The planning of our trip was very last minute, in fact, we didn’t book our accommodation in Niseko until we were already in Tokyo for a few days.
Because of this lack of forward planning, we ended up staying in a small village called Annupuri, which my guidebook did point out was an area with less tourists and more locals.
As it turned out, our stay in Annupuri was fantastic. The hostel where we stayed was family run, with a fresh cooked breakfast each morning, and a very friendly host who we communicated with through a very well thoughtout flip chart of common questions he gets asked.
For our first day of skiing we caught a bus to the Grand Hirafu ski area, as we had booked ski lessons in English for my wife. While my wife learnt to ski, I ventured up the mountain and very quickly discovered a mix of both ice and powder.
One thing that was particuarly different about skiing in Australia is the “expert” runs would be similar to a blue run in Australia, except they had not been groomed. I very much prefered this style of run.
On our second day of skiing we decided to ski at the Annupuri resort. Overall both days skiing was excellent and I would love to return to ski more.
