Japan - First Experience With Snow In Hokkaido (Part 1)

Hello there!

Having completed my earlier travel posts on Japan (Tokyo and Osaka) and Maldives, I saw that Worldmappin had the Winter Challenge #winterchallenge, so I thought I should give it a shot! Being in a country that is summer all year round, I went through some of previous overseas trips for some winter stuff, and I managed to find some interesting stuff!

With further ado, let's go!

This was a trip I took in 2018 and it was to a winter ski resort in Hokkaido, Japan! It's so coincidental that I am writing about Japan again, and it actually goes to show that there's so much beautiful sights across different seasons in Japan. Anyway, we flew to Sapporo and made our way to our resort by coach, which is the Kiroro Ski Resort!

We reached our resort and checked in to our cozy room. This was the view from our accommodation. A bird's eye view of the view and all the mountains and snow in the distance! I remembered I was so excited because this was my first time experiencing snow in my entire life! I actually spent a lot of time at the window admiring this scenery!

After settling down, we went to take a walk around the resort. The sun sets really early during winter, and it was already getting dark around 1700h. It was also freezing cold outdoors, and personally, I am a person that is pretty afraid of cold temperatures so it took some time for me to adjust. Fortunately, I had all my gear with me, from winter jacket, winter boots, winter gloves, etc. As it was in December, they had some nice Christmas trees for the festive season.

Then we saw this interesting structure which looked like an igloo! Being curious, we decided to go in to take a visit. The interior was pretty interesting and it didn't take us long to realise that this was an ice bar! As we were already freezing cold, we didn't want to take any cold drinks so we just took a look at what was inside and continued our exploration around the resort.

We also saw what looked like a church ahead, but at this time, we thought it was probably closed. And the weather really got colder and it was not easy to walk long distances outside.

Heading back to the resort, you could see the snow is falling moderately on the pathways and it was very quiet outside already. I guess most people were inside the resort, enjoying their warm dinners, or soaking in the onsens (hot springs). And it's also time for us to get our dinner!

So this summed up our first day at our Hokkaido ski resort! I guess our bodies weren't used to the cold weather because we came from a hotter country, but after a while, it got better. Stay tuned for the next few posts which I will share some of the activities that we participated in the ski resort, as well as all the pretty snow photos taken during the day!

Finally, thanks for reading my post in the community under World Map Pin!