Here is a video on YouTube that my friend Andy made for a ski trip we took with two other friends to Niseko in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Click the photos above for more. We stayed in a hotel right at the base of the mountain and coincidentally another group of guys were know from work were staying in the same hotel. The snow was great once you got off the beaten track. Niseko is a different type of ski resort for Japan in that it is...a ski resort. Some Australian English teachers started developing it 10 years ago or so and it is now one of the few ski areas in Japan that resembles ones in the West in that there is a little ski village with restaurants, bars, karaoke bars, many choices for lodging, and so on. This ended up being our last ski trip for the season. Normally, you can ski Hokkaido until early May but it was warmer than normal this year and the snow was not as strong. The annual snow festival in Sapporo, Hokkaido, where large snow sculptures adorn the city, was limited in duration this year from the snow melting as soon as the sculptures were built. Most people here blame it on El Nino, which according to the late Chris Farley is Spanish for The Nino. Anyway, I hope it's not from global warming because that's too depressing.
