Over a decade ago, my wife gifted me a ski retreat in Japan as a Christmas present. A couple of months after receiving the homemade voucher, a few friends and I flew to Sapporo to play in the big snow that Hokkaido is known for.
I distinctly remember arriving on Japan’s northern island just after dark. After a fast food stop, we began to meander towards Niseko. With the help of our headlights, I saw both forest and field under a constant barrage of tremendous, fluffy flakes. Traveling higher into the mountains, the snow progressively fell in larger and larger tufts, making it increasingly harder to see the road.
I had heard about Japow (Japan powder) for years. Though, as a skier who has been to a fair share of mountains, I wasn’t expecting the snow to trump anything I had seen in Jackson Hole, Grand Targhee, or Breckenridge. But, driving towards the base of Niseko’s Grand Hirafu, I could tell that this snow was different. I was taken aback by just exactly how much accumulation there was. Street signs were barely visible. Roadside drifts were taller than buildings. Arriving in Niseko, I opened the van door and, quite literally, fell waist-deep into the famous powder.
Since that first visit, I have returned to Hokkaido several times to explore and ski. Yet, my most recent trip north from Tokyo to Niseko wasn’t to pounce in the powder but to capture it with my camera for The New York Times. The travel photography assignment had been in the works for nearly a year and, with Japan’s ski season underway, I was glad to finally get to work on the piece.
I quickly learned that skiing on holiday and skiing for work are two vastly different experiences. Since I was concentrating on creating images, I only purchased a half-day lift pass to Niseko’s Annupuri area. I knew that I would need the rest of my assignment timeline to photograph other Niseko offerings (i.e. food, libations, shopping, etc.).
In the end, I only took two serpentine descents. One run took me from the peak of Annupuri to the base of Grand Hirafu. The second crisscrossed the first, traversing the peak of Grand Hirafu towards the base of Annupuri. During my four hours on the slopes, I made nearly six hundred images of the terrain that makes Niseko one of the most beautiful places in the world to ski in deep, deep snow.
Take a look at 36 Hours in Niseko and enjoy some assignment outtakes below.
I was happy to see one of my images from the assignment on the front page of the NYT Travel Section . Years from now, the honor will serve as a souvenir from my time as a photographer in Japan.
