G-Drama JEJU: EPISODE 33: HO-HO-HOKKAIDO

Another not-so-timely post... this is from over a year ago now, but we're going with the whole "better late than never" theory.

Continuing our pattern of always going somewhere colder than Jeju during the winter, we spent our Lunar New Year at the end of January 2017 in snowy, snowy Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan! More specifically, we went skiing in Niseko, followed by a jaunt to Sapporo to see a bit of the Snow Festival and to visit Hannah's high school friend Michelle and her husband Jamie. Of course, Mindy once again gets the credit for planning and organizing this trip, with Elana and Cassie rounding out the crew.

First view of Hokkaido from our plane. Snow: check.

Next up after the plane ride was the long bus ride to Niseko, home of incredibly powdery snow and so much English/so many gaijin that it hardly seemed like we were in Japan... more like a wintery Aussie enclave with a lot of udon available.

We arrived at our chalet and to some pretty impressive icicles.
(No one was impaled in the making of this vacation.)

View across the way to the other chalets, with mountains in the background!

All of the piles of snow around outside invited sledding, which was just the beginning of all of our winter activities in Hokkaido. Originally, I (Hannah) had planned to go along on this whole adventure as a snowbunny and hang out at the ski lodge all day, but when it turned out that Elana wanted to learn to snowboard, I decided to make an attempt at bravery and ski for the second time in my life (with help from very patient teachers Mindy and Cassie!). I figured I would rent skis for the first day, and then (thinking optimistically) return them after failing miserably/giving up.

The next morning, the chalet that we rented sent a shuttle for us (cheery drivers included) that took us to the slopes, where Mindy and Ben were thrilled to discover they were often the first ones to ski in the powder. Elana and I opted for a more leisurely arrival around 10ish, whereupon our "lessons" from Ben and Cassie/Mindy would commence on an area at the bottom of one of the hills. After managing to ski(ish) down that the first day, I surprised myself by deciding to keep my skis for the subsequent days, and managed to ski down a green trail five or six times (with much patient coaching from Cassie and Mindy) by the time we finished our third day!

Of course, Ben would say that Elana and I got a bit spoiled by the incredibly soft snow in Niseko... After watching Ben do a spin on his board so that he could fall backward rather than forward, Elana asked him, "Why don't you just fall onto your knees?" He couldn't help laughing and saying that she should try landing on her knees anywhere else... and that she wouldn't make the same mistake twice after that. Fortunately, falling in Niseko was almost like jumping onto couch cushions...

...especially since, each day we were there, more and more fluffy snow fell, so we slowly watched the drifts on our chalet's porch pile up...

...and the icicles above our door become more and more intense.

After skiing and snowboarding, all manner of winter activities, including tubing, ensued (where, yes, we assembled ourselves into a giant chain of tubes... and my foot caught the edge of a snowbank on the way down, so we all got covered in snow). :x Here's the video with incriminating evidence.

We also went snowshoeing for the first time! As you can see from the picture, I was able to communicate our names incredibly clearly to the snowshoe shop.

Is it a church? A lodge? A house? Noooo... this was the fancy, fancy bathroom (?!) where we snowshoed.

Our trusty guide from France leading Elana and Ben through the forest.

Best part of the snowshoeing trip: sledding down the hill onto the frozen pond using our snowshoes.

Second best part: deciding we should all take pictures as abominable snowmen by dunking our faces into snowbanks.

Of course, after such a cold experience, what better way to warm ourselves up than to go to an outdoor onsen? Luckily we found a co-ed one at a hotel not too far away from where we were staying. While we classed up the place by renting old school "swimsuits" to wear, Ben made it to the co-ed onsen first and made friends with two Japanese guys who spoke a little English... although when all the girls came out, they quickly got embarrassed and swam off (mostly because they were naked - fortunately the steam hides a lot ^^''). And then of course, we started making snowballs to throw through the middle of the stone pagoda statues decorating the springs. Amongst the most heinous crimes we've experienced in Japan was that someone stole Ben's towel from the changing room - and since the towels cost money to rent, he ended up using a t-shirt and a hair dryer. Though in Ben's experience of time, it took roughly forever to dry himself off, he was the first one ready to leave the onsen by about 10 minutes.

After all the fun in the snow, we headed to Sapporo Station and got some mall/Engrish sign-spotting time. This store was trying to be as general as possible in describing its selection...

...while this one decided that having humans in London is dumb.

In nearby Odori Park, we got to catch a glimpse of the Snow Festival before it officially started. Definitely brought back some memories of the Ice Festival in Harbin!

An unexpected highlight of the trip was the Sapporo New Chitose airport, which featured the ever-amazing, drool-inducing Cremia ice cream and more grandiose store descriptions.