Niseko 2017

I have a love-hate relationship with direct flight to Narita by Delta. It's a 6.50am flight so I gotta wake up at 4.30am and the night before I packed my luggage till 1.30am. But the arrival time at Tokyo is just nice at 2pm, lotsa light and time to explore around when we waited for our next flight on Vanilla Air at 6pm to reach Chitose airport at 7.40pm.

We checked in at Sunroute at around 9pm after a bus ride to Susukino, the hotel was quite nice actually. After an izakaya dinner I was so tired from all the travelling and waiting and I didn't have enough sleep the night before so I crash sleep after supper.
It automatically came so unexpectedly because I was so tired and I wasn't feeling anything. 

The next morning we headed to Otaru to meet Yiting and Ed.

On the way to Otaru

Our official first seafood meal in Hokkaido in a market in Otaru

I booked Isezushi, 1 Michellin Star sushi in Otaru but I thought the meal at the market was more fresh and satisfying.

Letao! Otaru's most famour cheesecake shop. Mmmm Mmmmm.

European buildings. Otaru is quite beautiful but one day is enough.

Naruto Fried chicken for dinner

Then we headed to Niseko, where we stayed at Frying Pan while they went to their own accoms. The next day the snowboarding starts!

View from Hirafu slope

Supermarketing on the first night

We ate at Jirocho Izakaya on the second night, it was super awesome. Check out the wings gyoza. We also ordered some nice Oden but we finished it before I had the chance to take a photo.

Some sweet sour fish. Even Ed who doesn't eat fish thinks it's quite awesome.

Crab Porridge which is average but feels good to have in winter

Karage and skewers

Grilled scallops

Third day lunch at Milk Kobo! Omg so good. It's a vegetable buffet with one main. The vegetable were super sweet and delicious.

The award-winning and best yogurt drink in Japan, from Milk Kobo. We also had their cream puff which is out of the world.

That's Mt Yotei 

I liked Annupuri slope. It's long and wide and easy to navigate so I could play around.

Breakfast at Frying Pan

Finally I had Rakuichi, the famous restaurant in Niseko. We queued for 45mins while eating our Letao Cheesecake, before the shop opened for lunch. The soba was good but I had better soba in Nagano (Nagano is famous for their soba) but the tempura was really worth it. Hokkaido vegetable are so sweet and juicy and so ever flavourful, even as tempura

Back to the cold again after eating, I did night boarding and off-piste for the first time. So cold but fun with all the untouched snow powder.

Bye bye Niseko!

I have mixed feelings about Niseko.
The good:

• Snow powder is always amazing in Japan, same as Myoko
• The rentals are reasonable and delivers to your lodge
• The view from above is amazing
• The slopes are wide and not as challenging as it seems
• We could go off-piste
• Food is quite good
• Northern hotel onsen ;P

The bad:

• It's overcrowded with foreigners, not an authentic Japanese experience
• Long queue at gondolas
• Everything is quite far apart, need a car to travel around.
• Expensive accommodation during peak season
• Food and ski passes are more expensive
• Some lifts might not be open due to wind/snow conditions
• It's super super cold.

Well, Niseko is catered more for foreigners. I still prefer my Myoko and Nozawa in Nagano.