Well, time for another trip report, only the third one for the year...... hopefully that's not too many, I'm not trying to take over the TR section, but when Epic closed down, I never got that chance to finish the Japan write up which I had only just gotten started. So, hopefully it's alright to finish that thread here......
This season was a great time. I got to spend a month in Hokkaido and really got to explore. I definitely felt more at home after 2016, I got to spend more time in some of the resorts I had enjoyed the previous winter and I found some new gems. The snow for Japan standards, was sub-par, but a sub-par season in Japan is still darn good.......
One of the guests enjoying the sub-par snow in Hokkaido...... pic: Grant Nakamura
I decided against going back to Niseko, it was a tough decision, but I decided to streamline the trips and focus more on the Furano and Otaru areas. There is no doubt Niseko has some great skiing; it's the biggest resort in Hokkaido, gets great snow and has some good terrain, but it's just so busy. It's a huge place and if you know it well, then I'm sure you can find plenty of untouched lines, but there's just so much pressure to find the freshies that you don't have at other resorts. It's also very expensive (again compared to other resorts in Hokkaido) and is a little too Westernized for my liking..... so, I pulled the plug. My biggest regret was potentially missing out on Rusutsu, that place is awesome, I had some great times there in 2016. In my opinion, it has the best fall-line tree skiing in that area (it's also getting popular though).
This time I had 10 or so days to go exploring for myself before the guests arrived, so I could further explore the resorts I had visited in 2016 and look at some new options as well. This was a rare opportunity. Let's get into it then. I'll give the disclaimer that I have the start of the trip saved from Epic and I wrote that with a lot of detail. The rest of the trip, I only wrote notes, so I will add a little detail, when I re-write (especially for first time visits to new places, of which there were a few), but I think I'll concentrate more on photos and video. So, let's start the adventure (again!)......
Travel Day
I took the Denver to Tokyo direct flight with United. The arriving aircraft from Houston was late arriving so that meant that I had a short time frame to get to the flight to Sapporo. I made it with about 5 minutes to spare. My bags turned up at the other side too, so I arrived in Sapporo with all my gear and on time by about 8pm. By the time I had checked in and put my bags in the room, it was 9pm. It turns out all the restaurants shut down at 9pm and as I walked around trying to find somewhere to eat, everything was closed. Whoops! During my wondering, I also realized that Chitose Airport is pretty huge. I hadn’t been to the international terminal before and there are tons of shops and a massive amount of restaurants in that part. Last year I only skimmed the surface apparently. Good to know for the future.
I was pretty much a zombie by this stage, so headed to bed and got my head down for a solid 8 hours. I was up early and had breakfast. Then I had to head to the Toyota Rent a Car place to pick up our van. I was meeting one of our new guides and her friend (a photographer) at the rental car place. I had my brand new International Drivers Permit (IDP) with me and Cynthia had her old one (still in date) that she had used in Chile over the summer. Hers was a little worse for wear and when the agent looked at both of our IDP’s, she started to question if Cynthia’s was still valid. Unfortunately the person who issued the permit had written over the date in black marker and the agent thought it was an old expired permit that had the date forged on it.
They wouldn’t believe that the permit was still new and we asked for the police to come and verify it for us, but they also wouldn’t agree on if it was ok for Toyota to accept it. So they wouldn’t let Cynthia sign as one of the drivers. Now we are trying to get her a new IDP sent out from the States and this has added an extra layer of complexity in regards to renting vehicles. The IDP is basically a translation of your driver’s license into multiple foreign languages and it needs to be accompanied by your real driver’s license at all times. Anyone can obtain one. Cynthia had already rented another vehicle with another company (she came to Japan early) and they had no trouble with her IDP, but Toyota seemed to be less flexible with the situation. So, to anyone reading this that is trying to rent a car in Japan with an older looking IDP, make sure you have a new one that has “consistent penmanship” on it! They take the IDP’s very seriously in this country. Lesson learned! I’m the only driver until we get this sorted out.
I completed the paperwork and signed for the van so then off we went. The next mission was to try and find some 2-way radios. I really like to have radios for in-group communication, especially for tree skiing with larger groups of people. It’s very easy to get split up and if you have radios, then that’s not a big problem. I always ski with them with our groups in India and will be using them in Chile. In the US it’s pretty easy; you can get decent Motorola units pretty cheap and they do a good job. Unfortunately you can’t use those same radios in Japan officially; the Western units operate on the same frequencies as the emergency services and they are illegal for use by civilians therefore. You have to buy special Japanese units that have the correct Japanese compliance symbol on them. The problem is they are not that easy to find, especially
In large enough quantities that I need, in the electronics stores and as it turns out; they are much more expensive in Japan. We had to take a trip into Sapporo to find some and they did not look the best. I paid nearly $45 USD per unit and so far, they have not been that impressive in their use. There are some decent looking Kenwood units for about $65 and in hindsight I should have gone for those as the “Firstcom S20” units might be a bit crap. We’ll see…… That added another 3 hours to the proceeding and we didn’t get out of Sapporo until after 6pm. It’s a pretty easy drive though once you get out of the city and off the freeway; the country roads (even in the dark) are quiet and easy going. We made it to Furano by about 8pm and went straight to the Furano Doxon brewery for a bite to eat. We had some edamame and I had the duck (all the meals were good) and we headed to the hotel.
We are staying for 4 nights at the New Furano Prince hotel, a big (400 plus rooms) ski in ski out property located at the bottom of the Furano ropeway in the Furano zone. It’s an impressive place, with an indoor and outdoor onsen (haven’t been to that yet), a couple of different restaurants and bars, a craft shopping area and is most importantly, ski in ski out. We got in around 9pm and took it easy. We had a big day planned furthering our knowledge of the Furano ski area the next day.
- Matt
This season was a great time. I got to spend a month in Hokkaido and really got to explore. I definitely felt more at home after 2016, I got to spend more time in some of the resorts I had enjoyed the previous winter and I found some new gems. The snow for Japan standards, was sub-par, but a sub-par season in Japan is still darn good.......
One of the guests enjoying the sub-par snow in Hokkaido...... pic: Grant Nakamura
I decided against going back to Niseko, it was a tough decision, but I decided to streamline the trips and focus more on the Furano and Otaru areas. There is no doubt Niseko has some great skiing; it's the biggest resort in Hokkaido, gets great snow and has some good terrain, but it's just so busy. It's a huge place and if you know it well, then I'm sure you can find plenty of untouched lines, but there's just so much pressure to find the freshies that you don't have at other resorts. It's also very expensive (again compared to other resorts in Hokkaido) and is a little too Westernized for my liking..... so, I pulled the plug. My biggest regret was potentially missing out on Rusutsu, that place is awesome, I had some great times there in 2016. In my opinion, it has the best fall-line tree skiing in that area (it's also getting popular though).
This time I had 10 or so days to go exploring for myself before the guests arrived, so I could further explore the resorts I had visited in 2016 and look at some new options as well. This was a rare opportunity. Let's get into it then. I'll give the disclaimer that I have the start of the trip saved from Epic and I wrote that with a lot of detail. The rest of the trip, I only wrote notes, so I will add a little detail, when I re-write (especially for first time visits to new places, of which there were a few), but I think I'll concentrate more on photos and video. So, let's start the adventure (again!)......
Travel Day
I took the Denver to Tokyo direct flight with United. The arriving aircraft from Houston was late arriving so that meant that I had a short time frame to get to the flight to Sapporo. I made it with about 5 minutes to spare. My bags turned up at the other side too, so I arrived in Sapporo with all my gear and on time by about 8pm. By the time I had checked in and put my bags in the room, it was 9pm. It turns out all the restaurants shut down at 9pm and as I walked around trying to find somewhere to eat, everything was closed. Whoops! During my wondering, I also realized that Chitose Airport is pretty huge. I hadn’t been to the international terminal before and there are tons of shops and a massive amount of restaurants in that part. Last year I only skimmed the surface apparently. Good to know for the future.
I was pretty much a zombie by this stage, so headed to bed and got my head down for a solid 8 hours. I was up early and had breakfast. Then I had to head to the Toyota Rent a Car place to pick up our van. I was meeting one of our new guides and her friend (a photographer) at the rental car place. I had my brand new International Drivers Permit (IDP) with me and Cynthia had her old one (still in date) that she had used in Chile over the summer. Hers was a little worse for wear and when the agent looked at both of our IDP’s, she started to question if Cynthia’s was still valid. Unfortunately the person who issued the permit had written over the date in black marker and the agent thought it was an old expired permit that had the date forged on it.
They wouldn’t believe that the permit was still new and we asked for the police to come and verify it for us, but they also wouldn’t agree on if it was ok for Toyota to accept it. So they wouldn’t let Cynthia sign as one of the drivers. Now we are trying to get her a new IDP sent out from the States and this has added an extra layer of complexity in regards to renting vehicles. The IDP is basically a translation of your driver’s license into multiple foreign languages and it needs to be accompanied by your real driver’s license at all times. Anyone can obtain one. Cynthia had already rented another vehicle with another company (she came to Japan early) and they had no trouble with her IDP, but Toyota seemed to be less flexible with the situation. So, to anyone reading this that is trying to rent a car in Japan with an older looking IDP, make sure you have a new one that has “consistent penmanship” on it! They take the IDP’s very seriously in this country. Lesson learned! I’m the only driver until we get this sorted out.
I completed the paperwork and signed for the van so then off we went. The next mission was to try and find some 2-way radios. I really like to have radios for in-group communication, especially for tree skiing with larger groups of people. It’s very easy to get split up and if you have radios, then that’s not a big problem. I always ski with them with our groups in India and will be using them in Chile. In the US it’s pretty easy; you can get decent Motorola units pretty cheap and they do a good job. Unfortunately you can’t use those same radios in Japan officially; the Western units operate on the same frequencies as the emergency services and they are illegal for use by civilians therefore. You have to buy special Japanese units that have the correct Japanese compliance symbol on them. The problem is they are not that easy to find, especially
In large enough quantities that I need, in the electronics stores and as it turns out; they are much more expensive in Japan. We had to take a trip into Sapporo to find some and they did not look the best. I paid nearly $45 USD per unit and so far, they have not been that impressive in their use. There are some decent looking Kenwood units for about $65 and in hindsight I should have gone for those as the “Firstcom S20” units might be a bit crap. We’ll see…… That added another 3 hours to the proceeding and we didn’t get out of Sapporo until after 6pm. It’s a pretty easy drive though once you get out of the city and off the freeway; the country roads (even in the dark) are quiet and easy going. We made it to Furano by about 8pm and went straight to the Furano Doxon brewery for a bite to eat. We had some edamame and I had the duck (all the meals were good) and we headed to the hotel.
We are staying for 4 nights at the New Furano Prince hotel, a big (400 plus rooms) ski in ski out property located at the bottom of the Furano ropeway in the Furano zone. It’s an impressive place, with an indoor and outdoor onsen (haven’t been to that yet), a couple of different restaurants and bars, a craft shopping area and is most importantly, ski in ski out. We got in around 9pm and took it easy. We had a big day planned furthering our knowledge of the Furano ski area the next day.
- Matt