokyo a couple of days on our way to and from Hokkaido to get a break from the long travel and also to shake some of that jet lag off on our way there. Not many flights will take you straight to Hokkaido anyway, so take two nights in the city and be amazed! Flights to Hokkaido from Tokyo can be booked directly on the websites of the airlines like JAL and Vanilla, but for our flight to Hokkaido we played the safe card and booked all the way to Asahikawa (one of the main airports in Hokkaido). You just have to make sure to use a travel site that will allow you to search with multiple stops. I was really nervous when flying to Japan if they would be fussy with our heavy luggage and huge ski bags so this was a great way of calming my nerves.

Flying back we booked directly with JAL from Sapporo (the larger Hokkaido airport) to Tokyo, and they were a bit concerned at check in that our bags were too heavy, but for some reason they let it pass when we explained we would be flying out of the country shortly. I thank the wonderful japanese helpfulness!

Getting around

Getting a bus in Japan is easy. There is always information to be found at the ticket counter or at the bus stop or at the hotel and the fare is easily paid in cash on the bus. If you are not told the price from the start, be assured there will be a screen in front of the bus counting and adding to your fare as the bus drives on. When you get off, you just pay what is posted on the screen, in cash of course.

When we landed at Asahikawa we just went to the bus ticked counter and purchased the ticket to our first destination (where it is, that is a secret we’re not sharing 😉 ). They have local buses going everywhere and the hotel had informed us of the name (rather, the location) of the bus stop. This is the only time we forgot to be attentive! You really have to know where you should get off and it is a good idea to check with google maps while on the bus. The driver did not speak much english so we couldn’t really understand where our stop was! We ended up getting off a kilometer too early, downhill!!! In the middle of bloody nowhere! With one huge bag and one huge ski bag each… It was late, I was tired, and absolutely in no mood for any bullsh*t. As soon as I saw a car I put on a huge smile and rased my hand with my thumb in the air. Lucky us! These four tremendously friendly Japanese in the car squeezed up, we managed to magically get our luggage into their tiny trunk and they drove us to our hotel with a lot of laughter and many selfies (from their and our part). I believe anyone would do it, I haven’t met a single Japanese not willing to help out.

Later, when going from Furano to Niseko, we took a ski bus (Hokkaido Resort Liner) that travels to the Sapporo airport where we got to hop on the next bus. Very comfortable! The tickets can be booked or purchased trough any hotel or resort customer service, just book well in advance and give the process a day, as this seemingly high tech country require you to provide all passport details and take several hours before they respond with a fax (!!!) to confirm your reservation. It made us smile!

Renting a car could be quite expensive, but from time to time we considered if it wouldn’t have been really nice to have one. We were lucky to meet two guys at our hotel in Furano who had a car who invited us to go touring with them on Mt Furano on the other side of the valley one day. For any touring in Hokkaido, you do need a car. All the mountains are separated from each other by large valleys so there is no real access to long tours from the ski resorts. Also, when in Niseko, we wanted to try the nearby resort Rusutsu, but getting there by bus from where we stayed took too long.

Sleeping

It is a good idea to make reservations a few months in advance. Not that all hotels get full, but we wanted to make sure we got a fairly cheep one as close to the lifts as possible. To find a place to stay we read the recommendations on powderhounds.com, checked booking.com for availabilities and (and this is important) studied where it was on google maps and the street view function.

I would recommend going for japanese-style rooms with the tatami on the floor and bedding that you roll out every night. The mattresses are actually surprisingly comfortable, and the greatest advantage is that, with the beds out of the way during the day, I had room to do some yoga every morning and every afternoon. That was a great treat for my back and legs after some long days skiing! Part of the experience is also to share the washrooms and the bath with the other guests. We quickly got into the habit of changing slippers when entering the washroom and were disgusted by some tourist going to the toilet barefoot! It seems a bit odd now, but we liked the japanese respect for the home and keeping it clean. The same goes for the communal baths at the hotels and the onsen (hot spring baths) we visited. You really want to respect that! Scrubbing and washing yourself thoroughly before entering the hot pool and sitting there quietly enjoying the sensation of the hot water on your tired muscles. The water in the baths is not changed very often, it is really like with natural hot springs, so the whole system depends on people being absolutely clean when entering the water.

Eating

We went all in on japanese food! Full japanese breakfast if available, rice balls for lunch once we had figured out which were edible, and restaurants or microwaved meals from the closest 7-11. The supermarket has a great choice of real fresh cooked food. We never had to worry about going hungry, we just had do be careful not to order something too weird.

I am normally a vegetarian, but that proved to be very difficult in Japan where every meal will have some fish or meet in it. I just had to give up while in Japan.

Weather and temperature

January should be the coldest month of the year but it never got too bad. It was probably never below -15C, but the wind could be fierce on the flat round mountain tops. I had to buy warmer mittens during the last week, and a face mask to cover my face from horizontal snow, but I hardly ever had to ski in my warmer fleece. I worried quite a lot about the temperature before leaving, and finally I decided to bring my hottest Sorel boots and giant down jacket. That was very lucky! There can be up to a foot of snow on the street sometimes so just be able to hop into very warm shoes, and take a walk at night in a very warm jacket was a great luxury.

What to pack

I will write a post when all our trips are over with my best tips on what to pack and not to pack for a long trip skiing, but specifically for skiing in Japan there are a few things I would recommend:

• • Short and wide skis for quick turns in deep snow and dense trees, with touring bindings. I have a pair of Armada Kufo 103mm wide. After a week we started packing our backcountry gear and skins every day. We found this hidden valley with plenty of untouched snow in Furano and went down it happily, until we realised following the tracks at the bottom led us away from the resort. When we finally emerged from the woods we had to walk for one hour trough town before returning to the ski resort. The next time we did the same run (which we absolutely had to! The snow was amazing!) we brought our skins and could easily skin back up into the resort in 20 minutes. Ever since then, the skins are always with us.
    

• • A balaclava and face mask to keep the snow smoke away from your neck and face. The snow was so incredibly light, it will get into every gap in your clothes.

• • High contrast lenses. We didn’t see the sun many times while skiing on Hokkaido.

• • A thermos. Mostly for keeping water hot at the hotel to be able to drink tasty japanese tea all evening.

• • A guide book to Japan. It is an amazing country, and it was fascinating to read about the areas we travelled too, the food, history and culture.

• • Cash. Almost everything has to be paid cash. We had just brought some Yen from Sweden hoping we could get the rest from an ATM at the airport, but that wasn’t as easy as I had thought. Some machines will not accept foreign cards and some have a limit on how much you can get in one go. Just bring all of it from home if you can, it will spare you some searching.

• Some “japanese for beginners” audio course. Excellent to listen to during flights and bus trips and we were always treated with large smiles when we did our attempts speaking japanese. We even had some real use for it when we had been dropped off in the middle of nowhere to tour in an abandoned ski resort. This was the start of the summer road trough the mountain pass, and it is closed in the winter, with snow towering high. A car drove up to us where we were standing getting ready to start walking. The window opened and a confused older man started speaking to us in japanese. Being able to say “I don’t speak japanese” at that point was very satisfying 🙂 And yes, we did have a map of the area where we could show him that he had to turn back to get to town.

When it comes to packing, one thing that we never used but wished we had is to ship luggage within Japan with the postal service. This takes a couple of days, but for us it would have been so nice to be able to leave our large bags at our last hotel on Hokkaido, and pick them up a few days later at the airport when flying out of the country. This is very common for the Japanese, and there are a number of companies providing this service for less than the cost of an additional bag on the domestic flight. Check with your hotel, they can surely help you!

Did I cover everything?

If you have been in Japan and have anything to add, or if you have any questions, just let me know in the comments 😀