| Ski Japanese Volcanoes |
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Skiing in every direction at Furano ski resort
Here, too, blame the location. Hokkaido sits at the confluence of two major volcanic belts, and the tectonic heartburn fires more than 240 natural hot springs, Japan’s largest concentration. Samurai warriors used to soak in these onsens after battle, but these days, luxurious new spas with cedar-plank pools and granite floors have sprung up near the slopes. There are more traditional inns called ryokans, as well, with tatami floors, sunken cedar tables, and rice-paper doors. The ski experience hasn’t always equaled the setting. “For years, ski hills here only occupied themselves with running the lifts,” says Dan Welk, a Hilton executive charged with bringing new life to Niseko, a collection of popular but tired resorts on Hokkaido. “Hotels were just OK. The food was brown and looked like it belonged in a garbage can. Clearly we see a huge potential for improvement here.” So do plenty of others. Japan is one of the few temperate areas in all of Asia with the infrastructure to offer a superb alpine vacation. Wealthy executives from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are flocking here. Multinationals like Citigroup, Hilton, and Grove are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate drab hotels, spruce up onsens, cut new golf courses, and design vacation homes. Condos overlooking slopes and springs sell for upwards of $1 million. As a result, the Japanese are falling in love with the sport again. Today the country has 765 ski areas, which is roughly twice as many per capita as in the U.S. A few days before Nori and I explore Daisetsuzan National Park, I head for Niseko, rolling past asparagus fields and dairy farms, the snowbanks growing larger the closer we get. Niseko consists of five resorts wrapped around a volcanic uplift, and dozens of traditional onsens percolate throughout the valley. It’s all linked by the Shiribetsugawa River, home to the itou, a fish that grows to be three feet long. Snow sags in front of homes, and a bamboo, called sasa, bursts through the white landscape in tufts of green. The sasa sometimes triggers huge avalanches. “The ski patrol here keeps asking me for pandas to graze the slopes in summer,” jokes Luke Hurford, the area’s 29-year-old general manager. Mount Yotei, a 6,227-foot volcano, looms overhead, enshrouded in shreds of gauzy clouds. The whole area has a Pacific Northwest feel, which is no surprise given that Niseko sits at about the same latitude as Portland, Oregon. We meet up with Tomo Kazama, a peppy 26-year-old skier who raced moguls in Park City, Utah, before her career ended with three blown knees (right, right, left). Petite with full lips and a puffy pink jacket, Kazama greets us one morning at the Hilton Niseko Village hotel, a comfortable but bland hulk of concrete with onsens downstairs and a gondola station in the building. Hilton recently bought the place and last summer began an overhaul, starting with the Pepto-pink lobby. We load onto the lift, and an electronic kiddie voice tells us in Japanese to enjoy the ride. “You’re a little late for the deep powder,” Kazama tells Eric and me as we zip over silver birches toward a run called Snorkel. It’s late March, but there’s still a solid enough base to compress an entire bamboo forest. “On New Year’s it was so deep—well over my head—that I had to be careful to make sure I could breathe,” she says. Instead, we have the next best thing: zarameyuki, or corn snow. 
Sato Atsushi prepares a futon at the Ryotei Kuramure spa in Otaru
“Ganbatte!” I shout at a fallen skier, encouraging her not to give up. She looks at me, the gaijin with fumbling Japanese, and giggles. For lunch we stop at a midmountain hut called the Yotei View House, a 60-year-old building with larch beams and a crackling fireplace. A Shinto shrine hangs on the wall over a poster of a skier scoring a face shot. The sansei soba, a mountain-vegetable-and-noodle soup with wild onions, baby bamboo shoots, and walabi, a green-stalk veggie, is scrumptious, as are the niku-man meat pastries. “Everyone wants everything to be new,” Kazama laments as we sit on the cedar deck. “Places like this are becoming more and more rare. Very few people want the Japanese style when they ski. Foreigners like it, but it’s mostly Japanese here.” One look around town below proves she’s right. Houses have timber A-frames and faux-elk-antler chandeliers, as if ordered from Aspen, and most hotels offer only a few token Japanese-style rooms. Kazama leads Eric and me over to the Wonderland lift, a single-chair relic where lifties in blue one-pieces sweep off the seats. This lift, though slow and rickety, is part of the country’s skiing charm, harking back to the days when any ride up the mountain at all was a gift. |
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