Last week I went to Hokkaido on my holidays and went to snowboard.
Now Hokkaido is the major place to enjoy snow activities. Not just the best place in Japan but even the best in the world where you can enjoy the fluffy powder snow.
Every time I visit Hokkaido, I see more travelers from all over the world.
Last time(few years ago) when I went to Niseko, maybe the most popular ski resort, I barely saw Japanese and felt I came to another world outside of Japan.
Niseko was and is the best place to ski/snowboard and understood why people from all over the world visits that place.
Niseko is quite far from the city Sapporo and this time went to Sapporo Teine Ski Resort and Sapporo Bankei Ski Area, close from Susukino, Sapporo's downtown district and one of the largest spot for nightlife in Japan, around 30 minutes drive from the ski area.
Sappro Teine Ski Resort
Source: https://sapporo-teine.com/snow/lang/en/
This place is popular that has a history used for Sapporo Olympic at 1972. It was a quite small scale comparing with Niseko or Rusutsu resort but they had good powder snow as well. The course was kind of straightforward, enjoyable enough, I thought I should try the advanced course but did not have enough time since we arrived around noon and had plans to eat lamb meat at Susukino. The equipment such as lifts was nice too.
The weather this day was snowy and was hard to see the sights.
Sapporo Bankei Ski Area
Source: https://www.bankei.co.jp/
Next day we went to this place. Here was more smaller and shorter than the previous one as I thought. And it was really crowded maybe because it was the day before national holiday on Sunday, there were lots of families and bunch of kids joining the ski school. We had to make a long line waiting the lift and after we jump off the lift, we had to be careful with the kids since they are every where around. The speed of the lift was fast and I fall down few times. I thought this place was more for skiing than snowboarding. Maybe for the crowd and the sunny day, the snow was hard and I saw some dirt showing on the surface. We might find somewhere else for next time haha!
The weather was really nice...
Have you guys ever visit Hokkaido and enjoyed the snow?
Hokkaido might be getting more exciting since there is a plan trying to build a casino resort at an area called Tomakomai, closer to the airport more than Sapporo, and the number of travelers could rise.