Niseko, Japan’s Own St. Moritz

Earlier that day I had been communing with the snow in a more conventional way, skiing my way through deep blankets of powder on Mount Annupuri in Niseko. The network of ski areas around the small resort village of Hirafu on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, see almost constant snowfall from December to April, a type of “Champagne powder,” as aficionados call it, that is a result of low pressure systems over northeast Hokkaido meeting high pressure systems over northwest Siberia. The winds from Siberia pick up moisture from the Sea of Japan, and the resulting bands of clouds dump huge amounts of snow when they reach the mountains. The 2010-11 ski season ran 165 days, Nov. 29 to May 12, and many days saw fresh snow fall. The beginning of this season could break the 50-year record, with 16.7 feet in December, the most since 1964. “Sometimes the snowflakes here are large enough to cast shadows,” said Pam Marks, a transplanted Canadian ski instructor who took me out on the mountain, adding that the skiing and snowboarding on even the regular slopes compare with world-class backcountry experiences she’s had in North America. The landscape is breathtaking. While the beauty of the Alps and the Rockies is intense and dramatic, these slopes are subtle and somehow mystical. Even the way the snow falls, constant and gentle, creates a particular kind of quiet; as I made my way down the mountain, I couldn’t even hear the sound of my skis in the powder. Bare birch branches peeked out of the ghostly white mountains. This sparsely suggestive backdrop, and the meditative onsen (natural Japanese hot springs), can turn any skier into a haiku poet. Niseko was coined the “St. Moritz of the Orient” by insiders in the 1960s, but the area still remained seriously under the radar until the ’90s, when it became the preferred playground for Australian snowboarders tipped off to the powder. Now, despite avid interest from well-heeled Asian skiers who arrive from places like Singapore and Hong Kong at Hokkaido’s new international airport, New Chitose, there are no waits for lifts even during holidays, and the resorts remain authentically Japanese. I visited in early February of last year, about a month before the huge earthquake hit the eastern coast of the country, setting off a tsunami and the nuclear plant crisis at Fukushima. Thankfully, Niseko remained largely unaffected (the mountain area is more than 500 miles northwest of the site), though local hotel and condo owners in the area did host refugees from areas closer to Fukushima last summer. Local business owners say that the tourism market here is holding up this season despite travelers’ initial wariness of returning to Japan after Fukushima. C. J. Wysocki, a Hong Kong lawyer who developed a complex of luxury condominiums here, said that holds particularly true for Asian visitors. He has seen a “a huge uptick in the last few weeks after it became clear that the snow was going to be epic this year.” Mr. Wysocki discovered the area on a company ski trip and pointed out that it holds a unique appeal for anyone who wants to “go from Hong Kong to skiing in about six hours (end to end) with no jet lag, and even less time from Beijing or Shanghai.” The two- to five-bedroom units in the complex, which is called Suiboku, are privately owned but can be rented like hotel suites. Custom open kitchens, stunning views of Mount Yotei (the perfectly symmetrical dormant volcano that provides the resort’s backdrop), heated repurposed wood floors, antique Buddhas, and tubs big enough for a whole family that look onto the snowy slopes, make each apartment feel luxurious but not over the top. OTHER high-end properties are creeping in as well. The Greenleaf resort, part of the Singapore-based YTL group, where I stayed, was revamped in late 2010 by Alexandra Champalimaud, a New York-based interior designer, with a fashionable lobby bar featuring cowhide armchairs and murals by a local artist, Emi Shiratori. Despite being more than 15 minutes from the main village, its outdoor onsen, where I retired après ski every day, and easy slope access made it a well-priced option. Next up is new development of Shiki, a 78-unit project scheduled to be completed by a Malaysian group next season, and a much-anticipated Christina Ong hotel expected to open in the next few years. There is also a formidable food scene here. The Niseko area benefits from particularly rich and diverse local produce and seafood, not to mention general Japanese precision and quality. Though the area is far to the north of Fukushima, the local chefs are still vigilant about food quality in light of the disaster, relying on both their own testing and continuing inspections by government and private companies. James Gallagher, the owner of Ezo Seafoods, a tiny restaurant and raw bar on a side street in Hirafu, where I ate briny, buttery oysters and snow crab legs, said that the safety issue is something restaurant owners are aware of, but luckily the damage has been limited, both in terms of actual physical contamination and consumer psychological reactions. “Probably 1 in 10 overseas customers raise the issue,” he said, “but those who have made their way into the doors of a seafood restaurant — many of them regular seasonal customers — have already made up their mind that it is safe to consume.” Mr. Gallagher has been monitoring everything that comes from Japanese waters and hasn’t discovered anything out of the ordinary near Hokkaido, thanks, he believes, to the fact that currents in the region move to the south. To reassure customers he changed the restaurant’s tagline from “Hokkaido Seafood” to “Fine Hokkaido and World Seafood,” incorporating Alaskan king red crab and Thai shrimp and tuna from the South Pacific when necessary; he has also added more vegetarian options. Katherine Bont, who runs the Sekka restaurant group with her husband, the chef Kim Wejendorp, said they had always relied on local ingredients, from “white asparagus grown in Kyowa-cho under the snow in the winter months” to “sausages and bacon from farmers who smoke them in their fireplace during the winter” to seven types of jam just from the fruit foraged in the summer. They also serve Yoshino salmon, roe and monkfish liver pâté from the coastal town of Suttsu along with cheese and dairy products from farms less than 15 minutes away. This year, she said, “We are keeping our stance on using as much Hokkaido produce as we possibly can, and if for some reason items are not available within our area, we are then making the decision to source overseas.”