JAPOW: Enjoying powder snow in Hokkaido

Hokkaido is famous for many things: seafood, hot springs, wild bears, and lots and lots of snow. In fact, the snowfall earlier this month was record breaking: 60 centimeters in just 24 hours! But the snow in Hokkaido isn’t just inconvenient (although it can be at times). The powder snow in Hokkaido is said to be some of the best in the world for winter sports.

The most famous destination for skiing and snowboarding in Hokkaido has to be the area around Niseko. There are many famous ski resorts there, like Niseko Hanazono Resort, Niseko Annupuri, Niseko Village Ski Resort, and Rusutsu Resort. Furano and Tomamu in central Hokkaido are also popular winter sport destinations. However, those living in Sapporo don’t have to travel far to enjoy some of the best Japanese powder snow (also known as Japow). There are several resorts where you can enjoy skiing, snowboarding, and other winter activities close to Sapporo!

1. Kiroro Resort

This popular ski resort has some of the best snow in Japan, and even within Hokkaido! Kiroro Resort has courses that are suitable for beginners, intermediate, and advanced skiers and snowboarders. You can also rent ski or snowboarding equipment and ski wear at the resort. Lessons are offered in Japanese, English, and Chinese. When you are tired, you can enjoy one of the hot springs at the resort. Kiroro Resort is located about 40 minutes from Otaru, and about 60 to 90 minutes from Sapporo.

Name: Kiroro Resort (キロロリゾート)

Address: 128-1 Aza-Tokiwa, Akaigawa-mura, Yoichi-gun, Hokkaido

Website: https://www.kiroro.co.jp

2. Sapporo Kokusai Ski Resort

This ski resort is located in Jozankei area, which is famous for its hot springs. Ideal if you want to relax your sore muscles after going down the mountains! You can go skiing or snowboarding on beginner to advanced level courses. If you don’t have your own ski wear or equipment, you can rent it at the resort. They offer ski and snowboarding lessons too. You can reach Sapporo Kokusai Ski Resort in about 90 minutes by bus from Sapporo Station.

Name: Sapporo Kokusai Ski Resort (札幌国際スキー場)

Address: Jozankei 937, Minami-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido

Website: https://www.sapporo-kokusai.jp/en/

3. Sapporo Teine Ski Resort

Sapporo Teine Ski Resort is another popular destination close to Sapporo. Some of the ski courses were even used in the Sapporo Olympic Games in 1972! But don’t worry, there are also courses suitable for beginners. The ski resort is just a 40 minute drive from downtown Sapporo. You can also go by bus from JR Teine station. It’s very suitable for a day trip from Sapporo.

Name: Sapporo Teine Ski Resort (サッポロテイネスキー場)

Address: 11-36 Miyanosawa 2-jo 2-chome, Nishi-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido

Website: https://sapporo-teine.com/snow/lang/en/

4. Moiwa Ski Resort

This ski resort is the closest from the center of Sapporo city. However, you can’t do snowboarding here, only skiing. The ski slopes are open until 21:00, so you can even go skiing at night and enjoy the night view from Mt Moiwa. You can reach the ski resort in 15 minutes by bus from Makomanai station.

Name: Moiwa Ski Resort (札幌藻岩山スキー場)

Address: Moiwashita 1991, Minami-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido

Website: https://www.rinyu.co.jp/moiwa/

5. Sapporo Bankei Ski Area

This ski resort is open until 22:00, so you can go skiing until late in the evening. You can reach the ski resort in just 15 minutes by bus from Maruyama station! Like the other ski resorts mentioned above, you can take lessons too and rent ski equipment, so it’s suitable for beginners as well as experienced skiers.

Name: Sapporo Bankei Ski Area (さっぽろばんけいスキー場)

Address: 410 Bankei, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido

Website: https://www.bankei.co.jp/

Most of the ski resorts listed above offer a rental service for ski wear and ski and snowboarding equipment. So if you want to try winter sports for the first time, you don’t have to invest a lot of money in equipment!

Had enough of skiing? No problem. You can enjoy other winter activities like sledding, snow tubing, or trekking on snow shoes at many of these locations too. And when you get tired, I recommend visiting one of the hot springs nearby to warm up!

Tip: If you need more details on how to reach the ski resorts above, please check this page!

Many of the students at Sapporo Language Center love winter sports too. They attend Japanese language classes on weekdays and spend the weekend enjoying the powder snow at one of the ski resorts listed above. If you have morning classes, you could even go skiing in the afternoon! If you want to learn Japanese while enjoying the best powder snow that Japan has to offer, you should consider studying at our school! Contact us now for more information.

Enjoy Hokkaido local cuisine inside an igloo!

A brand new event is being held in Otaru this year: かまくらジンギスカン (kamakura jingisukan). The kamakura in the event name isn’t related to the famous old city of Kamakura near Tokyo, but the Japanese word for igloo. During this event, you can enjoy the famous Hokkaido local dish jingisukan inside an igloo! If you haven’t tried jingisukan before, it’s a dish of lamb or mutton barbecue, named after the Mongolian leader Genghis Khan. You usually eat it together with vegetables like bean sprouts, onions, and bell peppers. It’s most popularly eaten by cooking it yourself on a dome-shaped skillet in a restaurant.

In most parts of Japan it’s far too warm to build igloos, but because of Hokkaido’s cold winters you can enjoy exciting activities like visiting the Sapporo Snow Festival, staying at an ice hotel, or one of many other winter events in Hokkaido. But this year the Igloo Jingisukan event in Otaru is being held for the very first time! The organizers, Taru Tabi, have built a small igloo village right in Otaru city. Apparently it took them an entire month to build all the igloos.

It might seem very cold to have dinner inside an igloo, but actually, igloos are much more comfortable than you might think! The entrance is small and close to the ground, so the warm air doesn’t escape and the cold wind can’t get inside. Once you start cooking the food, the igloo will become even more warm and comfortable. The igloo itself is about 3.5 meters high, so you can easily stand up inside.

The price for the regular jingisukan set is 3000 yen per person. You can order drinks separately, but at the moment no alcohol is served due to COVID-related measures. And this event is very suitable for COVID times, because you get your own private igloo, so there is a very low no risk of getting infected by other customers.

Don’t forget to make a reservation in advance. You can use the form on the website or call the phone number: 050-3775-7003.

How to get there

Otaru is just a short train ride away from Sapporo. You can go there from JR Sapporo station in 33 minutes on the express train or 47 minutes on the regular train. The event space is just a five minute walk from JR Minami Otaru station.

If you arrive at JR Otaru station, I recommend walking to the famous Otaru Canal for sightseeing, then heading down the shopping street (小樽堺町通り商店街) towards the Music Box Museum while visiting the souvenir shops along the way. The event space is very close from there!

• 入船1丁目2番

Location: 1-2-26, Otaru-shi, Hokkaido (北海道小樽市入船１丁目２−２６)

Dates: January 1 to February 28, 2022 (time: 11:00 to 20:00)

Website: Taru Tabi homepage, product ID T0001

Organizer: Taru Tabi (たる旅)

If you want to enjoy exciting and unique events like this while studying Japanese in Sapporo, contact us now to enroll in Sapporo Language Center! We are still recruiting students for 2022!

Stay at the Ice Hotel in Sapporo

Have you ever wished you could visit Elsa’s castle from the movie Frozen? Or have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in a world where everything is made out of ice? If so, you are in luck! You can now experience this and more right in Sapporo city!

This year at Sapporo Art Park, the Hokkaido Ice Hotel & Resort event is held. There are several buildings made of ice at the venue. Here, you can stay inside a hotel room made entirely out of ice! The room looks a bit like an igloo, but the walls, the floor, and even the furniture (including the bed!) are made out of ice.

If you don’t have time to stay overnight, you can also pay a visit to the ice bar. You can even order drinks served in a glass made out of ice. No lukewarm cocktails here at this bar! On Saturdays, they even have a DJ playing music from a DJ booth made out of – you guessed it, ice!

Do you have what it takes to stay the night in the ice hotel? I’m not sure if I could stand the cold, but it’s definitely an experience unique to Hokkaido!

Event name: Hokkaido Ice Hotel & Resort (北海道アイスホテル＆リゾート)

Dates: January 15 to February 27, 2022

Location: Sapporo Art Park (札幌芸術の森)

Address: Geijutsu no mori 2-75, Minami-ku, Sapporo-shi, Hokkaido (札幌市南区芸術の森2丁目75番地)

How to get there: 15 minutes by bus from Makomanai station

Website: https://w-awesome.com/act

If you want to experience exciting events like this while studying Japanese, please have a look at our website! Sapporo Language Center is now recruiting students for the July 2022 term. There is so much you can experience in Hokkaido!

Too cute to eat?! Hotpot at Kuma-chan Onsen

There’s a restaurant in Sapporo that has been drawing attention on social media. They specialize in nabe, a popular winter dish all around Japan. If you’ve never had nabe before, it’s a hot pot dish which consists of soup stock with ingredients like vegetables, mushrooms, meat, seafood, tofu, and eggs. It’s popular to eat at home with your family as well as in a restaurant. So why are people paying attention to this restaurant? It’s because their nabe looks absolutely adorable!

Cake from a vending machine? Only in Japan!

If you’ve been to Japan before, you might know that there are many delicious sweets. From traditional Japanese wagashi sweets to freshly made dorayaki and taiyaki, as well as sweets from other countries, you can find it all in Japan! Recently, there is a new sweet on the market, and the shop that invented is is located right in Sapporo.

The pâtisserie Okashi Gaku opened in the Susukino district of Sapporo in July 2021. They sell all kinds of cakes and sweets in their shop, but the reason why this shop has become famous is because of a certain unique feature: they have a vending machine where you can buy cake in a can!

Silver Spoon: the coming-of-age manga set in Hokkaido

If you like manga and anime, you may have heard of the hit manga Golden Kamuy, which tells the story of a Japanese man and an Ainu girl who search for a lost treasure in Hokkaido. However, Golden Kamuy is far from the only manga set in Hokkaido!

Another popular manga set in Hokkaido is Silver Spoon (銀の匙, gin no saji) by Hiromu Arakawa. The story revolves around Yuugo Hachiken, a teenager from Sapporo who enrolls in an agricultural high school in Hokkaido. Unlike his classmates who dream of a career in agriculture, Yuugo only enrolls in the school to get away from his strict family in the city, but studying agriculture isn’t as easy as he thought it would be.

Gundam exhibition in Sapporo

A special exhibition is currently being held at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art. The title of the exhibition is: “The world of Yoshiyuki Tomino – in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of HBC Hokkaido Broadcasting”.

Yoshiyuki Tomino is most famous for creating and directing the Mobile Suit Gundam series. He has been active in the anime and manga industry for almost 60 years, from the time when he first started working on the classic anime series Astro Boy. He has been involved in many different aspects of the creation of the Gundam series, from designing characters and making storyboards, to writing music for the series. This exhibition gives you an overview of his career in the anime and manga industry.

Go sightseeing in Sapporo for FREE!

Sapporo City has announced a new tourism campaign, titled “さぁ！まわろうSAPPORO～見どころ施設無料化キャンペーン～”. From Saturday, November 20 to Sunday, December 19, you will be able to enter nine popular sightseeing spots for free! This is a great opportunity to visit some places in Sapporo that you haven’t been to before.

I know that you are probably busy with your studies and preparation for the JLPT in December, so you may not have time to visit every single one of these places. So here are my recommendations for the best places to visit during the campaign!

Sapporo Mt. Moiwa Ropeway

As I wrote in a previous blog post, Mt. Moiwa is the most popular place to enjoy the night view of Sapporo. It’s beautiful during the daytime too, but the night view is really something special! It’s a very popular date spot too. You can reach the observatory on the top of Mt. Moiwa by using the ropeway. Normally, tickets are priced at 1800 yen a person for a roundtrip, so you can save a lot of money if you visit now!

Fly to Hokkaido on a Pokémon airplane!

Soon you will be able to fly to Hokkaido on a Pokémon airplane! From December 1st, domestic airline Air Do will start using Boeing 767 aircrafts decorated with a Pokémon design for their domestic flights between Honshu and Hokkaido.

Good news: you can come to Japan again soon!

The Japanese government announced some great news this week. Take a look at this article from Asahi Shimbun:

Japan plans to allow short-term business travelers, foreign students and technical intern trainees to enter the country under certain conditions. (…) The government is expected to announce the long-awaited eased travel restrictions this week before they take effect by the end of this month at the earliest, the sources said.

Asahi Shimbun, November 2, 2021

This means that those who already have a Certificate of Eligibility (COE) will be able to apply for a visa at their nearest embassy and fly to Japan soon! The exact date when students can enter Japan hasn’t been decided yet, but it could be as early as the end of November!