New Year’s Eve at the Hilton Niseko Village

After waking up at the ANA Crowne Plaza Chitose, we had breakfast and checked out to take a bus from the JR station to the Hilton Niseko Village. Once we arrived, we checked in and did a bit of exploring before our room was ready. After getting our room, we picked up our rental skis and had dinner. In the evening, we saw a taiko performance and fireworks at midnight for the new year.

Morning

We woke up to a snowy scene at the ANA Crowne Plaza Chitose! Last night, the pavement was visible in most of the parking lot for the Aeon next door. This morning, it was covered with a layer of fresh snow!

We went downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast, which was included as we are Diamond members in the IHG One Rewards program. The restaurant has a view of a small courtyard between the hotel’s buildings. The ground was covered with snow and it was sticking a bit to the trees as well.

The buffet had a selection of Japanese and Western options, with many local choices.

After breakfast, we returned to the room and got ready to leave. It started to snow more heavily during this time.

The fresh snow meant that the icy sidewalk was now much easier to walk on!

The hotel after we crossed the street at the traffic light. Our room was in the building on the left.

We arrived with plenty of time to spare for our 10:12am departure from Chitose Station to Niseko on Chuo Bus.

The bus station in front of the train station has multiple bus stops. They are clearly labelled so we were able to easily figure out where our bus would stop.

The JR station likely has seating but we found a smaller bus waiting room on the ground floor of the Chitose Station Hotel next to the station. The closest entrance is at the eastern corner of the hotel building.

It snowed at a good rate while we were waiting. Definitely nowhere close to blizzard conditions though. As for this sculpture on a pole, its not clear what it is. It could be a bird, but also looks like a fish jumping into water.

Soon, our bus arrived and we were on our way. The bus was a typical Japanese highway bus. The seats were pretty small as expected but it was clean. The bus made a bathroom stop about mid-way at きのこま园 Mushroom Garden, a highway rest stop.

It was somewhat busy with other busses coming and going and a number of cars. At times, the other vehicular traffic slowed us down but at other times, the bus couldn’t keep up with the cars in front.

Hilton Niseko Village

We arrived at the ヒルトンニセコビレッジ Hilton Niseko Village at around 1:15pm. Our room wasn’t available yet so we left our bags with the front desk. We were given a drink voucher, which we used immediately at the bar in the lobby. It was pretty busy but we managed to find a place to sit.

We decided to go exploring outside a bit. There was lots of snow on the ground as well as snow on the trees. The gondola next to the hotel looked pretty busy but the chairlift didn’t have any queue at all.

We also picked up a trail map which includes the point value for each lift and gondola. The Hilton Niseko Village is just to the left of the central crease on the map.

We went to walk around ニセコ世 Niseko-yo, the small shopping area of the ニセコビレッジ Niseko Village resort. There is no real village at Niseko Village so the only visitor services right next to the ski slopes are here. We don’t know how the management of these individual shops works, however, Niseko Village and its resort hotels as well as Niseko-yo are all owned by YTL, a Malaysian company. The actual town of Niseko is about two miles away.

This map shows the shops and restaurants in Niseko-yo.

We came across this fox sculpture. There weren’t very many people around at the time. Most of the restaurants were not open as it was not a normal dining time.

We popped into Chuya, a wine bar, and had some yakitori as they were still serving food. It was pretty mediocre.

After exploring Nisko-yo, we headed back towards the Hilton. The Hilton is, by far, the largest hotel in Niseko Village.

There was this little activity on the other side, or to the east, of the hotel. It looks like they offer snowmobile rides as well as sledding behind a horse. There was also a poor unfortunate reindeer who seemed to be there for photos.

We headed back into the hotel to see if our room was ready.

There was a tall and narrow Christmas tree in the middle of the lobby area.

We walked over to the front desk to complete the check in procedures and received our room keys.

We also received some information about the hotel, in particular, breakfast time. Breakfast is included with our stay as we are Diamond members in the Hilton Honors program.

This small key-sized card listed the benefits given to Diamond members.

The hotel also provided a leaflet about how to use the hotel’s onsen.

We walked by this display on the way to the elevators. Everything in there seems to be for sale. Some of it is reasonable, some of it is not!

A view of the central section of the hotel from the hallway on the 15th floor. The hotel is a cylindrical building, with a gap, with rooms on the outer edge.

We received a King Deluxe room. We did not receive an upgrade as they are sold out due to the New Year’s holiday. Despite the deluxe naming, this is the standard room at this property. The room was a decent size and included sufficient desk space as well as a sofa and chair which could be moved and separated. We ended up turning them so it would be possible to see out of the window while seated.

Most of the upgraded rooms involve a view of 羊蹄山 Mount Yotei, basically a mini-Fuji. Our room had a fantastic view of the mountain that Niseko is on, ニセコアンヌプリ Niseko Annupuri.

Fruit and chocolates were provided as welcome gifts in the room.

There were many individually wrapped chocolate pieces from ロイズ Royce’s, a Japanese chocolate brand. The name is more or less phonetic translation and has no relation to the English name Royce.

The welcome note that was on the desk.

We were quite surprised to find a small bottle of Moët Champagne hiding in the fridge!

The card that goes along with it.

The biggest downside of the Hilton Niseko Village is the very dated and tiny bathroom. It is a pretty standard looking Japanese bathroom unit. There is a separate sink outside, right by the room’s door. Like this bathroom, its pretty small. This wasn’t a surprise though, this is a well-known deficiency in this property.

It started to get darker outside before sunset, which is around 4:13pm here. One thing we noticed here is that the gondolas were all removed from the cable for the evening.

Once it started to get darker, we could see the lights below and on the mountain, particularly to the northeast where グランヒラフ Grand Hirafu, one of the Niseko United resorts, has a larger night skiing operation.

We went to pick up our rental gear from Village Sports, a shop at Niseko-yo. We brought our own boots and helmets so only needed to rent skis and poles. We booked in advance as we weren’t sure if they sell out. The price was 8000 JPY for the first day, 6300 JPY for the second day, and 6600 JPY for each consecutive day after that. Yes, the second day is cheaper for some reason.

It took a bit of time to get our equipment as they were pretty busy. Once we got our gear, we dropped it off at the ski valet. The way the Hilton’s ski valet works is that you give oner person your skis and receive a token in exchange. Then, you get a basket from a second person, put your boots in the basket, and had that over in exchange for a different token. The tokens, which are just laminated pieces of paper with a number on them, are used to get your gear back.

We decided to go back to Niseko-yo to have dinner. We were a bit undecided where to go but ended up going to Gogyo, a ramen restaurant by the Japanese Ippudo ramen chain. The Gogyo branding is a bit ridiculous as it is “powered by” Ippudo.

We got both the miso ramen and a more standard tonkotsu ramen. Both were very good but the miso was definitely more interesting and different. It was expensive compared to ramen in a non-resort location. But, it was far better than the yakitori we had earlier!

After dinner, we went to the Sapporo Drug Store at Niseko-yo for some snacks. This shop is a konbini on the ground floor and we think an actual pharmacy on the second floor. They had a pretty wide selection of items, particularly local ones from Hokkaido.

It was completely dark out by the time we returned to our room. The artificial lighting from the resorts was enough to illuminate the clouds in the sky.

We headed back out to Niseko-yo at 11pm to take a look at what, if anything, was going on. A 太鼓 taiko performance was scheduled for 11:30pm, however, we weren’t sure where it would be. One official source indicated it would be here at Niseko-yo.

There were a few people walking around here and there but overall it was pretty dead.

We returned to the Hilton as the lobby area was pretty busy when we left. Maybe it will be there? The schedule does show some taiko performances during the holiday season take place there.

It turns out the performance was in the lobby area but crammed into a small section by the bar. The taiko musicians were pretty good and extremely energetic!

We headed outside after the taiko performance to wait for the New Year’s Eve fireworks at midnight. We decided to setup our tripod a bit further away from the crowd and slightly up a slope, though we weren’t sure exactly where the fireworks would be launched from. But, this seemed like a good location.

It was soon midnight and the fireworks started! They were being launched from not too far away, just up the slope beyond the chairlift.

A little bit of adjustment was going to be necessary…

The fireworks lasted just under eight minutes. Although overall it wasn’t particularly fast paced, they did have a variety of shells. This was also definitely the closest we’ve been to a fireworks show.