If you'd only ever experienced Niseko under a four-meter blanket of snow, you'd barely recognize Hokkaido's most cosmopolitan winter-sports resort in summer — in the best way possible.
Gone are the half-pipes and moguls, and the skis and boards are all packed away in favor of mountain bikes. The pace of life slows as powder hounds are replaced by grazing cattle and elderly foragers scouring the hillsides for mushrooms and sansai (mountain vegetables).
A refreshing escape from sticky Honshu summers, Niseko — a collection of resort villages clustered around the base of 1,156-meter Mount Niseko Annupuri and with mighty, 1,898-meter Mount Yotei (known as the "Mount Fuji of Hokkaido") towering over all — is a rural idyll unlike anywhere else in Japan.