7 Places To Visit In Niseko

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Filter (7)
Mountain (2)
Day Trip (2)
Nature (1)
Hot Spring (1)

1. Mount Yotei

10 km from city center

Mountain

A 1,898 metre cone so symmetrical it is called Ezo Fuji, standing alone across the valley from the ski slopes and visible from almost everywhere in Niseko. It is an active volcano, last erupting around 1050 BC, which guides that call it extinct get wrong. In summer it is a real climb of eight to ten hours return; the rest of the year it is simply the thing every view here is arranged around.

Top Attraction

6 km from city center

Mountain

The 1,308 metre peak the four linked Niseko ski areas sit on, with a gondola running to near the summit and a panorama straight across at Mount Yotei. Worth knowing if you are visiting outside winter: the gondola runs in summer, and there is a night service for star gazing, which undercuts the common assumption that Niseko has nothing to offer once the snow goes.

Top Attraction

13 km from city center

Nature

A high moor reached by a 1,388m boardwalk flat enough for a wheelchair, which makes it the one alpine landscape here that does not ask for a climb. Pools sit among sphagnum and cotton grass with Mount Yotei showing on clear days. Snow closes it for half the year: road and walkway are usable roughly June to October, and the colour in late September is what most people come for.

Top Attraction

7 km from city center

Hot Spring

A remote bathhouse high on Annupuri's western flank, where the water comes out milky and sharply sulphurous and the outdoor tubs sit against bare volcanic slope. This is a destination in its own right rather than a hotel bath, and it is the most characterful soak in the area. The road in crosses the Panorama Line, which closes in winter, so check access before driving up.

17 km from city center

Garden & Park

Snowmelt that fell on Mount Yotei decades ago surfaces here at about 30,000 tonnes a day, bursting straight out of a mossy slope into a stream you can stand beside. It is one of Japan's hundred famous waters and people drive over from Niseko with empty bottles to fill them. Free, about 25 minutes from Hirafu, and a genuinely odd thing to watch.

29 km from city center

Day Trip

A caldera lake about 70 km south with an island in the middle, ringed by onsen hotels and overlooked by Mount Usu and Showa-Shinzan, a hill that pushed itself out of a wheat field during the 1940s eruption and is still steaming. Fireworks are launched over the water nightly through the summer and are visible from the shore. Allow a full day rather than an afternoon.

7. Day Trip to Shakotan Peninsula

65 km from city center

Day Trip

Two hours north, a coastline of sheer cliffs above water so intensely blue that the colour is marketed locally as Shakotan Blue. The walk out along the ridge to Cape Kamui takes about 20 minutes and ends with sea on three sides. Sea urchin is the local catch and the season runs roughly June to August, which is also when the colour is at its best.