Japan... part 1

It’s been now two days that we are skiing in Japan and up to now, it has stand to it’s reputation as being of the best destination for the snow. There even seems to be a Japanese counter part of the Snowchasers!
During our short journey in Japan, we will drive around Hokkaido Island (the northern island) and try to hit the most famous powder spots of this legendary island. We will stay around the south east for a little bit more of the first half of our trip and then moving a little bit north toward Furano. We start our trip by hitting Sapporo Kokusai. It is a small resort deserve by 2 chairlift and one gondola. We figure we didn’t need our backcountry gear since it was our first day and that we wanted to play it cool… Surely enough, after one run, we ducked under the roped and headed out for some slackcountry runs.
It looks like Japan ski culture involves more ski racing than powder skiing because almost all of the slackcountry was untouched and was waiting for us! Under a blue sky, we enjoyed our first turns in the samurai country. We also looked at the backcountry laying just minutes away from the resort. It mainly consists of untouched north facing runs of about 300m long… We gotta come back for those! Today, we skied Kiroro resort. It is another small resort mainly deserve by one gondola. We bought a 3hours ticket figuring we would head out to the backcountry after. This resort mainly consists of short steep pitches that end up in some flat sections. Here too, the steeper terrain sees way less skier than the beginners slope!
As we were thinking of going out of bounds, the wind really start to pick up and they shut the gondola (our main access to some proper backcountry). We then figure it would probably be a good time to start our hour and a half drive back to were we are staying (yes, I won’t be leaving in a car since I haven’t been able to convince my dad to do so…)
It is now puking outside, but it may turn to rain somewhere during the night. Tomorrow is suppose to be fairly windy shutting a lot of the good terrain…but tomorrow is another day!

Cheers!
evans