Niseko, Japan

Niseko United is the most popular ski resort complex in Japan, known by skiers around the world for it’s frequent powder skiing. This is particularly impressive because there are over 500 distinct ski areas in Japan.

Niseko is actually 4 resorts “United” on one shared lift ticket with no real boundaries between them other than natural obstacles. It’s located on the island of Hokkaido about 3 hours from Sapporo. Most visitors will fly into the New Chitose airport about an hour from Sapporo and take a bus directly to the resort from the airport.

This is not part of the Ski North America 100 project (obviously!), but since we spent 5 days skiing there and it’s such a popular destination, we thought we would do a review!

Stats and Rating

Real Vertical ?	2,980 (Verified on maps).  We regularly got 2,680 vertical top-to-bottom runs at Niseko Village.
Size	2,190 acres, but I don’t know how this was calculated.  This likely is just the inbounds terrain
Annual Snowfall ?	550″ * (see https://www.niseko.ne.jp/en/news/how-much-did-it-snow-in-niseko-winter-2022-23/)
Lift Pods ?	Somewhere between 8 and 14.  29 total lifts. The way lifts are placed in Japan is nothing like how it is done in North America and each of the 4 resorts has long gondolas that serve most of the resort. Then there are lots of shorter lifts serving individual runs and zones.
Distinct Trails ?	72 + 11 Gates
Review Date	February 2025
Number of visits	1 (5 days)
Our Rating	★★★ 1/2.  We don’t normally do 1/2 star ratings but this one is really hard to rate on our scale.  It’s not really a 4 but it’s better than a 3?
Resort website	https://www.niseko.ne.jp/en/niseko/

Niseko Review

We planned this trip to piggyback onto a tour that AiRung wanted to go on.  The choice was whether to go before or after the tour.  We chose before because I had heard that January and the beginning of February was the most reliable time to hit powder.  Well there was a 10-day dry spell in late January of course!  Luckily it snowed hard the day before we got there and then continued with smaller 6″ and 7″ days for the first 3 days.  Days 4 and 5 had only 2″ and then nothing.  So not terrible luck but right after we left it snowed 14″ and 24″ which would have been great to write about!

Coverage was complete though and we skied mostly soft snow with zero rocks hit the entire time.

Travel

Getting to Niseko was a long process for us, starting with a 12 hour flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and then connecting to Sapporo.  We took a direct bus from The Sapporo Chitose airport to Niseko.  It’s only about 120km, but it takes over 3 hours.  Speed limits are very low in Japan (50km/hr) and it was snowing hard most of the way.

Our lodging

We stayed at the Hilton in Niseko Village because we really didn’t know much about the resort when we were making plans, but we had heard about that hotel before.  It’s a great (but expensive!) hotel with a fantastic breakfast buffet for Hilton Honors members.  If you have points to burn we highly recommend that option, but a better more central location with better lift access would probably be the base of Hirafu.  This gives you easier access to the best night skiing as well.

There is always a line at the Niseko Village gondola but it looks worse than it is.  It took us about 15 minutes on a Saturday morning powder day.  There is a simulated old Japanese village right next door called “Niseko Yo” that has a lot of restaurants if you don’t want to eat at the expensive hotel restaurants every night.  They have special events on many nights there too — Fireworks one of the nights and a Japanese Taiko drum show on another that we loved.

Night skiing

After 22 hours of travel and almost no sleep, we checked into the hotel, picked up our skis, and headed over to the bus stop for the 45 minute bus ride over to Hirafu which has the best, most extensive night skiing.  Due to the language barrier we did not understand that there was a FREE hotel shuttle that would have been faster, but at least we got to review the local bus system!  It’s not great honestly.  Local busses in North America are usually free but not this one.  It’s also crowded.

The night skiing was really fun though.  There are 2 gondolas out of the Hirafu base area and most of the runs served by the 2 gondolas and 2 beginner chairs are lighted.  There was plenty of terrain to keep us busy from 4:30 to closing at 7PM, including the steepest inbounds terrain we found at Niseko United on the “Super” run.  Super is not really that well lighted and the fact that it was snowing made it even more of a fun challenge.  We had never seen this place in daylight before so the whole thing was a puzzle to be solved in the dark.

Long gondolas and short chairs

There are 7 gondolas at Niseko and 4 of them are more or less essential rides.  In Niseko Village and Hirafu it is in fact impossible to get to the upper mountain without riding one.  We aren’t fans of gondolas for many reasons (mostly the need to take skis off over and over again), so this was kind of a bummer.  We still shy away from them after COVID and in fact I did come down with a cold on the last day of the trip.  Give us open-air chairlifts any day — preferably high speed detachables.  Out of 29 lifts there are only 4 or 5 of those I can recall, and they mostly had long lines.

So this leaves the “pair” lifts and singles.  It is hard to get around the upper mountain without riding at least one of the “pizza box” singles.  We were frankly shocked that such a lift existed in the world.  I don’t think a tram safety board would ever approve a lift like that in North America.  It’s basically a board and a pole that you hang onto.  There is no backrest — just a small bar about 6″ high that you butt up against in the back.  In high winds and low visibility it’s downright scary and we avoided them when possible.  It’s funny watching non-locals try to load and unload the first time.  I watched a poor snowboarder eat it on both the load and unload.

The pair (double) chairs are short and generally serve one run.  All 4 of the resorts meet at the top of the volcano Annupuri with 2 doubles and 2 pizza box singles.  I think it has to be that way because those lifts have to close in high winds and they don’t want long primary lifts closing due to weather.

All this makes for a less than ideal lift network compared to what we are used to in North America, but on the other hand lift tickets are only $62 and you can’t expect them to dump $millions into modern infrastructure.  Prices and most of the lifts are basically stuck in about 1990.

Annupuri

Starting on lookers left, Annupuri has the highest base area and stays open longest into May.  This is some of the easiest terrain below the top of the gondola and because of that it’s pretty crowded.  Annupuri also has access to some of the best gated sidecountry.

Niseko Village

Next over to the right is where we were staying: Niseko Village.  This is basically one gondola and 4 chairs.  It’s narrow and there are only 2 or 3 ways down from the top unless you hike up a fairly large hill at the top of the Lookout lodge to ski a couple of inbounds steep tree runs.  The upper pizza box chair is required if you want to get over to Annupuri, but you can walk uphill a bit to get to Hirafu.  Niseko Village is interesting with some fairly steep intermediate groomers and definitely steep ungroomed bump runs, but it’s pretty small and limited.

Grand Hirafu

This is probably the largest part of Niseko United.  2 gondolas rise from the base and one of them is a brand new (as of 2023/24) 10 passenger gondola.  We spent quite a lot of time on that lift because the lines went fast and it served one of our favorite runs “Super” as mentioned in the night skiing section.  Upper Hirafu has several pair lifts and a pizza box.  What we called the Orange pair lift is the highest lift on the mountain but it was also a bit scary in high winds and low visibility with a small seat and no bar.

Hanazono (Flower zone)

When we finally got over to Hanazono we found a modern resort that is much different from the other 3.  We spent many runs on the only long detachable lift at Niseko.  This 6 pack serves some great long-ish wide groomers and our favorite easily accessible gate Strawberry Fields.

This gives me a chance to talk about interior ropes and gates.  In North America, these gates would all be patrolled and considered inbounds.  Yes, all of them.  There are several gates that are between actual groomed runs and these would just have been tree skiing zones possibly not even named as runs.  At Niseko, every run is roped-off on both sides with strict instructions to not cross ropes.  That rule is blatantly violated by scores of people that just lift them up and ski right on through.  It’s a strange situation that I believe is mostly due to lack of patroller staffing.  On all of these powder days we never once heard avalanche bombs being used to stabilize anything.  Instead they just rope off everything that is not groomed (and not one of the 20 or so bump runs) and you are on your own.

Food

Ok, Japanese food isn’t really my thing, but AiRung loves the ubiquitous curry and noodle dishes.  Luckily we found “The Edge” lodge at Hanazono the 2nd day where they seemed to have food designed to serve the thousands of skiers from Australia which suited me just fine.  Meat pies reminded me of my time there and in New Zealand.  They also had the famous Hokkaido soft serve ice cream made from Hokkaido milk.  You really must try that if you go.

At the hotel we had great Shabu Shabu and in Niseko-Yo we had steak and sushi.  Food is definitely not that cheap though.  You will definitely be spending way more on food than lift tickets when skiing Niseko.

Gates

We ended up skiing gates G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G7, and Strawberry Fields essentially.  I say “essentially” because if you enter G2 and hike to the top you also join the people hiking up from G3.  When you ski down you ski past G1.  Same for G4 and G5.  G7 is an interior gate and we had a lot of fun on that one.  The hike from G2 or G3 to the top is at least 30 minutes and I only had 2 of those in me before I was too tired to do it again.

None of the gate terrain is particularly advanced or scary, but you really need to have seen it on a clear day before you go to the top gates.  There are no trees or anything at all to give you any perspective in zero vis conditions at the top of the mountain, and it blows hard up there.  The areas accessed by G2 were my favorite.  There are 2 large bowls that feed into long half-pipe creek beds that take you all the way back to the base.  G3-G5 serve the other side of the mountain with a long ridge that gets progressively steeper the farther out you go.

There are a ton of people up there and even on a powder day it gets tracked out quickly just like in most crowded North American resorts.  Thus it’s a bit of a fantasy that you will be skiing a lot of powder at Niseko.  Soft snow for sure, but you need to get right up there to get the powder before noon.  By the next day it is completely tracked out just about everywhere I found.  I’m sure it’s like a puzzle to be solved though, and if you are a local with a whole season to explore no doubt there are secret stashes of powder long after the main zones are done.

The good

• Lots of snow which falls fairly reliably
• Good grooming:  It looks like the 4 combined resorts groom about 52 trails every night, which is a very large percentage of the named trails.  That leaves only 20 ungroomed bump runs!
• Lots of sidecountry terrain through the 11 gates
• The 4 areas combine for a large ski resort with almost 3,000 feet of vertical drop, so there is plenty to ski for many days
• Great night skiing at Hirafu
• Inexpensive lift tickets!  About $62 USD in 2025 which is absolutely unheard of for a resort of this size and quality snow in North America.

The bad

• Pretty crowded: Lifts, runs, restaurants, busses…basically everything.  We heard from locals that this year tourism has reached the “overtourism” level and some of the shine has rubbed off.
• Lift quality is all over the map running from a modern high-speed 6-pack with heated seats all the way down to the infamous “pizza box” single chairs which can be downright scary.  Lots of ancient old lifts.  There are several areas that really need more capacity.
• Hard to get to
• Very little steep inbounds terrain

Don’t Miss

Definitely do the night skiing at Hirafu if you have the energy!

Our best experience

We had a lot of great runs in the Strawberry Fields gated area at Hanazono.  The trees in there are perfectly spaced.  It starts out steep at the top and then flattens out to an area that is a blast to ski fast through the trees.

Would we go back?

That’s a tough question to answer.  I think it’s definitely something serious skiers with an interest in foreign travel should do, along with at least one trip to Europe.  We do feel that Niseko has been over-hyped on social media so keep your expectations in check if you do go.  I doubt we will expend the effort to do that again but it was a fun and memorable experience.